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Greatest conductors

51K views 113 replies 74 participants last post by  hpowders 
#1 ·
As an amateur listener, I am curious to hear from the experts who they consider to be the greatest conductors in recorded history. I know this is a difficult question, as some conductors have a special affinity for the work of a particular composer (e.g Karl Bohm or Neville Marriner for Mozart), but not so good in other areas. And like any musician, I'm sure conductors have their great moments and their not so fine moments. I havn't heard enough recordings to be able to give an opinion about who is the best, but I will give you a list of conductors from whom I have heard specially enjoyable performances:

Colin Davis
Nicolas Harnencourt
Georg Solti
Zubin Mehta
Herbert von Karajan
George Szell
Karl Bohm
Okko Kamu
 
#32 ·
Karl Richter's interpretations of J.S. Bach's sacred works (such as Matthew Passion and Mass in B minor) are sublime to such an extent that I barely listen to anything but Richter. He was a gifted organist as well, but his greatness lay in his ability to transform Bach's music into splendid veichles of wonder. There is a good recording of the Matthew Passion (from 1971) on youtube with the lovely Julia Hamari.

Other than that; I am somewhat an admirerer och Herbert von Karajan, unfortunatly alot of his recordings are in bad quality.
 
#33 · (Edited)
Furtwängler
Mravinsky
Klemperer
Szell
Ormandy
Mitropoulos
Böhm
Bernstein
Knappertsbusch
Stokowski
Toscanini
Celibidache
Keilberth
Walter
Reiner
Solti
Tennstedt
Karajan

MAYBE

Haitink
Jochum
Kondrashin
Wand

Very hard to tell. Once you reach a certain level, it's hard to see yourself as superior or inferior to someone also past that level.
 
#34 ·
It's easy enough to praise Toscanini for his firm opposition to the Nazis,but he weasn't a German,did not live in Germany and was never in the extremely difficult situation which Furtwangler faced as a German citizen.
He could have easily fled Germany as other eminent German and Austrian conductors did, Jewish and Gentile, but he chose to stay there and tried his best to be a bulwark against the Nazis.
 
#37 ·
Looking forward ..... Gustavo Dudamel

Gustavo is a man to watch. The most valuable quality he possesses aside from his obvious talent is his humility and willingness to give credit where it is due to the creator of El Sistema in Venezuala.

I do not say this, because it is the "in" or "popular" thing to say, but I say it genuinely and it is my personal opinion, regardless of his huge current popularity.
 
#42 ·
Karajan was not a bully - his concern for the welfare of his musicians makes him look almost democratic, in fact.

His business talents might not have found opportunity to develop if he had not been first and foremost a great and dedicated artist.

If music is what we like best then we need not let our selves get distracted by Karajan's jet-setting life-style, just as we need not be distracted by Gergiev's (and apparently also James Levine's) hatred of upper-classes.

Toscanini was not mentionned I believe (other than an allusion to his politics) many's all time favorite on a par with Furtwangler.

Artur Nikisch in his time was thought by many to be the greatest conductor then living.

My personal trio of favorites among the living: Christoph Von Dohnanyi, Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado.
Possibilities among the younger ones: Franz Welzer-Most, if he stops trying to act cool; and Thielemann, if he expands his repertoire beyond pre-Schoenberg Germany, as his role models Furtwangler and Karajan have done before him.
 
#45 ·
Just my humble opinion

Hi,
From my experience playing classical piano and being married to a conductor, I know that conductors memorize the music they conduct. When they have music in front of them, they are not really relying on it. If they did, they would be in a very bad way.
 
