A Self-Interview: Part 1

Mr. Charlap, what do you aspire to be?

I aspire to be the greatest novelist of the 21st century. 

How close do you think you've come?

I think I'm close enough to get a three sentence email from the greatest novelist of the 21st century. 

Why do you think there is such a gap between aspiration and achievement?

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm just some guy writing a novel when he should be working. I have no qualifications or expertise for this project, I just throw things at a wall and see what sticks. 

What sticks?

You've read it, you tell me. 

Well... I...

You haven't read it, have you?

No... (ten second silence)... So what do you aspire to make this work into?

Well, what I dream of doing is to do for Judaism what Dante did for Catholicism, Milton for the Protestants and Dostoevsky for the orthodox. 

Oh my... Do you find that a bit megalomaniacal? 

Every minute of the day. 

What did these great writers do?

They fielded the questions on which God was silent.  They provided the ultimate eschatology for their peoples and religions and why they are what they are and why they believe what they believe. They answered all those 'why's that God was reluctant to answer. 

So you mean to answer the questions the Bible neglects to answer?

No.

Why not if you're going to give the ultimate Jewish eschatology?

Because there's nothing less Jewish than an answer. 

So you mean to answer Jewish questions by not answering them?

Now you're beginning to sound like a Jew. 

(pause...) Mr. Charlap it would seem that you mean to portray the entire timeline of Jewish history.

In a sense, absolutely. 

What sense?

If you read the book you'd realize there's no sense in it. 

What do you mean? 

Waiter I'd like a smarter interviewer please. 

Mr. Charlap... You admit that you are portraying the entire history of the Jews. 

Jewish history, not history of the Jews, there is a very big difference. 

What's the difference. 

Gahennim if I know. 

.... So you mean to portray the entirety of Jewish history. 

Yes. 

How? 

You just said it yourself. It's a portrayal of it, not the real thing. 

Do you believe in the real thing?

Yes. 

Do you believe the Bible is how it happened?

Not even a little bit. 

So what do you believe?

My beliefs are in the book. 

Do you believe your vision of the Bible is the truth?

Absolutely not. 

What truth is there?

I believe we write down our own versions of the truth and once it passes past living memory it's every man for himself. 

What do you mean? 

Is this amateur hour over here?!

Mr. Charlap I'm sorry but...

Every era is going to see itself and its own values in the past, every person will do the same and basically does that to the present already. 

So what we believe is not the truth?

No it's the truth. 

What's the truth then?

You're asking the wrong question. 

What's the right question?

What's NOT the truth?

Why is that the right question?

I'd like to talk to your supervisor. 

Mr. Charlap, I feel you leave me with no choice but ask that question again. Why is pursuing the truth the wrong question but pursuing lies the right question?

If you read the book you'd understand. Don't make me do your homework for you!

Because you want the reader to speculate about what is true and what is false in the Bible?

My god a glimmer of intelligence... mazel tov you're getting somewhere. But not just... not just...

Not just...

...Not just the... the... th...

Thhhhhhhhhheeeeee Bible?

Uh-huh! Not just thhhhheeeee Bible buuuuuuuuuu....

...buuuuuuuu......

...buuuuuuuuuuuuuut

....buuuuuuuuuuuut everything else?

Close. Scale it down a little actually. 

Things that happen?

...

Things that happened?

(Charlap nods)

History?

MAZEL TOV!

I got it?

Basically, yes. c

What do you mean by basically?

It applies to everything else. 

That's what I just said. 

It's not what you just said.

.... 

....

Mr. Charlap, I'd like to ask you about why you've chosen this particular subject?

Why does anybody choose a subject?

Why Jews? 

I didn't choose the subject, the subject chose me. 

Why not Americans? 

I'm writing about Americans!

It seems to be a relatively small part of your whole story. 

The whole story's about America!

Even the stuff in Israel?

The whole thing's Israel!

Then how is it not about Israel?

It IS about Israel!

So it's simultaneously about America and Israel?

Yes.

Is it about other places?

Of course. 

So it applies to everywhere?

No. 

Where does it apply to?

Roughly one hundred thirty countries. 

Dear Dad #10

 

Oy... Dad...

It was Father's Day last week. It's been ten months. I'm finally in Kubler-Ross's depression phase. It's not at all a major depression, just a minor creep on where you realize these 43 volumes of memories are just memories. No matter how grief materializes, you're here, yet you'll never be here again.

The last year has been a daze. I'm realizing it's whizzed by because I've spent half of it on ChatGPT and Gemini. It still feels like you passed yesterday. They warn you all the time how complex grief is, but you have no idea until you experience it. It's a palette of Baskin Robbins 31 flavors times a thousand, where every experience is tasted anew amid absence's black hole.

When it happened I was in love; for better or worse, your sudden death didn't hit me yet for a while. But as that relationship fades, you become ever more present. Denial can take many, many forms, and I feel like I experienced them all this year, but I think the mourning has genuinely started in the last few weeks.

You weren't just a person, you were a planet: a gravitational orbit so dense that there was no definition of the world outside of how Dad defined it. At every moment of our lives you were so present that through our very mouths were spoken the words of you. How do you mourn a planet?

