My favorite B-Minor Mass Recordings:

My favorite B-Minor Mass Recordings:

1: Thomanerchor/Freiburg Baroque/Georg Christoph Biller 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWMUt0KmY4

2. Wiener Singerknaben/Concentus Musicus Wien/Nikolaus Harnoncourt 1968 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5jIVFDp8lc&list=PLOvDSA4hBTlMIQMhEVorMh6CHbE15_TeY

3. Thomas Hengelbrock/Balthasar Neumann Ensemble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvExf77nRs4&list=RDkvExf77nRs4&start_radio=1

4. Mazaaki Suzuki/Bach Collegium Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1jV2EMLiSo&list=RDO1jV2EMLiSo&start_radio=1

5. Rundfunk Chor Leipzig/Neuisches Baches Collegium musicum/Peter Schreier

6. Capella Amsterdam/Frans Bruggen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gw318qPDhk&list=RD-gw318qPDhk&start_radio=1

7. Netherlands Bach Society/Jos van Veldhoven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FLbiDrn8IE&list=RD3FLbiDrn8IE&start_radio=1

8. Arcangelo/Joshua Cohen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF2p_nO0pVI&list=PLmOSt1fomrMWP9LGxZEbbgoaQj2W-J7pz&index=1

9. Gachinger Cantorei/Bach Collegium Stuttgart/Helmuth Rilling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gw318qPDhk&list=RD-gw318qPDhk&start_radio=1

10. Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Eugen Jochum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZDBAWLSbMo&list=RD6ZDBAWLSbMo&start_radio=1

Runners Up: Gustav Leonhardt, 

What do all these performances have in common?

Synthesis and diversity.

They do not banish the old, they do not fully trust the new. They do not make everything fully grand, they do not make everything nothing but intimacy. They look at a two hour work and realize that every new moment needs a variety of expression to hold audience attention.

There are all sorts of ways to do it. The Biller has the Thomanerchor, a sound that Bach surely would recognize 300 years later as his own choir. There is something about that sound that is simply perfect, more authentic than any authentic instrument. It fits Bach as well as the Vienna Philharmonic fits Strauss waltzes. But the reason I love Biller best is that he paces it like a mountain climb. From moment to moment, we aren't just conscious of the immediate moment but of everything which came before and everything which may yet come. It is an act of supreme architecture. If a great objectivist like Toscanini or Klemperer lived today, this may well be how they'd have done this extremely objective spiritual music. But it's more than just objectivity, it's a dialogue, or a compromise, between two sides of a fraught discourse, both of which have important points to make.

On the one hand, there is the old world of Bach: soporific tempi and too large choruses who can't sing it even so. And yet, amid all that boredom are 20 minute segments of absolute transcendence, transcendence which often vanishes from more recent performances. What makes Bach so loved is his harmonies, his part writing, his counterpoint. Why would anyone ever want to breeze through it at a speed at which it can't be appreciated?

So surely there has to be some compromise: surely great musicians can intuit a place where we can still be sent to heaven, yet not fall asleep for the rest.

I believe the way to do it is though the form. In Bach's greatest 'summa' works, to approach it movement by movement for cumulative impact, where you can feel precisely how one movement leads to the next, how every moment before leads to the moment after. These are works greater than they can ever be performed, but they don't just exist to move us or excite us, they exist to quiet us, and more than any other composer, the 'quietus' of Bach is the point.

On the other hand, Joshua Cohen does the opposite of Biller: he creates an opera of contrasts. In every movement he seems to be saying which approach works better, the old or the new? In the outer movements of the Gloria, he goes full Gardiner and creates an outright Dies Irae of noise, but in the more reverent choruses on the Gloria's inside, he plays them with broadly paced reverence. The solo movements are not dances, nor are they meditations, they're conversations, and set at the conversational speeds where you can best hear the text and understand how one movement moves into the next. Is it architecturally coherent? Maybe not, but then again, neither usually are cathedrals.

But Harnoncourt does it very differently. I don't think we imagine how revolutionary that first recording of the B-Minor Mass sounded. For some people it was rage inducing, for others it must have been like seeing the stars for the first time. But now that the revolutionary effect has worn off, it seems like one of the most traditional recordings ever made. Most of the tempi are so much more sensible than we generally hear today. The strings are so much more polished. The boys choir sounds downright normal compared to one voice per part stuff. More importantly, this is perhaps the first attempt to present the B-Minor Mass as a truly alive work of art in which contrast and development exist in dialogue: instead of spiritual valium.