#50 ·
I can't rate conductors in isolation only how they deal with certain composers so, from my collection, fave recordings of fave works..
Zinman -LvB symphony cycles and overtures, Barber/Baltimore SO stuff, Schuman symphonies and Rimsky-K orchestral works
Neeme Jarvi - Sibelius tone poems IMO, Prokofiev symphonies, Tchaikovsky orchestral works
Colin Davis - Berlioz SF, Haydn London Symphonies, Schubert symphonies
Chailly - Brahms piano concertos, Rossini overtures and the Schuman 'Mahler' symphonies
Dutoit -Berlioz SF, The Planets, von Suppe overtures, Ravel orchestral works, Saint-Saens orchestral works
Karajan - Sibelius tone poems, Tchaik symphonies, LvB 1962 symph cycle, Brahms symphonies, Alpine Symphony
Marriner - Schubert symphonies, Rossini overtures, Schumann symphonies, Mozart symphonies, Dvorak & Tchaik serenades
Mackerras - Tchaik ballets, R-K Scherezade/Cap Espagnol, LvB symphonies, Mozart symphonies
Beecham - Bizet orchestral works, Schubert symphonies, Berlioz SF and other orchestral
Harnoncourt - LvB symphonies, Schubert symphonies, Brahms symphonies
Abbado - Bizet orchestral works, Prokofiev suites, Mendelssohn symphonies and overtures, Brahms serenades & Hungarian dances
Dorati -Tchaik ballets, Haydn London symphonies
Haintink - Shosta symphonies, Debussy orchestral works, LvB symphonies
Jansons -Dvorak symphonies, Tchaik symphonies
Sawallisch - Brahms piano concertos, Schuman symphonies
 
#51 ·
Neeme Jarvi - Sibelius tone poems IMO, Prokofiev symphonies, Tchaikovsky orchestral works
Yes! and put his Glazunov Symphony Cycle and Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Khachaturian's Ballet music there too. Pretty much anything Russian he ever touched was wonderfully performed.
 
#52 ·
And what do you think of Vladimir Jurowski? Do you find him a challenging conductor? I do find him and maybe Paavo Jarvi the most challenging and promising conductors of ex-Soviet parentage, if I can use this inexact term.

I respect Jansons too. For his perfectionism. Maybe some people find him phlegmatic, but I like his perfectionism more than Gergiev's arrogance.

***
I should add to Barking Spiders words about Abbado - not only Bizet, but also Ravel. Maybe he is at his bests in French music.

And Mackerras - I recomend all of you to buy his Supraphon recording of Dvorak Symphonic Poems with Czech Philhrmonik. It is great!
 
#54 ·
emiellucifuge
In 2008 he visited Mosocow with the Bavarians. Yeah, some people found him to be phlegmatic. There were a kimd of holy war on the Mariinsky web-forum. Not me. I like his Shostakovich set, his Poulenc, his Mahler Fifth, his Shostakovich Seventh with RCO. I'm just unhappy that he doesn't bring Concertgebouw to Moscow.
 
#55 ·
Herbert von Karajan
John Eliot Gardiner


I probably have more recordings by these two conductors than anyone else... and have never been disappointed. Karajan's Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Schopfung, his Beethoven cycle, his Strauss tone poems, and even his efforts to approach Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern with as much polish and passion as one approaches Beethoven are enough to make him a towering conductor for me.

Gardiner gets credit as one of the leading conductors working in a HIP manner. His Monteverdi L'Orfeo, the recently completed cycle of Bach's complete cantatas as well as the St. Matthew and St. John Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, the Mass in B-minor, and the Magnificat, his Schumann, Beethoven, and Brahms cycles, and any number of other recordings make him an unavoidable master.

After these?

