I'm sure someone has already posed this question in the past, but I'm new here, so
What do you think are the ten best orchestras?
What do you think are the ten best orchestras?
To be perfectly honest, I am interested in hearing subjective and descriptive accounts as to what members of this forum like about their certain favourite orchestras. I am not in the least bit interested in what most of the members here feel are the best orchestras based on some set of half-baked criteria, simply because in the end this amounts to a list of favourites anyway.The trouble with merely listing one's personal favourites is that no one else is really all that interested.
I agree. So let's make it an expression of personal opinions and tastes rather than striving for in-depth objective analysis, something that very few people here or anywhere are truly capable of, myself included.Wherever I have seen any kind of definition of "best" or "greatest" they are generally very vague, and merely list a few attributes like "aesthetic quality", "influence", "innovation". They sound better than nothing at all, but in practice the results usually boil down to a hodgepodge of personal opinion and the furtherance of personal favourites, and all objectivity gets thrown out of the window or is very opaque.
This is a recurring topic, and I agree with Topaz's general tenet that over a long enough period of time, the market is the best measure of "what is best". In that case, there is no need for each and everyone of us to "List the 10 best orchestras", as orquesta tipica suggests. More appropriate to the task would be an in-depth analysis of this question by a certain jewel-named member, with a factual presentation of the results. But where is the fun in that?For this reason, I came to the view that the only sensible objective criteria for "best" in a music context is one based on mass appeal, or popularity.
3rdplanetsounds, I am also not sure who you are referring to, and I don't quite understand the point you are trying to make beyond stating your general disgrunt. If you are not a native english speaker, that's ok, but please don't call other people illiterate when you yourself have trouble expressing your views.topaz, the man is just saying ... [edit] ... so god dammed illiterate ... [edit] ... Im getting a little pissed off with the attitudes to this site ... [edit] ... sense of dislocation.
Ha, good point. Not many people seem to want to have a go at this...I see the replies have been flooding in since you posted the above about 10 hours ago.
Very true. The days of the instantly recognizable sounds of Ormandy's Philadelphia, Karajan's Berlin and Solti's Chicago are long gone. I'm sure people can "blindly" identify recordings that they know, but that's different than just identifying the sound of an orchestra. Perhaps the Vienna Philharmonic is the only orchestra left that truly strives to preserve the sound that they played with from their inception.I bet in a blind test most people couldn't tell the difference these days. They might like to think they can but I reckon not, provided we are talking about recorded music and we stick to the big name orchestras.