Good point. I am an owner/acquired/collector/archiver. I prefer CD, LP and paper books( preferably hardcover) and I only use streaming for convenience while walking/jogging or as an alternative to radio in the automobile. I have paper back up for all important things. I insist upon paper monthly statements for accounts. Of course my young adult children are fully digital. With physical music media( and books) I would feel lost without the objects themselves and their totality of resource information in a convenient analog format which is available immediately without resort to computers, software, arbitrary operating systems, failures, endless back-up requirements-you name it. Oh yeah-I almost forgot-when the power goes down I can still read my book if I can see it and pop my CD into my Sony portable CD player( yes I still have one of those in great operating condition) and listen if I want better sound than through iPhone. You may call me a Luddite, but “I am sure I am not the only one”……….
As for Furtwängler and Barbirolli being up there in the "firmament", I guess I'm in the minority, I'm not a fan of either. I can stand only so much arpeggiating and rough orchestral playing. That said, I can appreciate the "sound" WF created more than most of what JB did. Anyway, I've said enough about both in the past and don't want to repeat myself, and I certainly don't want to offend anyone.
I think I appreciate Furtwangler more than Barbirolli who I have mentally relegated to the Solti level-so to speak. But with Furtwangler the sound quality of recordings( or lack thereof) has been an impediment as well. With Solti-other than “The Ring” I sort of look the other way. We all have our opinions which to my mind keeps the conversation interesting. And, you know, sometimes a comment may cause us to revisit something and possibly change our opinion. I know I have done so on more than one occasion prompted by discussion here.
Agreed, also with regard to Solti. I've tried his recordings ad nauseam, but, apart from some of his Mahler with the London SO, to no avail. Not being an opera fan, I've never heard his Ring.
Perhaps my firmament is too large of a place, haha. Not that these are all in the firmament, but for kicks I made a list of conductors who's work I regarded highly enough to listen to at the very least, or "collect" in some cases very selectively, but a number of them more comprehensively. Just for fun, or debate, here's my list. There conductors of the current generation who might have been included, but I kept it fairly slanted towards the past. Sorry, don't know why the paste is double spaced. Claudio Abbado Karel Ančerl Ernest Ansermet Břetislav Bakala Serge Baudo Sir Thomas Beecham Sir John Barbirolli Eduard van Beinum Leonard Bernstein Herbert Blomstedt Karl Böhm Sir Adrian Boult Guido Cantelli Pablo Casals Zdeněk Chalabala Andre Cluytens Albert Coates Ferenc Fricsay Oskar Fried Wilhelm Furtwängler Carlo Maria Giulini Nikolai Golovanov Bernard Haitink Sir Hamilton Harty Desire Inghelbrecht Neeme Jarvi Eugen Jochum Herbert von Karajan Rudolf Kempe Paul van Kempen István Kertész Erich Kleiber Carlos Kleiber Otto Klemperer Paul Kletzki Rafael Kubelik Igor Markevitch Jean Martinon Lovro von Matačić Willem Mengelberg Dimitri Mitropoulos Pierre Monteux Yvgeny Mravinsky Charles Munch Artur Nikisch Eugene Ormandy Antonio Pedrotti Andre Previn Fritz Reiner Artur Rodzinski Hans Rosbaud Sir Malcolm Sargent Hermann Scherchen Carl Schuricht Karel Šejna Constantin Silvestri Stanislaw Skrowaczewski William Steinberg Leopold Stokowski Otmar Suitner Yevgeny Svetlanov George Szell Vaclav Talich Klaus Tennstedt Arturo Toscanini Sándor Végh Bruno Walter Felix Weingartner
There are quite a few conductors on your list whose work I like or at least don't dislike, but I don't share your admiration for Barbirolli, Ansermet, Mengelberg and one or two others, and there are some whose work I'm not sufficiently familiar with to say something about it.
I don't think there's anybody who equates Hurwitz' taste to some expert consensus. While it's amusing at times to hear his highly prejudiced, often self-righteous opinions, he's just a regular listener like any other (but with more knowledge on Sibelius). It should be noted that he doesn't appear have any formal musicological training (hence his repeated diatribes against musicological authenticity) or serious performance/conducting background. For more informed analyses (or just better tastes), I always sought out Alex Ross, Jed Distler, and Jens Laurson.