And then there's Hengelbrock. In some ways it's even more my favorite than Biller. I disagree intellectually with a lot of how he paces it, but the music breathes so naturally that it's almost impossible to notice the tempos. So many Bachians care so much about precision, making their forces stamp every bar precisely on the beat: Hengelbrock, like so many of my favorite standard instrument conductors, couldn't care less about getting a crisp rhythm. Like the world's most natural podium musicians, he seems to want more that every musician take ownership of their playing and express themselves freely. If the attacks are constantly spread out, some ahead of the beat, some on, some behind, he doesn't care at all. The sincerity of expression, the commitment of every player, matters more than the ensemble.

But one way I completely agree with Hengelbrock and don't with so many others is in how much he gives to the soloists vs. the choir. There is a much more nuanced perspective to the One Voice Per Part debate: the choruses probably couldn't do a lot of the things Bach asks them to do, and if they did it, they had to rehearse with great dedication, and surely there's no way that hard-working Lutherans had enough time in their schedule to get to the whole thing. On the one hand, I find the OVPP one of the dumbest ideas in a movement full of dumb ideas. On the other, I think there were a lot more solos than we generally suppose. I think Bach reserved them for the climactic moments and had a few key virtuoso runs that he worked them on like dogs and let his temper scare them into practicing at home. The rest was probably soloists.

That's what synthesis means.

Another approach, one I greatly appreciate without loving is the Veldhoven. Veldhoven is pretty magnificent at pacing, and he has a lot of lovely singers (the Mass is more than its conductor after all...), but he doesn't have enough of them. Like Hengelbrock, he reserves a lot of singing for soloists, but my occasional question is why? I know it's often thought Bach didn't have more than, say 10 or 15 singers, but how can there be such a thing as a composer who writes on the grandest possible scale for compromised forces? If Bach had the chance for 50 or 60 professional singers and a fully complemented orchestra to boot, would he ever have refused it?

There are objectivists like Gardiner, so full of drama that I feel my nerves frying. There are objectivists like Herreweghe, so full of beauty that I fall asleep. In lieu of Herreweghe, allow me to recommend Veldhoven. In lieu of Gardiner, let me recommend Suzuki as many people do.

He has all of Gardiner's instrumental virtuosity and most of the singing virtuosity, but he has one element Gardiner never has: joy. Long before Gardiner was widely known as the Nelson Muntz of music, his performances struck me as rage given sonorous air. They have many, many virtues, including humor, including even fun, but they are without joy. You cannot look at Suzuki's Petrenko-like manner on the podium and conclude that he is anything but a joyful human being. Even without visuals, Suzuki's rhythms are absolutely infectious. Every time I hear someone say about Bach 'it's supposed to be a dance' I throw up in my mouth a little, but under Suzuki these not just lace-and-powder dances at Rococo court, they're the dances of musicians who are genuinely enjoying themselves. Certain movements I find too quick, and surely the B-Minor Mass is supposed to be a little more solemn than this, but in every case, Suzuki's decisions make sense on their own terms. I find his Domine Deus much too fast, but it's an enthusiastic dance, and it turns the Qui Tollis into a shock: one moment ago we were dancing at a tavern with a comely girl at church, now we are in her funeral cortege.

But then there's one that comes from a place even beyond personality. I'm not a huge fan of Frans Bruggen: the Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert that sends everyone else into ecstasy just seems non-descript to me and occasionally borderline incompetent (listen to the beginning of his final Mozart 39 and how the already slow tempo gets slower and slower...). When you watch Bruggen, he rarely seems to actually conduct: he's just keeping time with one hand, and it shows. So many of his performances are uninflected, unaffected, and simply bland. I don't know what other people see in this guy except a musician who carries good taste into vulgarity. But Bruggen was a baroque flautist long before he was a conductor, and here he's on home turf. I'm never convinced he understands a single composer after Haydn, but Bach he gets. Bach doesn't require a shader, just a guiding hand and the players do the rest. This is Bach playing so natural I feel like I'm listening to Schubert. How does one even speak of interpretation in a recording like this? It's just a stone perfectly polished by the sea.

The one thing I wish we had is more recordings of trad-instrument Bach in concert halls with musicians of impeccable taste and spirituality. Rilling is great, and god knows there are enough recordings from him of the B-Minor Mass, but Rilling never quite hit the sweet spot. All his recordings oscilate between a vocal line beautifully sustained and runs with staccatos so emphatic they seem etched by bullets. With regard to speed, his first recordings were too traditional and pastoral, then he began to sound like he was taking cocaine in the organ loft.

Peter Schreier, however, is one of the great musicians of our lifetimes, and whenever he took up the baton for choral works, the results were excellent; rarely moreso than here. Schereier even recorded this twice, and unfortunately, of the preferable one I can only find highlights on Spotify. The highlights seem to give us the outline of a performance of absolutely impeccable pacing and architecture, along with some of the most beautiful singing and playing you've ever heard. Occasionally you get some weird mannerisms, like a piccolo trumpet playing the horn part in the Quoniam, or weird decrescendos in Crucifixus, but they stand out because so much is so right, including a gradual realization that the Crucifixus is poco a poco ritarding from nearly the halfway point. It's magnificent! Those East German musicians behind the curtain were some of the greatest on earth: with all the impeccable training of the west but isolated from the luxury padding of the Karajan era.