But now, as I begin to stare down my jubilee and live the ages I watched you experience, life feels very very different even as it feels like you're here. People have been telling me I look old since I was a kid, but I always felt twenty years younger. Now that you're gone, I feel my own age for the first time. For the first time, I feel like life has truly advanced at the pace it should. For the first time in my life, there isn't enough time to understand the world enough. My memory repository is gone, my encyclopedia is gone, the seemingly effortless command of the world's events that I could go to with any question is gone, and now memory becomes as much a struggle as inquiry.

What never ceases to amaze me, and somehow amazed you still more, is that the rules of the old world apply yet again. After everything you showed me about how history happens, I was not surprised by how entropy's come for the US, but you seemed stunned. The more things change, the more they stay the same (you'd always said it in the original French), but the point was always that things change. As the great philosopher Patton Oswalt said: "You can't change nature, but nature is change," and in a country that's spent two-hundred fifty years giving history a middle finger, nobody knows how to negotiate history in a world they proudly don't know.

I said a little bit about a San Francisco interaction in the last letter, but my mind keeps going back to that interaction last month. I made the mistake of saying in San Francisco that I am a proud liberal Zionist (yet another reason I shouldn't drink...). A very nice lady (African-American) had cousins who were, according to her, making antisemitic comments about Jews online because of what's going on in Gaza, doubtless she meant blood libelous comments, and she wanted me to advise her how to make them understand that Israel is different than Jews. I can hear exactly what you would have said to her:

"Your cousins are right."

And if she'd pushed you on it:

"Maybe they're not, I don't care."

You didn't give a shit in these situations. If someone told you you were wrong, if someone got angry, if someone didn't find your condescension funny, you would just call them an idiot and relish the opportunity to get away with a faux pas. Over the years I've tried mightily hard to take your elan in vitriol, but I have neither your panache nor your confidence. I was never secure or certain enough of my own intelligence, I never had that ability to reduce opponents to quivering jelly with five words.

I was trying to be polite and having gotten myself into it, I had no polite means of withdrawing. All I could do was smile and nod as her husbands' ears turned into steam with every new thing I said that he of course insisted was just propaganda, in spite of admitting that all he knew about the situation was from Hasan Piker. If they still insisted on having the conversation, what could I do? Drinking or not, I knew my role as a guest in someone else's house. My hosts were quite a bit to the right of me, and later this husband got into a shouting match with them, but I was not going to give a history of Israel-Palestine to people who didn't know it yet would still dispute every word. Whatever one can say about you Dad, your confidence in verbal combat would shake Socrates. You scented weakness the way wolves smell blood, and there was no tactic you were not beneath. No one would ever figure out why you felt you had to stoop to it.

But you never had to deal with my generation directly: if you viewed me with a certain contempt, you viewed my generation as something on the end of your shoe. I can well understand why: my generation sometimes sounds as though confidence in nuance is something for past generations who felt like they have a future. To be as aware of the world in our time as you were in yours is nearly impossible. There's so much more information for us to digest than your generation ever knew what to do with, and in an age when data and evidence is procured so cheaply, everybody doubts the veracity of what they read. The end result: all those historical periods you talked about in such detail--when people cling to certainties and fanatical violence precisely because there's no certainty to be had? We now live them--or at least we begin to...

I don't know if you heard anything about 'Zohran' before you died, but you certainly had choice things to say about AOC that I had to talk you down from in ways even you admitted later were excessive. You spent a lifetime trying to sort the wires of Jewish values: figuring out what is the 'good Jewish programming' and what's the 'bad Jewish programming' in granular detail. With your capacity for nuance you'd have made a magnificent Rebbe even if you'd have abided contradiction from your followers about as well as a grand inquisitor.

Love and you were infinite, but they were very complicated things. Your reverence for Judaism was indivisible from your contempt for it, your veneration for education blurred with your disdain for it, your compulsion for material security obscured your absolute derision of it. It was all very Jewish. Was disparaging the things you loved a clever concealment of vulnerability? Was it an unconscious compulsion? Or did you just hate the things you loved?

Either way, there was not a single thing you loved that you did not think would benefit from an eternity of unsolicited nagging about how it could self-improve. A true sign of success in life is to be a liberator whose followers can take success so for granted that the liberator becomes the jailer. That's the story of sixties America, perhaps it's the story of 1848 Europe, perhaps it's the story of the Maccabee rebellion or Sinai, hell, perhaps it's the story of half the world's imperial powers (please don't parse these analogies Dad).

But so many people I know, far more than you, don't speak that language. Love means love, hate means hate, history means theory and values, not facts, and I often doubt they know what it means to have complicated feelings about anything. I don't understand people like that. I don't know how to deal with people like that. I fear people like that. They're not at all simple-minded, many are smarter than me in a hundred different ways, but they think the world is simple, easily understood, and you either get it or you don't. Mysteries don't really seem mysterious to them. Those are the people who can so easily be convinced to separate the world into love and hate, not realizing what an absolute labyrinth love can be. They're all nicer people than me: they're certainly nicer than you... but I always get the sense that the doubts about the world that keep me up at night, and I strongly suspect kept you up too, did not occur to them.

I don't really have repressed frustrations: frankly neither did you, but viewing the world on that level of realism is pretty brutal. Is there any consolation out there? Is there any reward? Does every victory carry the seeds of defeat? Does every political movement become everything it hates? Do all great things in the world eventually betray what made them great? Does love entail telling the people you love everything that's wrong about them? Are we all born to die?