Love this statement. It's my philosophy as well -- that's why I gravitate towards positive reviewers once I left my broody, judgmental twenties.
A result of a mis-spent youth AND adulthood! It's reasonably large, but I have some friends who's collections are virtual archives....I reserve the designation of truly impressive collections for those folks!
Barbirolli was great in Dvorak, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams, and Elgar (to name just a few). The only thing problematic was the Halle Orchestra which was rather rough around the edges. That said, his Sibelius 2nd with the RPO is one of the best ever put down on disc.
So, as probably the resident contrarian, I have to pipe up and say I like Solti. His Mahler cycle is one of my favourites and I think he conducts eastern European music brilliantly.
I'm now listening to parts of the Ansermet set below, to see/hear if I'm missing anything. I must admit that Ansermet is a much better conductor than I remembered from years ago, but I really can't get past the occasionally very rough playing of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Yes, it does have character, but that playing... Ouch.
Yes, those were intentional omissions. I've tried. I acknowledge Barenboim's huge talent, and it's wonderful to see such gracious gent as Rattle have success. When I've watched many videos of Rattle on the BPO app, it strikes me that it's no wonder (for my money) the BPO often sounded so seedy under his direction (yet still sounded great under various guests) because I can't see that his gestures help them to line things up at all. But it's not a Karajan type imprecision of gesture, but something actively against the grain. I saw Rattle's Debussy Pelleas at the Met (2011 or so?), which was praised to the skies, but I found it a fussy, woozy, shapeless interpretation far removed from what I think should be the case for that work. I admire Solti's Ring, but it's not my favorite. Maybe some day, I'll get it with him. I do try things out on occasion. For someone who obviously knew his way around the opera house, I wonder why it seems he pushes singers around so much, and generally "forces" things. I like much of Muti (in his prime) but he could do this in the opera house too, in an effort to clear the cobwebs of tradition as well. Perhaps it's the Toscanini influence? In contrast, I just got done watching a wonderful Karl Bohm Strauss Ariadne (a DVD from a 1965 Salzburg production) and he moves things along very forcefully and unsentimentally, but he's there to breath and expand and support the singers to a T. It's really fantastic conducting, bracingly exciting and savvy of what works in this music he knew like almost nobody else.
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That's funny, I have the same problem with Barenboim. I've tried and tried, to no avail. To me his piano playing sounds willful and the same can be said of his conducting, and that's not something I appreciate. I have his complete Bruckner cycle with the Chicago SO (I think it's the first of his many versions, like Karajan he records the same stuff over and over again, his Beethoven Piano Sonata cycles being a case in point) and a few pieces with him conducting in mega boxes by others, but that's about it. As for Solti, I can be short, I've already said enough about him here; to me he is all power and no substance - well, maybe with the exception of his Ring, as I said I haven't heard it. Rattle is not a favourite of mine either, all I have is his Mahler 10 with the Berlin PO (third Deryck Cooke version) and that's more than enough
I couldn't agree with you more about Barenboim. At the risk of opening up a flame war, I'll share the opening of a blogpost I wrote 15 years ago: In my opinion, Daniel Barenboim is one of, if not the, least talented musicians before the public today. Clearly, since he’s music director of the Berlin State Opera and principal guest conductor of La Scala, many other people don't share this opinion, and it’s true that I saw this view first expressed in B.H. Haggin’s writing, but nothing I’ve heard in all the years since has changed my mind. Take, for example, his contribution to the 30th anniversary celebration of Live from Lincoln Center recently broadcast on PBS. In the madly kaleidoscopic segment of concerto performances, Barenboim’s few measures stood out for the leaden quality of the playing. There was no phrasing, musicality, or even interest in what he did. He looked the part but based on his playing he could just as well have been some guy from the audience in a tux, called up at the last minute to take the place of an indisposed soloist. There's more here: Criticizing the Critics.