If this music truly belongs to everybody, then we need this master 'bach' on the symphony subscription schedule. We need the whole world of 'Baroche' music on the schedule. Symphony orchestras are unfortunate creatures that play the same 100 hits over and over and over again.

There is a parallel universe out there where we don't listen to the same B-Minor Mass over and over again for a week, but rather use our time to investigate a massive world of potential lost treasures. Some of it's crap, but there are a lot more jewels out there than we think there are. There are great musicians out there: both composers and performers, and there would be still more if ideology didn't corrupt us all into dismissing what should be entertained.

Bastille Day: An Essay for Tisha b'Av - first half

 Bastille Day: an essay for Tisha B'Av:

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I saw an article yesterday I found so disturbing for entirely selfish reasons. Apparently Israeli writers are being boycotted unless they wash their hands of Zionism altogether. So are American Jewish writers. Agents are refusing to even represent them because there's no point in even hawking the books to publishers. When Israeli writers mentioned this, the president of PEN International Association of Writers resigned his post.

I'm not going to link to it here. For selfish reasons I just found it too disturbing, but here's what The Atlantic had to say about that article:

"On Thursday morning, PEN America, the free-speech organization, posted an article detailing the “isolation and exclusion” many Israeli and Jewish writers have felt since October 7, 2023. The authors describe being blacklisted at publishing houses, boycotted by activists, pressured to downplay their Jewishness, and called out in online witch hunts including a viral crowdsourced spreadsheet that asked: “Is your fav writer a Zionist???”

PEN America currently sits on a widening fault line, one that divides old-school liberalism, which treats the right to speak as more important than any particular ideology, from a surging and fiercely ideological left that sees Israel and Zionism as its enemy. Still, it was a shock to learn that this article—mainly a collection of writer testimonials—set off an eruption.

Mengestu had been in his position for only seven months following a few years of turmoil at the organization, much of it over Israel and Gaza. When I reached him, he described the PEN article as a possible threat to the constitutional rights of those who advocate for shunning Israeli products (including art) according to the standards of the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement. Apparently setting aside the question of defending free expression for Israeli and Jewish writers, he focused on the rights of pro-Palestinian activists. A document like this from PEN, he felt, could provide more fuel for legislation that targets proponents of BDS. Such legislation already exists in most states, though it is usually aimed at businesses and individuals seeking government contracts. “It’s the first amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu wrote in an email. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”"

...So much for my book getting published, if I ever finish it.

For better or worse it's a book designed to be unfinishable: a kind of "Jewish Mentaculus" meant to create a counter-Jewish history, outlining another way it may ahve happened. Is it the most likely way it happened? Absolutely not. But I find it the most fun way it might have happened, designed to make points about the meaning of Jewish History, being Jewish, the Jewish relationship to the Holy Land and the world's, and how we just might create a better understanding between Jews and Gentiles: if such a thing is 1% possible.

Is it ego meant to create the most 'important' Jewish book since the Bible? Well... maybe?... but you can't really help what takes shape in your imagination. More likely, it's just that my imagination tends that way. Some of us were not born with an edit button. Most people connect from A to B with little trouble. Type-A people connect from A to Z. My mind connects from A to Q to X to 7i.

Until this fog lifts of Jewish writing, there's no point in sending anything at all to a publisher. I borderline hate Israel: not just the Israeli government but a perpetual annoyance with the rudeness of Israelis, the worship of strength and weaponry, the arrogance toward Americans who have supported them so loyally for decades, and the swamp-ass heat. The majority of Israelis are everything that set my teeth on edge. But I will not wash my hands of Israel, Zionism, the capability of a better country, a better Jewish nation and a Zionism that is once again compatible with multilateral liberalism. I'm not particularly fond of my hometown either, but twenty years after I lived there, Israel remains a kind of second home. The node around which my entire view of the world revolves. We literally gave the world the idea that humanity has a purpose and a destiny, and if the world does, then a world without Israel is a world without itself.

More and more of my friends turn anti-Zionist, and if even they always were, anti=Zionism becomes ever more important to their own worldviews. I cannot help questioning whether friendship is really possible between these two sides. Blame the people who raised me if you like, but the belief in Israel is too deep in my kishkes to ever give it up. Perhaps that belief is futile and self-penalizing. Perhaps God will have us thrown out of our countries like He ever does, for if He exists, then He is a cruel God, a jealous God, using us as labrats to teach world's souls moral lessons in the next world. But even if there is no God, what progress is even possible without believing that He is there? You can try if you like to make the world work for justice: but you'll never get more than half of it. The world has so many different motivations to get them out of bed in the morning, but there is no more effective motivator than God. Those who work for justice work for victory here on earth. Those who work for God work for victory for all eternity.

