Underrated Classical Musicians - Leif Segerstam

 Some 'weird' conductors are weird in a bad way that clearly means to highlight themselves, others are weird in a way that clearly means to draw out the spirit of the music. Segerstam has been the better kind of weird for fifty years. Here's a nearly 50 minute Sibelius 1 where the energy never lets up. The playing has so much intensity in every bar, you hear every detail of the orchestration pellucidly, and the way he blends the orchestra is magic unlike anything one ever hears in Sibelius (just listen to how gorgeously he phrases and balances the beginning of the Andante). There are plenty of conductors who do 'all the right things', but it takes a special kind of genius to stretch out the tempi like this and make it all the more compelling: this is the kind of stuff you expect from Bernstein, Celibidache, Furtwangler, Horenstein, Sanderling, and especially Klemperer. One occasionally also hears murmurs that Segerstam is weird enough to resemble Klemperer in more ways than musically, but regardless of that, it's nice that occasionally the real eccentrics still get their chance - had Paita or Shipway or Cleve been Finnish, perhaps they'd have been able to find consistent work their whole careers.

More on Segerstam some other time.