Here's the 'greatest' Beethoven conductor in generations (IMHO... perhaps since Hermann Scherchen or at least Michael Gielen) did my least favorite symphony of his this weekend and made it sound like a masterpiece.
https://youtu.be/EP02o07Hak4?t=1553
I didn't know of Honeck at all until he came to Pittsburgh, where he quickly established himself as easily the best conductor of traditional repertoire working in America. I've read that around the early 2000's or before he was not yet what he later was, but by now, Honeck is so good that I try to drive to Pittsburgh a couple times a year just to hear him perform (I usually try three times a year and make it once...). He is, quite simply, one of the greatest musical masters I've ever had the privilege of hearing. I heard Jansons with the Pittsburgh Symphony too, and that was unforgettably transcendent in a completely different way. Jansons was magic - technique and expression were indivisible, and every moment felt perfect and right as though he'd been carefully assembling everything for decades. Honeck is anything but perfection, and the results are often rather sloppy, but that's because Honeck always seems like he's trying to break previous ideas apart to try to do something even riskier, deeper, more profound. It's not broken apart in the sense that Honeck is trying to impose a conception like Thielemann, but rather animating the music from within, bringing out what's already there. A lot of people poo-poo Honeck because they think he's trying to be Carlos Kleiber without Kleiber's genius, but I think Honeck is different - Kleiber was never this unselfconscious or heart-on-sleeve. Kleiber's product was clearly finished before he ever brought it to the first rehearsal. Honeck is perhaps closer to Walter, Kubelik, Fricsay, Harnoncourt, a central-European romantic with a lower-case 'r', the kind of musician for whom there is no finished product, and is always looking for more inner meaning.
(the single greatest Dvorak 8 I've ever heard...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAv-NGppFw
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