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Most Israeli authors, most Jewish authors, are probably Zionists, but they're exactly the sort of Zionists you want to foster. 

This shit isn't going away. Zionism will exist long after you and I are long gone, dear reader. Your anti-Zionist children will either face Zionists who compel Israel to comply with the rules of a liberal world order, or you will face Jewish nationalists whose mentality comes increasingly to resemble the radical Islam so embraced by the very peoples you champion. 

Perhaps if Zionism kills enough people, you'll become sympathetic to it again...

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You may find the current plight of the Jewish liberal trivial and misinformed, but you should pity us just a little. There is no situation more comically pathetic than the Zionist liberal (and yes, for the purposes of just this point, they're one and the same). The rest of the left-liberal world views us with contempt, the rest of the Zionist world views us with contempt too. The writers among us are basically boycotted by other Jews as by other Gentiles. 

As always, the people cancelled by the left are only the liberals who care what you think. The conservatives didn't give a shit before, they certainly don't give a shit now. 

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Here's the main problem with preventing Zionists from publishing. You may be interested in authors who believe in banning other authors. I am not. If I find out an author consciously boycotts other authors, I respect them a little less: not because I find their point of view morally wrong, but because I think their capacity to think is less than writers who believe in freedom. My mind naturally assumes they don't have things to say as interesting as a writer who thinks differently on that issue. Whether or not censorship is wrong or right: censorship is boring. It makes for less interesting books, it makes for less interesting discourse, it makes for less interesting people.

It's not just about freedom of expression: I don't even know if it's about freedom of expression at all. Here's the point: if you believe that a point of view is evil, then the best way you have to understand how they came to that view is to READ them. Reading isn't just validation or comfort: it's espionage and surveillance. It's one thing to hear their thoughts broadcast into your head when you don't want to hear them: anybody would find that annoying; but to reserve 10% of your reading time for points of view you find abhorrent at a moment of your choosing is necessary to put the stuff you do agree with into context. If you want to understand the opposition properly, you have to know what you're disagreeing with.

And it goes even further. If you need to understand the point of view of Nazis, you have to read Nazis. If you need to understand the point of view of a Zionist, you have to read Zionists. If you want to understand the point of view of Republicans, you have to read Republicans. If you need to understand the point of view of sexual harassers and assaulters and abusers, you have to read them. If you want to prevent people from going down their paths, you need to understand exactly what leads them down such paths, and you need armament for the crucial moments when you can prevent people from committing evil acts. The best way to do that is, by far, to read the precedents and locate the root circumstances of what makes such people turn to things we find abhorrent.

Don't do it out of obligation, wait for the moments when you're ready. Wait for the moments when you have the presence of mind to confront it. Wait for the moments when you are ready to change your own thinking. Don't expect to be convinced: if anything the opposite. Just as reading people you support may make you a better ally, reading people you oppose can make you a better opponent: an opponent who can target your arguments more precisely because you understand what makes them tick. Don't expect them to be convinced any more than you do, but it makes them understand that they have formidable opponents, and if they want to do everything they want, they will have more opposition than they thought, and once in a while they will retreat. Every time they do is another victory in a war of attrition

What is the alternative?

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The alternative is to let these people go through life feeling perpetually misunderstood. The alternative is to ignore people you find dangerous: isolate them with their own thoughts, their own fears, their own pathologies. The alternative is to let them fester and often grow into things you find still more abhorrent.

How do you think Donald Trump happened? How did so many millions of Americans feel comfortable electing him? How did 78 million Americans vote for him just when he lost? How did he win again?

Part of it is that yes, Republicans have gone down a path just that evil, but part of it was us, and the more victories he gets, the less willing we are to acknowledge it. Between 2016 when he won and 2020 when he lost, Trump gained 15 million votes! How did it happen?

Part of it was inflation, part of it was immigration, but part of it was because people feared liberals. Whether or not they were right to, they feared us. Why did they fear us? Because we isolated them. We made them pariahs.

Why and how did we?

American society has increasingly relied on medication and therapy to manage emotional issues. It's made families more pleasant, it's made friends more pleasant, it's made the workplace more pleasant, but it hasn't made everybody more pleasant. Those who have not become more pleasant, who cannot become more pleasant in certain interactions, who cannot afford to be more pleasant, have broken the new social contract and are left out of this newer more pleasant world where everybody who partakes can validate the shit out of each other in a way they couldn't before.

Those who lose their tempers, those who are insulting, we simply write them off. We ignore them. We isolate them. We cancel them. So many unpleasant actions are now considered some form of abuse. Videos on the internet proliferate about the importance of writing off the narcissists in your life, and it is sometimes estimated that narcissists constitute 7% of the world population, with a full 1% exhibiting psychopathic tendencies and another 1% exhibiting sociopathic.