Georg Solti- (Der Ring des Nibelungens, Elektra, Salome, Schubert's 9th, Beethoven's 9th, Mahler's 8th, Verdi Requiem, Die Frau ohne Schatten, etc...)
John Barbirolli- (Mahler's 5th, 6th and 9th, Kindertotenlieder, Ruckertlieder, his recordings of Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams, and Sibelius)
Karl Böhm- (Mozart's symphonies, Beethoven's 6th, Berg's Lulu, Strauss Operas: Daphne, Arabella, Brahms Symphonies, The Marriage of Figaro, Brahm's Symphonies, etc...)
Wilhelm Furtwängler- (Beethoven's 9th, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Schubert's 8th, Don Giovanni, Tristan und Isolde, etc...)
Leonard Bernstein- (Gerschwin, Schuman, Ives, Copland and other American composers... not forgetting Bernstein himself, Mahler, Beethoven, Shostakovitch, Berlioz, Offenbach, etc...)
Otto Klemperer- (The Magic Flute, Das Lied von der Erde, Brahms Symphonies, Brahms German Requiem, Bach Mass in B-minor, Wagner Orchestral highlights, St. Matthew Passion, Bruckner... especially no. 4, etc...)
Eugen Jochum- (Bruckner cycle, Bruckner choral works, Brahms piano concertos with Gilels, Brahms symphonies, etc...)
Carlos Kleiber- (Beethoven 5 and 7, Brahms 4th, Schubert's 3 and 8, Verdi Otello and La Traviata, Der Freischütz, Tristan und Isolde, Der Rosenkavalier, etc...)
William Christie- (Les Indes Galantes, Vespro Della Beata Vergine, 1610, Couperin - Leçons de Ténèbres, Lully: Petits Motets, Charpentier: Te Deum, Rameau - Les Grands Motets, Zoroastre, Schütz: Kleine geistliche Konzerte, Handel- Serse, Mozart The Magic Flute, Purcell-Divine Hymns... one of the greatest living conductors and a master of the Baroque... especially the French)
René Jacobs- The Magic Flute, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Idomeneo, La clemenza di Tito, Die Schopfung, Handel- Rinaldo and Saul, Monteverdi - Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi, Bejun Mehta ~ Ombra cara (Arias of George Frideric Handel), Gluck Orfeo et Euridice, Bach Motets, etc... another master of HIP... who has brough new life to Mozart's operas)
Pierre Boulez- (Szymanowski, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bela Bartok, not to forget Boulez himself.)
Harry Christophers- Handel- Messiah, Isreal in Egypt, Delirio Amoroso, Haydn's Die Schopfung, The Eton Choir Book, The Flowering of Genius, Ceremony and Devotion: Music for the Tudors, Victoria, Britten, Barber, Purcell: The Faerie Queene, etc... Christopher's is another among the greatest living conductors... and his group, The Sixteen are masters of choral music... especially of English polyphony.)
Marc Minkowski- (Handel's Water Music, Haydn's London Symphonies, Rameau - Une symphonie imaginaire, Offenbach's Orphee Aux Enfers, Handel's Dixit Dominus, Mozart 40 & 41, Handel's Giulio Cesare, Ariodante, Hercules, Rameau - Dardanus, etc... Minkowski is for me an up-and-coming master... an HIP composer whose work centers upon the Baroque re-imagined with a rock-n-roll sensibility.)
 
#56 ·
Herbert von Karajan
John Eliot Gardiner


I probably have more recordings by these two conductors than anyone else...
Straightforward in its simplicity. I have never made an effort to inventory my collection by conductor... but I suppose if I did, Solti would be first, Karajan second- followed by (maybe) Ormandy.

Karajan has done so much wonderful stuff that I kind of hesitate to say this... but I can't say that I've never been disappointed by him. His Schubert symphonies drove me to other versions. By my own admission, I'm not the most reliable guide to Haydn... but I think Karajan's Haydn is a hot mess!:p [It's puzzling... how can he perform Mozart so well, and essay Haydn so weirdly??:confused:]
 
#57 ·
My current top 5 conductors:

Masaaki Suzuki
John Eliot Gardiner
Dimitri Mitropoulos
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Pierre Boulez

I consider it purely coincidental that three of them have recorded or are recording a complete set of Bach cantatas (Harnoncourt, of course, having shared with Leonhardt).

Honorable mention goes to Pietari Inkinen. To be perfectly honest, I really want to put him in this list but I figure I've heard so little of his conducting (four Sibelius CDs and that's it), and he's only in his early 30's, so he's going to get a lot better in the coming years (Thank goodness he doesn't have excessive attention going to his head).
 
#61 ·
My favorite conductor is James Levine, who as most of you I imagine already know is also the artistic director of the New York Metropolitan Opera. There is something about his energy which in my opinion captures music so well. I specially enjoy the way he conducts Wagner. Another thing I have read about him is his ability to get so much work done in so little time and to raise the level of any orchestra he is working with. This being the reason I mentioned him in my book "New York's Opera Society".
 
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