Friday, September 24, 2021

9 Unappreciated Living Old Podium Masters

 Before we do another conductor ban, nine examples of old podium masters worthy of the golden age still working today. Not counting a few more obvious names...: the greats are still there, we're just not looking in the right places, so instead of the ones who are communicating something essential, we get the slick pros who 19 times out of 20 create results with good playing yet convey nothing essential or ecstatic. Nobody can tell my ears that Charles Dutoit conveys anything but a plaster cast of music. Nobody can tell my ears that Zubin Mehta doesn't phone 9 out of 10 concerts in. Nobody can tell my ears that Riccardo Muti isn't trying to impose his personality at the expense of everybody he works with, or that Valery Gergiev doesn't give a shit what happens for 70% of every concert and then turns the electricity on for the 'wow' moments. The evidence of their cynicism is all there for anybody who looks for it. It is absolutely, 100%, not true that the greatest talents get noticed for 100 different reasons. And how many great talents don't even reach the margins of people's awareness? So here they are, 9 conductors worthy of Klemperer, Kleiber, Mitropoulos, and Koussevitzky.

Adam Fischer doing the Ring Cycle:
Gabor Takacs-Nagy doing Beethoven Pastoral:
Claus Peter Flor doing Mahler 6
Jorge Mester doing Mahler's Resurrection
Yan Pascal Tortelier doing Sibelius 1
Yuri Simonov doing Pique Dame
Vasily Sinaisky doing Tchaikovsky 5
Masaaki Suzuki doing the St. John Passion:
Gunther Herbig doing Bruckner 7

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