Even if all that is true, what happens when you isolate the nearly one-in-ten of the population that exhibit antisocial tendencies?

If it's true, then these are the ones more likely to stock up on guns, who turn to opiates, who consume political propaganda. If these are the people with inordinate amounts of rage, then they are the ones who either find outlets for their rage that are truly antisocial, or they use substances to nullify themselves into non-being.

Just look at Trump rallies, they are giant mass demonstrations of antisocial rage where people get to pour out the two-hours hate society no longer permits them. But it is not just an act of rage and hatred, it is an act of mourning by people who feel that they've devoted their all to others for whom they were responsible, only for their contributions and love to go completely unappreciated--often accompanied by accusations of abuse, selfishness. Many of us are willing to exonerate our worse moments by the unfortunate circumstances in which we found ourselves, but for many others we do not give nearly the same charity. It's one thing for the people who are truly in danger, but every person you write off as toxic is another person whom, if they are toxic, their pathogens grow and rot.

If you really want to understand how Trump happened, view one statistic:

27% of Americans today do not speak to their parents:

TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT!

This is as big a breakdown in our country's socializing as that 50% of Boomer marriages failed. It may only be half as many, but marriage is choice.

The relationship between parent-child is necessity, it is the basic unit of human interaction. It is a bond beyond humanity, made by the most powerful releases of blood and oxytocinm and dopamine and endorphens and vasopresin a person will ever experience in their lifetimes.

But the moments when those chemicals are not released feel all the worse for the precedents of good feeling, made still worse by adrenaline and cortisol. The people you love most are also liable to be the people you most hate.

In nearly every case, I'm sure the families were as difficult as everybody claims, but is the alternative really any better?

A similar 28% of adults under thirty have been diagnosed with major depression. Among teens 12-17, 20% exhibit a major depressive episode every year! 42% of Generation Z reports struggling with depression.

22% of young adults from 18-29 report having zero close friends. Only 56% of Gen-Z reports having come to adulthood ever being in a relationship.

Is this really better?

Meanwhile, 37% of Americans age 18 to 29 report getting their news from social media influences, with a larger portion getting them from right-wing influencers than left-wing.

Is depression as bad as abuse? True abuse? Probably not, but I dare you to try major depression and tell me if you don't occasionally wonder. There is a way in which depression is the worst of all possible illnesses, because depression is the one illness designed to strip us of our resilience. If one is already feeling hopeless, how much harder becomes resilience?

In the worldwide 'Happiness Index' Baby Boomers still report being happy enough to qualify for the top 10 countries in the world. 

Adults under 30? #62. 

It's entirely possible that Boomer entitlement reserved the happiness for themselves and hogged some sources of happiness they should have passed on to later generations. It's entirely possible that Boomer divorce rates set a example to later generations telling them that family is not important. It's entirely possible that technology has been the great destroyer of this country's entire fabric: leaving what we should have gotten from people who love and like us to screens who cannot love us back. 

But that does not change that something terrible has happened in the American social contract. 

#2? The second-happiest country in the world for young people?

Israel.

Not Palestine, but Israel.

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What is the point of family?

The point of family is a declaration of faith. Not faith in god, faith in closeness and bonds and emotional connection. Family is faith that through it all, through all the difficult moments, through all the moments that make you want to commit acts of violence against others or yourself, the people to whom you are most closely bonded are not worth giving up on.

We think we can choose our family, but try having a kid and telling yourself that the bonds of friendship are thicker than blood.

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An Absurdly Long Email I Wrote About Conducting

 I was not a trainer by nature. I would get bored at that. I was an 'interpreter'. I didn't have huge 'concepts' for the pieces, but I'm a writer. I love detail: phrasing, balances, articulation, small rubatos that emphasize the structural features and harmonic tensions. I want music to tell a story. Art to me is 'shape'.

The greatest masters keep some options open. They don't usually leave decisions to the minute they're up there, but they usually decide that there's a spectrum of possibilities they can pursue in performance and find ways to prepare the groups that leave their options open.

The vast majority of these conductors have very high information density. Their beats don't just tell you where the beat is, the beats tell you how quickly to breathe and bow, what the attack is like and how sustained the attack should be, and exactly how much weight to put into the sound.

John Nelson: [http://youtube.com/watch?v=hwAmKvVP9oI&list=RDhwAmKvVP9oI...](http://youtube.com/watch?v=hwAmKvVP9oI&list=RDhwAmKvVP9oI...)