I certainly hope you're still somewhere out there, because you now have a god's-eye view for the best history show on earth. With you, history had a reliable voice. Now it has mine. I already hear you telling me everything I get wrong.

Love,

Evan

It All Goes Back to the Iran Deal

One of the many, many knock-down drag-out tragicomic Israel fights in my family was over the JCPOA: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or in plain English: the Iran Deal.

I will never forget my father going to New York ten years ago to protest the Iran Deal. I told him "Don't do it Dad, these protestors are barn animals." He went, he came back: "Oh my god these people are absolutely insane! Caroline Glick shouted like she was (Godwin redaction) and everybody was cheering for her like she was Moshiach!" "It's a shame nobody told you that Dad before you left." "Alright smart guy... what are you going to get on me next about?"

On the one hand, I found liberal cheering for the Iran Deal to be incredibly disingenuous. Nothing in the Obama years was more effective to isolate me from other liberals, and if I felt alienated, can you imagine how other Jews felt? So many Obama supporters acted as though it was an end to the issue and like it was proof that the proper results always happen when you talk to your enemies. The Iran Deal was not an end, it was a beginning: just one small step on a long road to diffusing a threat that would remain no matter who is the Iranian head of state (take note Netanyahu's camp).

What the Iran Deal bought was time. The Soviet Union was contained, and it was the same Republicans so eager to take credit for the USSR's fall who proved that when a country overfocuses on military and weaponry, they collapse, not from war, but from fear of war that causes them to neglect of everything else. The point was that the more time you buy, the more Iran comes undone by its own idiocy, its own corruption, its own decadence. Once they have their full measure of that, military action is that much more effective.

Deal or no deal, there may have come a time when Israel had to act. The very controversy of the deal is enough reason for Jews to hold a grudge against Obama forever, regardless of the deal's efficacy. The Iran Deal may be the seminal event in the historical chapter that ends the Jewish golden age.

On the other... oy... here we go... on the other,...

The people who opposed it did not simply make a mistake: they WERE the mistake. We gave borderline neoconservatives like Howard Kohr and Abe Foxman the keys to the Jewish community, and forty years ago when they divided the community into 'us' and 'them', we did not take the keys away from these blind dinosaurs immediately. We had a chance for a left-wing pro-peace Israel lobby with J-Street, now that lane is closed and JVP has their long-term parking spot. We let Foxman turn the Anti-Defamation League from a small arm of B'nai Brith to a battleship ready to pick race grievances for Jews on any flimsy excuse like a Jewish Al Sharpton. When the Iran issue came up, AIPAC and the ADL chose a side, and we will be paying for their faux impartiality for generations.

Inevitably, you bring this up to other Jews and they say 'this issue is too important to be on the wrong side of.' OK: what side is the wrong side?

As we see now, even if you defeat Iran, the Iran problem doesn't go away. Even if you get rid of the mullahcracy, the Iran problem doesn't go away. Even if you get rid of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iran problem doesn't go away. Even if you occupy Iran through a puppet government in perpetuity, Iran becomes yet another holy cause the world of radical Islam holds against the Jews, the Iran problem becomes the everywhere problem.

When you bring this up to other Jews, the response is always a mix of disingenuous pragmatism and disingenuous nihilism:

The pragmatism:

Iran is the immediate threat, other countries that want to kill us too but they're not trying to get the bomb imminently." How the **** long is imminent? Iran has been six months away from the bomb for more than twenty years! Not even Israel can set the Iranian nuclear program back every six months another six months, and if they can, why the **** is it such a priority to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities?

And let's face it. Iran is far from the only nuclear threat. Pakistan is forever one coup d'etat away from a mullahcracy of its own; its population vastly more antisemitic than Iran's (Pakistan: 78%, Iran: 56%--that will change now...). Pakistan is already the origin of the 'loose nuke network.' How many places does the Jewish community think we can invade at one time?

The nihilism:

I'm hardly the only person to make this point, but there is a large 'woke' segment of the Jewish world. It is not the wokers you think: it's the Jewish right, not left. Every point the left makes with regard to race and gender, this right makes with regard to Jews. If you believed both sides then if you scratch the surface of anyone in the world you find 8.3 billion racist, sexist, transphobic antisemites who simultaneously hate the rich and the poor, hate both their own country and immigrants and simultaneously believe in complete segregation and complete integration.

It isn't just madness from the left, it's madness from the right. It's a lazy, deceitful excuse to justify any outrageous behavior or demand they want to make. The lack of self-awareness, the lack of pragmatism, the utter lack of sympathy for anyone on the other side is simultaneously lethally dangerous, and pretty goddamn funny. Both sides are ripe for a 21st century Monty Python sketch, and it would be just another line on the eternally long list of things to which they take exception.

Follow this nihilism to its logical conclusion: how many wars does Israel declare before they piss off the wrong enemy? If the world is really that bristling with contempt for Jews, all it takes is one war you can't win, and yet again, the entire world won't bat an eye as our temples are burned to ash and our menorahs plundered.

