Underrated Classical Musicians 2/22/20

I'm honestly thinking of trading the rest of the tickets in for something later this or next season, and either see something else or go home. The Eroica was thankfully much better, and its finale was downright great, but that Beethoven 2 (my pick for LvB's most underrated symphony) was infuriatingly terrible - a caricature of everything people accuse Historically Informed Performance of being: robotic, inexpressive, passionless, like a machine you simply turn on or off, with no musical insight to recommend it except for the timbres of different makes of instrument. A person unfamiliar with these works could come away from such performances thinking Beethoven empty noise. It's doubly maddening because the performances I heard these forces deliver in 2018 of Berlioz were once-in-a-lifetime revelations. But for Beethoven, driving to Pittsburgh to hear Manfred Honeck conduct Fidelio was such a better idea than hearing Gardiner do a complete cycle, and I will return to hear Honeck conduct the Missa Solemnis in April. Honeck is a real musician who can't seem to give a performance that isn't a celebration of musicianship. John Eliot Gardiner has better angels in his nature, but he has the natural inclinations of a musical drill sergeant. 

Now that I'm back in my friends' air B&B in Peekskill, I put on this recording from Dmitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic, no doubt recorded in Carnegie Hall. Hard core classical obsessives know Mitropoulos, but however highly they rate him, they still underrate him. He is one of the half dozen or so greatest conductors of the 20th century. If some of his interpretive decisions in the last 90 seconds are questionable: who cares when so much before it is so right? Hearing a performance like this, or a Beethoven 2 by Mengelberg, or Beecham, or Harnoncourt, that lives on the edge, that burns with such searing passion, that displays so many little details of Beethoven's vision, unnoticeable in other performances, is what makes this music, what makes all music, worth listening to.