The Messiah recording was sort of his musical last will: he prepared his own edition that took from all seven versions. You can see that he is still shaping phrases in the moment, the rise and the taper, but at the same time doing the phrasing within a framework of great discipline. These are decisions made in real time, and the musicians respond. He makes some circles conductors are clearly not supposed to do, but his wishes are completely legible to the musicians, and by being not exactly by the book, he gets a warmer sound. As you know, it's a lot easier to get a cantabile when you don't have a completely direct beat.

William Christie: [https://youtu.be/emeJJ3xU3oM?si=J752l37fUl-RnDzL&t=4007](https://youtu.be/emeJJ3xU3oM?si=J752l37fUl-RnDzL&t=4007)

I don't think anyone has ever done the beginning numbers of Messiah Part 2 better. Listen for the footstamp right before 'the chastisement' and how it energizes a subito forte nobody else does. Every moment has intentionality of dynamics and phrasing. Again, the structural framework is utterly disciplined, but within it is the most unbelievable imagination and lets the chorus focus on conveying the expression. Nelson may have some awkwardness in his technique, but Christie's gestures are utterly clear at every moment and you know exactly what he wants from watching him. He emphasizes exactitude more than expression, but the gestures have absolute clarity. Look how he often beats ever so slightly ahead of the beat, so that everybody knows the character he wants. By beating ahead of the beat, he can get greater weight of tone, but his technique is so clear that it never throws anybody off. Whenever he wants a direct attack, he beats right on the beat, but that switch between the two gets him the option of very different sounds.

Adam Fischer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXw5l7lFapY...

Listen to the bizarre shit Fischer does with Haydn's Surprise Symphony, much of which is clearly planned in advance, but however unorthodox the technique, you see right away how the orchestra could never mistake what he wants. Ilya Musin said that conducting is the tension between expression and exactitude. Weird as his technique looks, this is a masterclass in it.

Ivan Fischer: [https://youtu.be/GIJK34VDMak?si=uADd-LijmLjUgt68&t=3672](https://youtu.be/GIJK34VDMak?si=uADd-LijmLjUgt68&t=3672)

His younger brother, studied with Harnoncourt, probably considered the greatest master of standard repertoire today: was almost director in Baltimore and DC once upon a time. It's a much more orthodox performance of Haydn 102 than his brother's 94, but watch every gesture: every ictus and rebound. Every beat, every space between the beat, conveys the sound, the speed of the bow and breath, the dynamic, the place in the phrase and the character. This is the kind of encyclopedic technique Carlos Kleiber and his ilk brought to the profession and it frankly revived orchestral musicmaking.

Helmuth Rilling: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gw318qPDhk...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gw318qPDhk...)

Since one of my main teachers studied with Rilling in Oregon, I guess Rilling's my 'musical grandfather'... God Rilling was good. No matter how he felt about HIP, he got Bach, and a lot else besides (he also commissioned La Pasion Segun San Marcos by Golijov). It amazes me how few early music specialists emphasize vocal line, but look at the continuity of his beat, this is a conductor who prizes vocal line like hawk does eggs, and it shows. Obviously, the staccati are not as pointed as in most HIP performances, but unless the tempi are lightning quick (an occasional Rilling foible), it's all to the good. I've often felt HIP misses everything good about legato and sacrifices a lot of musical beauty that I'm sure the composers wanted.

Mazaaki Suzuki: You worked with him. You know what a model he is better than I do.

Peter Dijkstra: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdDdtVo2nRo...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdDdtVo2nRo...)

Luks and Lutz and Gottfried are great, but Dijkstra is, I think, the best HIP right now. Every single moment has complete intentionality. There is no way any musician would look at that technique and not know exactly what to do. Not just technically, but aesthetically. Before he's done he could be the all-time HIP maestro.

John Eliot Gardiner: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tm27tmfEAY...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tm27tmfEAY...)

I don't get Gardiner, He is constantly shaping phrases when in front of singers, and yet with orchestras he is just beating fast and getting no phrasing out of them. I've always said that the best are 'in the trenches' with musicians. Simultaneously supporting and guiding them, and obviously Gardiner's a bit of a general... I don't love a lot of Gardiner's Bach, but this is the greatest St. John Passion I've ever heard, and he is shaping every phrase here. Gardiner does evil very well...

Thomas Hengelbrock: (added after the email) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvExf77nRs4&list=RDkvExf77nRs4&start_radio=1

Thomas Hengelbrock may not be the greatest master in HIP, but he's my favorite. Everything I love about my favorite standard conductors is present in Hengelbrock: namely, the freedom. Hengelbrock is one of the very few HIP masters in which nothing feels bound by the beat. So many HIP conductors shape music around the pulse, and everything feels a little too strict. he shapes through the phrase. Even when he's faster than I'd like, nothing feels over-drilled. It might be a little too hangdog for Type-A listeners, but it allows the musicians the freedom to sound as though they're express without inhibition. When you look at his beat, it's both very different from the extremely specific beats of Suzuki and Dijkstra, and from the usual HIPsters who handle the baton with all the naturalness with which they'd handle a snake. There is barely a beat, because he is conducting the line. Whenever there's a rhythmic emphasis needed, he strictens it up. If things start a little before or after the beat, he doesn't care, he almost prefers it. Instead, the players are free to get a singing tone and phrase without worrying that the conductor's dictating their every move. They've clearly worked out the interpretation before, and he trusts the performers enough to only stand in the way when they need it.