On the other hand, leftists, Jewish and/or gentile, follow your optimism and solidarity to its logical conclusion. If the world is full of brotherhood (siblinghood...), if imperialism and capitalism and racism and sexism and etc. are the true impediments, if the world stands at an intersection of oppression that we have to remove all at once like a pair of pants, why do you hate anyone at all? Why can't you be more understanding of the rest of us ignoramuses, why does the rage well up whenever you encounter someone who doesn't buy what you're selling (er... redistributing)? Is it at all possible that maybe, just maybe, the problem isn't the systems but people like me who create the systems and perpetuate them? And if it is? How are you going to get rid of us? You're clearly not going to convince us, are you willing to go to war over it? Are you willing to die and kill over it? Because if you're not, Hamas is, the Iranian government is, the Communists who once claimed to speak for you certainly were, and they're even less likely to be convinced by your vision than we are.

We can't go back to the world before the Iran Deal, we can't go back to the world before October 7th, we can't go back to the world before Zohran and Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro (that ballistic chipmunk). This is our world now. None of us knows the rules of the new world. Don't trust anyone who says they do. All we can do yet is offer an autopsy for the old one and wait until someone a lot smarter than me explains it.

You Don't Mess with the Zohran

 

.

No it wasn't a f***ing shock in New York.

People need to breathe. Not just Jews, everybody. People need oxygen at least as much as they need water, and they need the breathing room to believe that their needs are honored, and not just their needs, their wishes, their desires, their hopes.

Here's the thing though, nobody really cares whether their hopes are honored or not, they just care that it feels like they are. They think they do but people notice their feelings long before they notice facts. Fox News is proof enough that if you give people someone to look down on and someone to be mad at, they will turn on their interests as quickly as shit through a goose. Hell, Bernie Sanders is proof too: he's an old school social democrat who didn't advocate for ideals any to the left of FDR's Economic Bill of Rights (publicly, at least). Only once has he ever uttered the word 'intersectionality' in public and that was on the issue of prison incarceration, not once has he ever said "I believe in DEI" either, but because he said 'we need a revolution', because he said 'the business model of Wall Street is fraud,' millions of intersectional socialists flocked to him as though he said 'f*** the police!'

No matter what their political point of view, people want to feel as though their humanity is honored, and they don't really care about the details.

I'm as pro-Dem establishment as anyone gets. Anybody long-time reading here knows that I have no love lost toward any hard Left. I think most people who spend their time thinking about politics don't know much about it. They don't read anything they disagree with, they don't memorize statistics and instinctively dismiss findings millions of people have collated in good faith, they're only interested in the theories of people with whom they agree. However you view politics, whatever rage or rancor or contempt you have, you don't know politics until know their points of view better than you know your own and acknowledge all the places they may have a point.

I dropped the ball on that lately, I'm still mourning my father and most of my time is spent on ChatGPT discussing music and all the books I haven't finished as though I'm an expert. When I looked up and saw that Zohran's entire list won in New York, I was both not surprised at all and very surprised that I hadn't noticed any trend. I've barely read about politics this year. The entire primary election cycle passed me by as though it hadn't happened.

Fortunately, I'm not a person of much influence. I have a facebook page and a blog, a couple friends with some influence, and thanks to my dear father, accumulated a pretty decent knowledge of history over the years. What I've learned in this:

Whenever you cut people out of a coalition, they eventually cut you out. Every faction mutates from generation to generation but the basic human natures remain unchanging. Some people believe the world is better off sharing resources, some people believe the world's better off hoarding them. Nothing to be done about it: you can't convince them reality's more complicated, you can't slake their moral outrage, and if you tell them they're wrong they're so caught up in propaganda's feedback loops that they convince themselves that the arguments against them are in fact arguments for them. They will never concede an inch to you and always have an answer that sounds convincing in isolation, but then you go home, you realize the context of what they say and your jaw drops. It's like Chesterton said:

“If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

Is the hard right or hard left of this country truly crazy? Not quite: they're not Hamas, they're not the IRGC, they don't even move into settlements. But between the hard right and the hard left, one of the two is incredibly powerful, and one of them just won three seats from the Dem establishment.

Three seats.

It's in New York. It's in Manhattan. It's always in the most educated places that radicalism proliferates: again, nothing to be done. Will they take more seats? Of course they will. Who will fall next? Probably places in New England, probably California, probably certain parts of Maryland and New Jersey and Northern VA, and a certain other state I won't mention... Is it the end of the Democratic party? Well, it's the end of the Democratic party as we've ever known it. Is it a harbinger of socialist rule in America? Not particularly, and even if it is, it's only a disaster of we make it a disaster.

We might.

Eventually, every country goes onto the chopping block and learns the hard way what polarization truly means: if you provoke one side, the other side will provoke back.

How do Republicans win? They fall in line. You all know the adage: "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." The establishment stays the establishment because they know preserving their holdings is more important than any ideal. And it goes both ways. In exchange for falling in line, they make people feel welcome whom they secretly view with contempt. And at this point, we have little to lose: elections are contested cycle after cycle, we might as well try socialists who make promises with a smile rather than center-leftists who remind us that politics is just a boring drudge. Whether or not they lie through their teeth (and they inevitably will, even if they think they won't), promises in politics are always more important than results.

