Sir Thomas Beecham...Delius
Paavo Bergland.... Sibelius
Karajan....Tosca...ect.
Leonard Bernstein....Nielsen and Copland
Simon Rattle
Seiji Ozawa
and most others mentioned
Some good Mahlerites that I've heard live:
Manfred Honeck- a surprise- very competent and accomplished
Marin Alsop- not a surprise. If she was good enough for Bernstein she's good enough for me.
Ivan Fisher- probably the cream of today's crop; very impressive in just about every Mahler he does and get this- if he doesn't think he can do the music justice, he won't do it! (i.e. M8- says he can't wrap his arms around it yet)
Zubin Mehta- surprisingly excellent even though he's as old as dirt. Became a much better Mahlerite with age. Finally retired. wish he'd tell Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand to do the same.
Jaap Van Zweeden- some really fine Mahler performances. Who knew?
Bad Mahlerites? too many to mention. Just saw one tonight w a Big 5 Orchestra and almost got sick.
Great, but dead Mahlerites; Lenny, then everyone else.
Bruno Walter is not only a revered Mahlerite, but was personal friends with Mahler which many think gave him the inside track on what Maher wanted when his works were conducted. Also, for M2, Gabriel Kaplan makes a good showing. You have to respect some rich guy that made his life's work conducting one thing and one thing only! He rented orchestras many times to perform and record M2 , which he thought was the finest piece of music ever written. M2 became his religion! He was also very authoritative on the piece to the extent that other conductors consulted him on the specific score markings to gain insight as to what Mahler may have meant and how certain passages should be played. I read an interview many years ago with Slatkin that discussed this in detail and was impressed that Slatkin accorded Kaplan great respect for his insights into the piece.
Eugene Ormandy: (Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Brahms, Saint-Saens)
Karl Bohm: (Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss)
Bernstein: (Stravinsky, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Mahler)
George Szell and William Steinberg: (Beethoven)
Malcolm Sargent: (Gilbert & Sullivan)
Pierre Boulez: (Berlioz)
Eugene Ormandy: (Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Brahms, Saint-Saens)
Karl Bohm: (Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss)
Bernstein: (Stravinsky, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Mahler)
George Szell and William Steinberg: (Beethoven)
Malcolm Sargent: (Gilbert & Sullivan)
Pierre Boulez: (Berlioz)
Bruno Walter is not only a revered Mahlerite, but was personal friends with Mahler which many think gave him the inside track on what Maher wanted when his works were conducted. Also, for M2, Gabriel Kaplan makes a good showing. You have to respect some rich guy that made his life's work conducting one thing and one thing only! He rented orchestras many times to perform and record M2 , which he thought was the finest piece of music ever written. M2 became his religion! He was also very authoritative on the piece to the extent that other conductors consulted him on the specific score markings to gain insight as to what Mahler may have meant and how certain passages should be played. I read an interview many years ago with Slatkin that discussed this in detail and was impressed that Slatkin accorded Kaplan great respect for his insights into the piece.
Marty's story about Gilbert Kaplan is quite fascinating. He was a very wealthy financial publisher and became fascinated with M2. Watching a typical concert with a first class conductor is very impressive and one can see it is much more than just beating time (the ultimate insult to a conductor is to call him/her a bandmaster.) It is amazing that someone who had no formal training could learn to conduct one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. I have a CD of his recording of the Mahler 2 with the London Symphony. Quite a fine recording. He also recorded the famed Adagietto from the Mahler 5, which I have never heard. The Adagietto was the theme that pervaded the Visconti Movie 'Death in Venice'. Visconti changed the lead character from a writer to a composer.
According to Simon Rattle, this movie interpretation was a distortion of Mahler intentions and created a trend to misinterpretations of this movement , each conductor wanting it to last longer than the previous one ...
Although the vaporetto arriving to Venice will stay forever in my mind for many reasons, when listening to music I prefer less melancholic interpretations.
According to Simon Rattle, this movie interpretation was a distortion of Mahler intentions and created a trend to misinterpretations of this movement , each conductor wanting it to last longer than the previous one ...
Although the vaporetto arriving to Venice will stay forever in my mind for many reasons, when listening to music I prefer less melancholic interpretations.
Thanks for that insight. I read Death in Venice (in German, no less) before seeing the movie. Clearly Visconti took real liberties with the story in Mann's novella (casting Aschenbach as a composer (a very Mahler like character) rather than an author) particularly with the implication of the main character's fascination with the young boy.
Having heard Mahler 5 a few times in concert, even with Rattle's current orchestra, it has been my experience that conductors do make the Adagietto the high point of the symphony.
Very old school: Wilhelm Furtwangler and Bruno Walter, especially on Beethoven symphonies.
I loved also the music directed by Fritz Reiner, very different in approach and timing from the two old previous Master; probably It's only a suggestion that comes from some excellent american LP's .
I loved also the baton of Bernard Haitink, Georg Solti, Evgeniy Mravinsky and Claudio Abbado, all now deceased.
Current and still active directors:
Valeriy Gergiev, excellent on Romantic music, and Ole Christian Ruud, perfect in Scandinavian landscapes.
Honorable mention for youngtimers: Jurai Valcuha that here in Torino has conducted many times the National Radiophonic Orchestra.
Now that the movie Tár has been out a while, it rekindled some interest in great conductors again. I couldn't help notice that one of the most moving scenes was a video tape of Lenny doing one of his famous Young People's concerts which I watched many years ago as a kid but basically forgot about it until I saw it again in Tár. That guy could move musical mountains just by talking. I also remember being mesmerized by his Harvard lectures on music history as a teenager, which are gems worth seeking out. There were a lot of subtle comments on conducting in Tár, but that Lenny clip stole the show for me. However, that was followed closely by the sideways arms sweep conducting gesture of Lenny's that Blanchette imitated (made me gasp), as well as her impeccable imitation of Gould's playing of the Goldberg variations (which she actually played- no stand in!). A damn fine, immersive acting performance indeed.
Since this thread is about 8 years old, one can't help notice there has been no mention yet of Yannick Nézet-Séguin (music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera and Orchestre Metropolitan in Montreal) who is now in his prime and considered by many one of the elite conductors working today. No argument from me. He's extraordinary.