Emanuel Krivine: (added after email) Beethoven Symphony No 6 F major Pastoral Emmanuel Krivine La Chambre Philharmonique

He's doing the same thing, only moreso. See an explanation later under Kubelik and Jochum.

As for Herreweghe, he gets gorgeous albeit monodynamic results. I have no idea how he does it.

------------------------

So much is learned by looking at rehearsals. Sorry that I get carried away with the length here. Do whatever you want with it.

Carlos Kleiber: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzo1SsxG5Uk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzo1SsxG5Uk)

The most talented conductor there's ever been. Every gesture is coordinated to the phrase and the exact shape and energy he wants. He has a verbal metaphor for everything. Whenever you use verbal metaphors ('filligree... filligree') the chorus responds immediately. Below is a concert so legendary it can make even me love Johann Strauss:

Sergiu Celibidache: [www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFyjSkJ2rY&t=15s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFyjSkJ2rY&t=15s)

The other most talented, just more of an asshole. He is such a stickler for phrasing and bow/breath speed. He knows exactly the shape of every phrase and how to reach the top of it. More than anybody else, this clip shows that so many things about orchestral life transfer to choruses: so much of music is about speed of breath and bow. The slower the breath or bow, the richer the sound, and at the same time, the slower the breath out is, the more room the conductor has to balance the chords.

Herbert von Karajan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shc-4AZVaNk...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shc-4AZVaNk...)

Fucking Nazi. Not my favorite, but he was a master. He understood how to get sound, he understood how to get blend, he understood how to make musicians listen to each other, and he understood how to energize a piece. He always said that the real music happens in the overtones. The overtones determine the timbre, and the timbre is determined by how we breathe and listen. Karajan, whatever I think of him, shows exactly how that's done.

Leonard Bernstein: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kyso5VmZ6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kyso5VmZ6g) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsJ7_toPNVs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsJ7_toPNVs)

He was a genius obviously, and what he showed is that the more knowledge a conductor has, the more passionate a conductor can get without it seeming obnoxious.

Bruno Walter: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsnMiayZDQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsnMiayZDQg)

One of my favorites. He gets so much more done by talking as the musicians are playing.

Ferenc Friscay: [https://youtu.be/bky5FHEKZjk?si=krrTcbFDavy0lCXa&t=229](https://youtu.be/bky5FHEKZjk?si=krrTcbFDavy0lCXa&t=229)

One of my favorites. Amazing batonless technique, but finds a literary metaphor for everything he wants. Also, completely willing to sing what he wants.

Rafael Kubelik: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKTdSGz7KpU...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKTdSGz7KpU...)

My single favorite conductor. Not a great technique, though what he has he uses to sustain the vocal line. No jerky movements, absolute continuity with which the orchestra knows just what sound to use and how to phrase the line. He was pure music. He took huge romantic risks, but unlike, say, Lenny, they were never excessive because he understood risk management and just how far to push a rubato or phrase swell before it was too much. Man what he's able to do with words and metaphor. You can auto-translate the CC to English.

Harnoncourt: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Mrk62TyI4...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Mrk62TyI4...)

He had little technique, his interpretations were too excessive, but man that guy was an inspiration. He knew exactly how to inspire his players with metaphor and narrative. The stories he told in rehearsal were bullshit, nobody cared, it was still exciting as shit.

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Some performances, the real goodies.

Eugen Jochum: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPn9l510a0Y...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPn9l510a0Y...)

Another favorite. The greatest Bruckner conductor of all time in my never humble opinion. Everything with him is line, and weight, and breath. In this case I mean breath in that the structure has room through rubato to contract and expand so it never feels constricted: like a well fitting pair of pants. For him, precise attacks are very rare, and he conveys them with the left hand while the right emphasizes continuity of sound and line. In tuttis, the bass instruments always come in before the rest of the orchestra, so that we hear the warmth of the sound rather than attack or pristine chords. Like Kubelik, he is pure music.

Colin Davis: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuGSOkYWfDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuGSOkYWfDQ)

Yet another favorite. Davis was the anti-Mackerras. They dominated London for forty years. They were equally great, I loved them both growing up, but Mackerras was all rhythm, staccato and impact, Davis was all legato, line, and depth of sound. Like Jochum, he never had an angle in his beat, but he had as little rubato as Mackerras did. He shows better than anyone that you don't need rubato to be absolutely expressive.