Against all evidence, our party doesn't believe that. We believe in results, and consequently, we usually lose. Whomever the next Presidential nominee is: be it Shapiro, Newsom, Pritzker or AOC, you fall in line and do your best to influence them, even when you know it's 98% futile. That 2% is always where the progress is made.

So is it good for the Jews?

No! Of course not! But what the **** did you expect? You get into bed with a lobby that insists on bipartisan support during an age when one of two parties deliberately blows up bipartisanship, eventually the other party will desert you. AIPAC pretended there was a balance of power when there was clearly no balance. Our organization had disproportionately prosperous supporters, it was easier for us to go along with what the left now calls 'neoliberalism' (which in the sane world basically means 'privatization'), and they used privatization to give an entire generation an education they can't pay for unless they're the children of prosperity. Of course, they'll go for any ideology that tells them that the system is corrupt. And of course the system is corrupt! Every system is corrupt! The only relevant questions are 'how corrupt?' and 'who's more corrupt?'

The biggest lie in human history, the lie everybody falls for, is the idea that we can live a life of ideals: that everyone's humanity is recognized, that you can be free, that you can be secure. Where is the evidence that that's possible?

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a left who hates Zionism so virulently now because Israelis were already provoked into embracing the right-wing by a left-wing that already hated them. It also leaves us with a right-wing who increasingly hates liberal Jews so virulently because they associate the current left-wing turn of the Democratic party with Jews. And it leaves us with a moderate Jewish establishment still clinging to the late twentieth century, and believes that with enough PAC money they can still win elections: but the TV era appealed to the center: when you have central networks you have center political beliefs. The internet appeals to the fringes: on the internet you only get noticed if you're more extreme than the last guy. And if there's anybody extremists are known for having a problem with...

I've been saying for 25 years (ask AU friends) that the Jewish community is going to turn hard right. Where can you go when the left has no room for your self-defense? The tighter the grip of authoritarians, the more we depend on their protection. The more we depend on their protection, the more hated we grow by everybody under them. Zohran is not going to kill us: his co-believers won't kill us, our own delusions will kill us.

I am so tired of saying this, but the oldest story in Jewish history is that Jews rise to the height of prosperity, then they forget what got them there. The success of intelligent Jews proves useful to rulers in a hundred thousand ways, these successful Jews are lorded over the populace as the model minority which shows the world what you can achieve with enough gumption. The Ruach Elohim deserts us, and like idolworshippers in all generations, we worship success over humility. We basically have one or two generations to give back to communities that finally brought us some good fortune: but Jews are humans too, and we like success as much as the next guy. When Jews are conspicuously successful, their grandchildren get exiled, at best.

Are we two generations away? Are we one generation? Probably not, but who really knows? The one thing you can be sure of about Jews is that every Jew you know seems successful until we all disappear overnight.

Orchestra Fantasy League

 Please don't ask me how long I spent on this and how it distracted me from the rest of my life. I'm still not satisfied with it, but there is one lesson from it that is more important than anything else...

STAY OFF CHATGPT!

Philadelphia Orchestra:

Leopold Stokowski 1912-36

Albert Coates 1936-51

Charles Munch 51-66

Constantin Silvestri 66-81 (ideally)

Franco Ferrara 81-94 (ideally)

Yuri Temirkanov 94-09

Giuseppe Sinopoli 09-19 (ideally)

Tugan Sokhiev 19-

New York Symphony

Otto Klemperer 1945-60

Guido Cantelli 60-84 Bernard Haitink 84-94

James Levine 95-10

Donald Runnicles 10-25

Mirga Grazynte-Tyla 25-

Metropolitan Opera:

Erich Kleiber 33-55

Ferenc Fricsay 55-70 (ideally)

Thomas Schippers 70-85 (ideally)

Gary Bertini 85-2000

Christoph von Dohnanyi 00-10

Kirill Petrenko 10-25

Vladimir Jurowski 25-

Manhattan Opera Company

Fritz Busch 1933-51

Rudolf Kempe 51-66

Colin Davis 66-81

Rudolf Kempe 81-84

Istvan Kertesz 84-96

Donald Runnicles 96-11

Philippe Jordan 11-26

Antonello Manacorda 26-

American Symphony:

Leopold Stokowski 62-72

Michael Tilson Thomas 72-80

Gunther Schuller 80-90

David Robertson 90-03

Marin Alsop 03-18

Teddy Abrams 18-

New York Philharmonic:

Gustav Mahler 09-30 (ideally)

Otto Klemperer 30-45

Jascha Horenstein 45-60

Leonard Bernstein 60-75

Dean Dixon 75-90 (ideally)

Michael Tilson Thomas 90-05

Esa-Pekka Salonen 05-20

Thomas Ades 20--

WQXR Symphony of New York

Felix Weingartner 1933-55 (ideally)

Josef Krips 55-70

Carlos Kleiber 70-80 (ideally)

Nikolaus Harnoncourt 80-95

Claudio Abbado 95-05

Ivan Fischer 05-20

Manfred Honeck 20-

New York City Opera

Victor de Sabata 33-45

Franco Ferrara 45-68

Giuseppe Patane 68-83

Riccardo Muti 83-98

Daniele Gatti 89-2013

Gianandrea Noseda 13-28

Michele Mariotti 28-

Brooklyn Philharmonic:

