Favourite Conductors

[Bonn1827]

..and he's an Aussie too. Yeeeaaaah!!!

[Chaszz]

Bernstein and Solti. Bernstein's Fidelio is my favorite. As a Wagner fanatic, I love conductor Karl Muck, who recorded Act III of Parsifal and other fragments of Wagner in 1927. The sound is remarkable for the time, and the interpretations are marvelous. Perhaps it helped that Muck was trained by conductors who had worked under Wagner at Bayreuth. Also a current Bayreuth stalwart, Christian Thielemann, is IMO a great Wagner conductor.

[Tony John Hearne]

Toscanini for an absolutely electrifying account of Beethoven 3, 5, 7 and 9 with the NBC Symphony; Bernstein for the Mahler symphonies ; Karajan for The Marriage of Figaro (strange choice I guess but the sheer pace and the stellar soloists are incomparable), Vernon Handley for Vaughan Williams 6 - all now sadly departed which leaves me with Barenboim for being simply wonderful at everything

[Roehre]

Is this discussion of various conductors what some critics have termed "reification"? Does this reification extend to the score? We ask, simply, for enlightenment.

Philip, May I ask what reification means, just simply for my enlightenment

[Bonn1827]

Tony, you are SO RIGHT about Maestro Barenboim. He is just extraordinary. I saw a recent documentary about Roland Villaneau (spelling), the tenor, and he was appearing at The Met in "Carmen". The camera showed Barenboim starting to conduct the overture and his left foot and whole leg was pounding up and down on the podium to the rhythm of Bizet's great piece. I thought, "yes, you've got music intravenously haven't you!"

Also, those Toscanini performances with NBC Symphony Orchestra are incandescent. I presume they're the Mercury recordings from the 50's you're talking about? These performances simply glow in the dark!

Greetings from Sydney!

[Michael]

Philip, May I ask what reification means, just simply for my enlightenment

I'm sure it was a typo. He meant rectification. He certainly didn't mean the concrete realisation of an abstract idea. Not our Philip.

[Chris]

I have put off responding to this thread, as it's really, really hard to answer this. So many conductors jump out at me for specific eras or composers or even pieces!

For Beethoven, David Zinman and George Szell come to mind.

For Baroque music, I think of the big names in period instrument ensembles - John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, and increasingly Ton Koopman.

In general, Daniel Barenboim, Colin Davis, Neville Marriner...

Very difficult question.

[Tillyvalle]

For me it has to be Karajan. I have a dvd of him conducting Beethoven's symphony No 7 eyes closed as usual. The second movement is mesmorising.

[Megan]

I'm sure it was a typo. He meant rectification. He certainly didn't mean the concrete realisation of an abstract idea. Not our Philip.

Our Philip means what he typed, 'reification' it isn't a typo, plus it would be most unusual for him to misspell a word twice . His question can be put thus: Does this 'idolization' of conductors extend to the score?

I think conductor idolization started with Karajan, who had rather a large ego, in my view, but I suppose that is a charge you can lay against most conductors! Then look at Toscanini! but I counterbalance that by saying that he was probably the greatest conductor of all time.

[Bonn1827]

I would think so. I can't imagine celebrating the conductor's performance of a work if one isn't particularly enamoured with the work. The performance can actually draw you closer to a piece you may have felt ambivalent about. I love Beecham's "Scheherazade" (spelling) but wouldn't listen to anyone else's reading of it. His is just so wonderful, those undulating waves heard so clearly in the string section!! And yet Beecham himself seemed a preposterous pomposity of a man!!

[Tillyvalle]

I was just trying to tmagine Beethoven's and Karajan's egos in the same room! Ah well, I for one can forgive them both!

[Quijote]

Philip, May I ask what reification means, just simply for my enlightenment

I have forgotten to answer this! For me, in the context I use it, it means placing the score on a plinth, as a sort of sacrosanct "text".

[Quijote]

Philip, May I ask what reification means, just simply for my enlightenment

Sorry for overlooking this question. In terms of the score, what I mean by the term is to place the "text" on a plinth, to treat it as sacrosanct scripture. Megan has rightly transposed this in terms of conductors.

[Tony John Hearne]

I read about and watched last night on You Tube, Carlos Kleiber (LVB 7 and Coriolan) Can conducting get any better than that?

[Bonn1827]

Yes, the Brahms 4 with Kleiber conducting the Vienna Philharmonic!! CD sound harsh and hard, but what a sound that orchestra makes and what phrasing and intonation!!