Wolfgang Sawallisch:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brpMs5076EA...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brpMs5076EA...)

Perhaps the greatest of all in Schubert and Schumann. One of the great techniques and ears. With a simple flick of the wrist he knows how to get a completely different sound, a completely different phrasing, and always within a very tight structure.

Gunter Wand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNNj7rsPPBY...

I am in awe of Gunter Wand. He can maximize weight of sound just as Jochum does, yet he can clarify lines and phrases the way Celibidache does, his technique has Kleiber's exactitude. He's where classicism and romanticism meet seamlessly and nobody knows which it is. He knows exactly how to change tempi for a second subject so that nobody notices yet the phrase breathes and momentum carries in a way it never would if the tempo stayed the same.

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc_n848r8xc...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc_n848r8xc...)

The greatest conducting technique of all time, bar none. The conductor I wanted most to be like. More than anybody else, he shows what's possible to get without saying a word. Here he is doing Schnittke. He said it was about unlocking the players' creativity.

Pierre Monteux: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sREBh6fTz8c...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sREBh6fTz8c...)

My 2nd favorite conductor. Sound isn't great here but Sorcerer's Apprentice here shows the advantage of economy. The more boring the beat, the more every specific request stands out.

John Barbirolli: [https://youtu.be/d5Zw8G0heH4?si=EhMSWPg501ahZmrH&t=2563](https://youtu.be/d5Zw8G0heH4?si=EhMSWPg501ahZmrH&t=2563)

Another favorite. If Kubelik and Jochum were too generically romantic, Barbirolli shows how to be both romantic and detailed. He gets both the most incredible singing line and incisive rhythm. Every note has a specific approach, clearly worked out in rehearsal and part markups, but at the same time, the technique is so exact that he's able to change things on a dime, subtly putting rubato and agogics everywhere that can't possibly be rehearsed. He gets both the most incredible singing line and incisive rhythm.

Klaus Tennstedt: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Vm3xpeAvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Vm3xpeAvc)

Yet another favorite. My pick for the greatest 'romantic' conductor, and the greatest Mahler 8 conductor I've ever heard. He did it through pure emotional vulnerability with his musicians when he talked about personal experiences, and totally compressed intensity on the podium. He moved wtih very small gestures and fervent looks, and the performers just responded.

Christoph von Dohnanyi: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyOP3X6yMU...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyOP3X6yMU...)

A classicist who can express. Clearly beating time with a torn or dislocated shoulder. He can barely move his right hand but nobody ever did Schumann 2 better. He basically does what little he can with his right, but he basically conducts the whole thing by shaping phrases with his left hand.

Eduard van Beinum: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8K5b7A6nuM...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8K5b7A6nuM...)

Another favorite. Doesn't use a baton, barely moves either hand, yet you know exactly what he wants at every moment and the Concertgebouw responds with volcanic force.

Riccardo Muti: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6CVqC-zHMs...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6CVqC-zHMs...)

I don't like Muti much, but what he shows here is how to conduct a high not at 2:55. He literally conducts a downbeat up with a slight jump and a fist in the air. Everybody knows what it is, and the singers keep their vocal support.

Kirill Petrenko: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGqcGkfxPO4...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGqcGkfxPO4...)

Usually considered the greatest in the world right now. I love him because he's 5'3. All you have to do is look at him to see why people call him the best. Romanticism and classicism are seamless here, so are exactitude and expression. He emotes, but only for information's sake. Often in the quiet moments, and in the loud moments, he does it for instruments that will have trouble emoting in certain registers. In obvious places, he never does it.

Manfred Honeck: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAv-NGppFw...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAv-NGppFw...)

The greatest 'interpreter' of our time. Nobody thinks more deeply about pieces. Nobody departs more from the score except Adam Fischer, and yet it always seems organic. Here's Dvorak 8, a piece I love, never done more excitingly or 'dancily.'

Markus Stenz:: [https://www.youtube.com/live/J0PeGGQuGyY...](https://www.youtube.com/live/J0PeGGQuGyY...)

Another Surprise Symphony, the best second movement I've ever heard. Stenz is an example of how you can use the Petrenko/Kleiber/Celibidache technique to get much freer, more romantic results, and yet it always seems as though he stays within the structure!

Finally (sorry):

Mariss Jansons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfEahj-fZ4...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfEahj-fZ4...)

The greatest conductor I ever heard live. Kubelik is my favorite, but Jansons is the ideal. Exactitude and expression, romanticism and classicism, precision and passion, complete emotional involvement and yet you have no idea how he's interpreted anything. He was an absolute mystery, and yet when you watch him conduct, you hear him rehearse, there's no mystery how he did it. When he was based in Pittsburgh, I would go see him on tour in DC, and people would come out of his performances speechless. He was... perfect.

The greats of the next generation will be 50% women or much more.