Walter Hendl 55-80

Dennis Russell Davies 80-95

Oliver Knussen 95-2005

Gil Rose 2005-2020

Tito Munoz 2020-

New York Philharmonic:

Arturo Toscanini 37-54

Erich Kleiber 55-70 (ideally)

Ferenc Fricsay 70-79 (ideally)

Michael Gielen 79-89

Charles Mackerras 89-99

David Zinman 99-2014

Riccardo Chailly 14-24

Kirill Petrenko 2025-

Boston Symphony:

Serge Koussevitzky 1924-49

Dmitri Mitropoulos 49-64 (ideally)

Jascha Horenstein 64-79 (ideally)

Ferenc Fricsay 79-89 (ideally)

Michael Gielen 89-2004

Simon Rattle 2004-2019

Jonathan Nott 2019-

WCRB Symphony of Boston (Formerly DAR Symphony)

Felix Weingartner 1918-33

William Steinberg 33-45

Gunter Wand 45-65

Kurt Sanderling 65-80

Rudolf Kempe 80-90 (ideally)

Wolfgang Sawallisch 90-05

Michael Schonwandt 05-20

Markus Poschner 20-

Los Angeles Philharmonic:

Leopold Stokowski 1936-62

Andre Previn 62-77

Lorin Maazel 77-92

Esa-Pekka Salonen 92-2005

Gustavo Dudamel 05-20

Joana Mallwitz 20-

ABC Virtuosi of Burbank:

Paul Paray 1928-48

Yevgeny Mravinsky 48-63

Georg Solti 63-78

Zubin Mehta 79-94

Valery Gergiev 94-2009

Lorin Maazel 09-19 (ideally)

Gustavo Dudamel 19-

Los Angeles Opera:

Alexander Smallens 1928-49

Alfred Newman 49-64

Zubin Mehta 64-79

Thomas Schippers 79-94

John Mauceri 94-2009

Kent Nagano 09-24

John Wilson 24-

San Francisco Opera:

Alexander von Zemlinsky 1933-48

Hans Rosbaud 1948-63

Bruno Maderna 63-78

Hans Zender 78-93

Sylvain Cambreling 93-08

Susanna Malkki 08-23

Barbara Hannigan 23-

San Jose Symphony:

Gunther Schuller 75-90

Pierre Boulez 90-2005

Ingo Metzmacher 05-23

Susanna Malkki 23-

San Francisco Symphony:

Eugene Goosens 30-50

Ernest Bour 50-65

Lukas Foss 65-80

Michael Tilson Thomas 80-90

Kent Nagano 90-2005

Oliver Knussen 2005-20 (ideally)

Jorg Widmann 20-

Pacific Symphony of Oakland

Lukas Foss 50-65

Gunther Schuller 65-80

David Zinman 80-95

Dennis Russell Davies 95-10

Joann Falletta 10-25

Alan Gilbert 25-

WPA Symphony of Berkeley:

Hermann Scherchen 1945-60

Rene Leibowitz 60-75

Herbert Kegel 75-90

Heinz Holliger 90-05

Markus Stenz 05-20

Maxime Pascal 20-

San Diego Symphony:

Pierre Monteux: 1919-35 Vaclav Talich 35-45 Ferenc Fricsay 45-55 Bruno Walter 55-60 (ideally) Paul Kletzki 60-75 (ideally) Eduard van Beinum 75-85 (ideally) Rafael Kubelik 85-95 (ideally) Armin Jordan 95-2010 (ideally) Eliahu Inbal 10-20 Markus Stenz 20-

Cleveland Orchestra:

George Szell 46-69

Istvan Kertesz 69-84

Christoph von Dohnanyi 84-99

Claudio Abbado 99-2014 (ideally)

Osmo Vanska 14-29

Hannu Lintu 29-

Lyric Opera Chicago

Josef Krips 39-54

Herbert von Karajan 54-69

James Levine 70-95

James Conlon 95-10

Antonio Pappano 10-25

Speranza Scapucci 25-

WFMT Orchestra of Chicago:

Fritz Reiner 42-62

Igor Markevitch 62-77

Kirill Kondrashin 78-93

Lorin Maazel 92-2007

Vladimir Jurowski 07-22

Cristian Macelaru 22-

Chicago Symphony

Fritz Steinbach 1918-33

Eugen Jochum 1933-51

Fritz Busch 51-66

Rafael Kubelik 66-81

Gunter Wand 81-96

Istvan Kertesz 96-11

Adam Fischer 11-26

Philippe Jordan 26-

NPR Symphony of America:

Howard Hanson 33-58

Dean Dixon 58-73

Kenneth Schermerhorn 73-88

Leonard Slatkin 88-2003

David Robertson 03-18

Robert Spano 18-

IBM Symphony of Raleigh

Antal Dorati 38-68

Karel Ancerl 68-83

Gerd Albrecht 83-98

Charles Mackerras 98-13 (ideally)

Hannu Lintu 13-28

Krzystopf Urbanski 28-

Minneapolis Symphony:

Paul Kletzki 36-60

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski 60-75

Gunther Herbig 75-90

Klaus Tennstedt 90-2005 (ideally)

Alexander Vedernikov 05-20 (ideally)

