I thought this might be an interesting topic for people to consider: if you could add 10 quality years to any 5 conductors, whom would you choose? Unless blatantly obvious (e.g.: my final example), please give a reason for your selection(s). O.K: I'll start-
5) Giuseppe Sinopoli 1946-2001. Love him or hate him (and there are plenty of people who fall into the latter category), he would have made musical statements that would have given all of us something to talk about. It would not have been boring.
4) Wilhelm Furtwangler 1886-1954. He lived to age 68, so it's problematic to say "career cut short." However, he died at an "historically inconvenient" point in history. Another 10 years would have taken him deep into the stereo era, and enrich our collective recorded music legacy.
3) Klaus Tennstedt 1926-1998. Even longer lived than Furtwangler (died age 71). Two provisos: a) deserved a better fate than having been a non-entity behind the iron curtain for all those years, and b) 10 healthy years might have moved him from the category of "great conductor" to immortal Music Director.
2) Istvan Kertesz 1929-1973. Died in tragic drowning accident aged 42. Perhaps the most prominent example of "posterity being cheated." To borrow the Norton text's comment on Keats, "what he could have accomplished had he lived is beyond conjecture."
1) Gustav Mahler 1860-1911. For reasons that really don't have that much to do with his conducting.

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95

I don't feel like I'm ready to write anything about conductors, but perhaps I can travesty your thread into 5 Instrumentalists - 10 more years. Can I?

Feel free, Senor M. Consider the subject transmuted--- originally, I had thought to make it about composers, but I expected the usual (but understandable) names Mozart/Schubert/Mendelssohn/Bizet/Chopin would be proferred. As for instrumentalists... you're more qualified to give detail on the obvious Ginette Neveu. Another seemingly equally obvious mention is Jacqueline DuPre, with the proviso that, even though her Master Class contributions were considerable, I'd wish for 10 more healthy performing years. Should Michael Rabin merit a mention? To be sure... but I don't know if he'd make the cut down to 5. That should get things started.

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95

I can't possibly put down such a list, but I have read in lots of places that Fernec Fricsay was a wonderful conductor who died early at the age of 47. So, maybe, I would choose him. I have the recording of Beethoven's 9th with Fricsay conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker, the first stereo recording of the symphony.

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Regards,
Navneeth

Neveu, DuPré, Rabin... Cheater, you took all the great ones. Let's try a few others..

William Kapell: I haven't listened to anything from him in the last two years, but I remember I really liked his stuff. Particularly his Prok 3rd. (But who knows, he could have been degenerated into other Earl Wild or Ralph Votapek... )

(More to come, but I have to study now...)

To Opus: Thanks! My original idea isn't dead yet! Bravo for the mention of Fricsay, another example of "posterity being cheated." He succumed to cancer, too (as did Tennstedt). A "quick-and-dirty" review of my sources shows that Fricsay had the same birth-year (1914) as Carlo-Maria Giulini, Rafael Kubelik, and Kirill Kondrashin. [Now that I think of it, we could have profited from more years from Kondrashin (died 1981).] His career arc was no less elevated than that set of collegues (an excellent case could be made that it was more elevated). To Sr. Manuel... I merely mentioned some names for instrumentalists-- I didn't discuss their nonpareil artistry. We can still do so.

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95

A correction: He was nearly 49 when he died.

Well, the beta list for instrumentalists seems to be in (with a BIG assist from Senor M.), and it is (I shudder at providing an ordinal ranking, so list is chronological):
Ginette Neveu- 1919-1949: Violinist- perished in airplane crash aged 30. Powerful sound still shines through on the monaural bequeathment to posterity.
William Kapell- 1922-1953: Pianist- another plane accident victim, died at 31. Clarity mated to vigor was the hallmark of his best performances.
Michael Rabin- 1936-1972: Violinist- official judgement was that he died in accidental fall, aged 35. More mystery is attendant upon his career arc than any other on this list. Not wanting to engage in the unsubstantiated, I'll merely say that, at his best, he was one of the very great ones.
Glenn Gould- 1932-1982: Pianist- died from cerebrovascular accident aged 50. A "thinking person's musician," his legacy is primarily his well-thought-out studio recordings. He was re-emerging in public life (albeit with the baton rather than at the keyboard) shortly prior to his passing.
Jacqueline Du Pre- 1945-1987: Cellist- debilitated due to multiple sclerosis, retired from performance at age 28. Redirected remaining energies to master-class instruction. On the very short list of most emotionally fulfilling Cellists to ever play that instrument.

Her pianist brother died in the same crash.



Dinu Lipatti: Not enough good things to say about him. Just one bad thing: he died in his thirties.

Ten more years of Leonid Kogan, wouldn't have done any harm.

And ten extra years of recordings by Miron Polyakin would have been great. He was the russian Kreisler, a true poet. (The austrian Kreisler was Kreisler himself, and the brittish Kreisler was Albert Sammons ). Try to catch Polyakin in his recording of the Glazunov concerto.