John Storgards 20-

MPR Symphony of St. Paul

Bruno Walter 1933-48

Rafael Kubelik 48-64

William Steinberg 64-79

Colin Davis 79-94

Bernard Haitink 94-09

Mariss Jansons 09-24 (ideally)

Jakub Hrusa 24-

Washington Philharmonic:

Leo Blech 1937-53

Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt 53-68

Christoph von Dohnanyi 68-83

Kurt Masur 83-98

Herbert Blomstedt 98-08

Sakari Oramo 08-23

Paavo Jarvi 23-

New Orleans Philharmonic

Pierre Monteux 1935-52

Carlo Maria Giulini 52-67

Georges Pretre 67-82

Ataulfo Argenta 82-97 (ideally)

Antonio Pappano 97-2010

Alain Altinoglu 10-25

Daniele Rustioni 25-

Austin Symphony:

James de Priest 1985-2000

David Robertson 00-20

Esa-Pekka Salonen 20-

Charlotte Symphony:

Jorge Mester 1975-95

James Conlon 95-10

Leonard Slatkin 10-25

Marin Alsop 25-

New Jersey Symphony:

Max Rudolf 33-85

George Cleve 85-00

Hans Graf 00-15

Christoph Konigs 15-30

Detroit Symphony:

Paul Paray: 48-63

Ataulfo Argenta 63-78 (ideally...)

Michel Plasson 78-93

Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos 93-08

Juanjo Mena 08-23

Andres Orozco-Estrada 23-

WPR Symphony of Madison

Vaclav Talich 1943-61

Charles Mackerras 62-77

Libor Pesek 77-92

Istvan Kertesz 96-2011 (ideally)

Gerd Albrecht 11-21 (ideally)

Tomas Netopil 21-

Kansas City Symphony:

Gabriel Pierne 1925-37

Roger Desoirmiere 37-52

Karel Sejna 52-67

Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt 67-82 (ideally)

Ivan Fischer 82-97

Charles Mackerras 97-12

Markus Poschner 12-20

Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas 20-27

Dallas Symphony:

Eugene Ormandy 31-60

Jean Martinon 60-75

Andre Previn 77-92

Lorin Maazel 92-2007

Charles Dutoit 07-22

Stephane Deneve 22-

Colorado Symphony

Wilhelm Furtwangler 1922-45

Hermann Abendroth 45-60

Eugen Jochum 60-75 (ideally)

Joseph Keilberth 75-90 (ideally)

Daniel Barenboim 90-2005

Christian Thielemann 05-20

Andris Nelsons 20-

The Concert Artists of Utah:

Bruno Walter 1918-33

John Barbirolli 33-48

Carlo Maria Giulini 48-63

William Steinberg 63-78

Wolfgang Sawallisch 78-93

Antonio Pappano 93-2008

Andrew Davis 08-23

Mark Wigglesworth 23-

Calgary Philharmonic:

Enrique Jorda 1960-80

Mario Bernardi 80-95

Kenneth Schermerhorn 95-10

Kazuyoshi Akiyama 10-20

David Afkham 20-

Houston Symphony:

Maurice Abravanel 1946-81

Neeme Jarvi 81-96

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky 96-11

Jose Serebrier 11-21

Robert Trevino 2026-

San Antonio Symphony:

Jose Iturbi 1960-75

Luis Herrara de la Fuente 75-90

John Neschling 90-05

Andres Orozco-Estrada 05-20

Domingo Hindoyan 20-

Phoenix Sympohny:

Henry Lewis 1970-85

Enrique Batiz 85-00

Jorge Mester 00-15

Carlos Miguel Prieto 15-

Miami Philharmonic:

Izler Solomon 55-70

Enrique Batiz 70-85

Jesus Lopez-Cobos 85-00

Eduardo Mata 00-15 (ideally)

Gustavo Gimeno 15-

OPR Symphony of Portland:

George Schneevoigt 1933-45

Tauno Hannikainen 45-60

Sixten Ehrling 60-75

Paavo Berglund 75-90

James de Priest 90-05

Thomas Dausgaard 05-20

Kristiina Poska 20-

Las Vegas Philharmonic:

Anatole Fistoulari 1945-60

Enrique Jorda 1960-75

Carlos Paita 75-90

Ole Schmidt 90-2005

Frank Shipway 05-20 (ideally)

Han-Na Chang 20-

Vancouver Symphony:

Vladimir Golschmann 31-58

Paul van Kempen 58-68 (ideally)

Walter Susskind 68-83 (ideally)

Jean Martinon 83-93 (ideally)

Edo de Waart 93-2008

Francois-Xavier Roth 08-23

Pablo Heras-Casado 23-

Cincinnati Symphony:

Volkmar Andreae 1933-45

William Steinberg 1945-60

Eduard van Beinum 60-75 (ideally)

Peter Maag 75-90

Armin Jordan 90-05 (ideally)

Erich Bergel 05-15 (ideally)

Gabor Takacs-Nagy 15-

Montreal Symphony:

Ernest Ansermet 1923-33

Desire Defauw 33-45

Eduard Flipse 45-60

Sergiu Celibiache 60-75

Seiji Ozawa 75-90

Charles Dutoit 90-05

Michel Plasson05-15

Yannick Nezet-Seguin 15-

Toronto Symphony:

Frantisek Stupka 33-51

Ionel Perlea 51-66

Joseph Keilberth 66-81 (ideally)

Mariss Jansons 81-96

Colin Davis 96-06

Semyon Bychkov 06-17

Juraj Valcuha 17-

Pittsburgh Symphony:

Jascha Horenstein 1931-45

Lovro von Matacic 45-60

Constantin Silvestri 60-66

Klaus Tennstedt 66-75

Jerzy Semkow 75-90

Eliahu Inbal 90-05

Manfred Honeck 05-20

Petr Popelka 20-

IPR Symphony of Indiannapolis:

Eduard van Beinum: 45-60

Karel Sejna 60-75

Armin Jordan 75-90

Jean Fournet 90-2005 (ideally)

Mario Venzago 05-20

Michel Schonwandt 20-

Milwaukee Symphhony:

Carl Schuricht 1946-66

Herbert Blomstedt 66-81

Klaus Tennstedt 81-89

Zdenek Kosler 89-04

Adam Fischer 04-11

Yakov Kreizberg 11-26 (ideally)

Tomas Hanus 26-

Rochester Philharmonic:

Hans Swarowsky 1937-75

Ilya Musin 75-85

Jorma Panula 85-00

Otto Werner-Mueller 00-15

Kenneth Kiesler 15-

Atlanta Symphony:

Robert Shaw 69-88

Andrew Davis 88-03

John Nelson 03-18

Paul McCreesh 18-

Nashville Symphony:

Vittorio Gui 1933-48

Franco Ferrara 48-53

Charles Groves 53-63

Georges Pretre 63-78

Andrew Davis 78-88

Peter Maag 88-2003 (ideally)

Mark Elder 03-18

Robin Ticciati 18-

Baltimore Symphony:

Dmitri Mitropoulos 30-45

Victor de Sabata 45-60 (ideally)

Lovro von Matacic 60-75

Alexander Gibson 75-90

Yevgeny Svetlanov 90-05 (ideally)

Tugan Sokhiev 05-20

Rafael Payare 20-

Buffalo Philharmonic:

Artur Rodzinski 1933-58

Janos Ferencsik 58-73

Arvid Jansons 73-88

Jan Krenz 88-03

Andrey Boreyko 03-18

Antoni Wit 18-28

Giedre Sletyke 28-

Alaska Philharmonic:

Issay Dobrowen 1922-41

Nikolai Malko 41-56

Efrem Kurtz 56-71

Yuri Ahronovich 71-86

Vladimir Delman 86-2001 (ideally)

Vasily Sinaisky 01-16

Alexander Lazerev 16-26

Oksana Lyniv 26-

St. Louis Symphony:

Fritz Reiner 34-42

Karl Bohm 45-60

Ferdinand Leitner 60-75

Horst Stein 75-90

Otmar Suitner 90-2000

Michael Schonwandt 00-15

Simone Young 15-30

San Diego Symphony:

Louis Fremaux 60-82

David Atherton 82-97

Jahja Ling 97-12

Eiji Oue 12-27

Diego Matheuz 27-

Calgary Philharmonic:

Enrique Jorda 1960-80

Mario Bernardi 80-95

Kenneth Schermerhorn 95-2010

Kazuyoshi Akiyama 10-20

David Afkham 20-

Edmonton Symphony:

Desire Defauw 1950-60 (ideally)

Max Goberman 60-75 (ideally)

Sixten Ehrling 75-90

James de Priest 90-2005

Santa Fe Festival Orchestra

Mahler 1930-45

Talich 45-55

Fricsay 55-65 (ideally)

Celibidache 65-75

Matacic 75-85

Semkow 85-95

Harnoncourt 95-05

I. Fischer 05-15

A. Fischer 15-25

Honeck 25-

Mardi Gras Festival Orchestra

Pierre Monteux 1919-1942

Vaclav Talich 42-57

Eduard van Beinum 57-72 (ideally)

Rafael Kubelik 72-87

Claudio Abbado 87-02

Ivan Fischer 02-17

Simon Rattle 17-

Carmel-by-the-Sea Opera Festival

Arturo Toscanini 1933-54

Guido Cantelli 55-64 (ideally)

Franco Ferrara 65-74 (ideally)

Carlo Maria Giulini 75-89

Thomas Schippers 90-04 (ideally)

James Levine 05-14 ('ideally')

Riccardo Muti 2015-24

Riccardo Chailly 2025-

Bayreuth West: American Festival of Music Drama: (also performs modern works and concerts.)

Richard Wagner: 1888-1903 (ideally)

Anton Seidl: 03-18 (ideally)

Arturo Toscanini and Gustav Mahler18-33 (Mahler leaves in 29 - Furtwangler takes over in 30)

Wilhelm Furtwangler and Victor de Sabata 30-45

Erich Kleiber and Fritz Busch 45-60 (ideally)

Rudolf Kempe and Guido Cantelli 60-75 (Cantelli comes in 65)

Klaus Tennstedt, Carlos Kleiber and Wolfgang Sawallisch 75-90

Daniel Barenboim and Zubin Mehta 90-2005

Christian Thielemann and Daniele Gatti 05-20

Kirill Petrenko and Antonio Pappano 20-