The current issue of BBC Music Magazine has a featured list of the \u201c20 Greatest Conductors of All Time,\u201d including one fantastic misprint in the press release version of the list now circulating- \u201cTerenc\u201d rather than \u201cFerenc\u201d Fricsay<\/p>\n
1. Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004) Austrian
\n2. Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) American
\n3. Claudio Abbado (b1933) Italian
\n4. Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) Austrian
\n5. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (b1929) Austrian
\n6. Sir Simon Rattle (b 1955) British
\n7. Wilhelm Furtw\u00e4ngler (1896-1954)
\n8. Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) Italian
\n9. Pierre Boulez (b1925) French
\n10. Carlo Maria Giulini (1914-2005) Italian
\n11. Sir John Eliot Gardiner (b1943) British
\n12. Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970) British
\n13. Terenc Fricsay (1914-1963) Hungarian
\n14. George Szell (1897-1970) Hungarian
\n15. Bernard Haitink (b1929) Dutch
\n16. Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) French
\n17. Yevgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988) Russian
\n18. Sir Colin Davis (b1927) British
\n19. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) British
\n20. Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) Australian<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had a few friends and colleagues attempt to bait me into commenting on the list, but have been somewhat hesitant to do so. It turns out that if you single out any living conductor for praise, you run the risk of offending all other living conductors, their agents and their orchestras, and never working again.<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s an interesting exercise- I like<\/em> ranking things, and most topics, like \u201cmost over-rated pianist\u201d are not suitable for the blog. I\u2019ve therefore decided to leave off all living conductors, even though Haitink would have made my list, and Harnoncourt and Boulez might have had a chance.<\/p>\n In any case,\u00a0 I thought the real value in such a list might be educational. No one conductor is likely to be great at everything, but what they are<\/em> great we can learn from- it’s important to know where to set the bar of what constitutes great Bruckner or fantastic Shostakovich. Until you know and understand what the greats were great at, you\u2019re in no position to make reasoned assessments of those of us working today. Likewise, if we simply canonize our favorite artists, then there is no incentive for the art to keep growing and evolving. Therefore, I\u2019m going to try to find something critical as well as something complimentary about everyone on the list.<\/p>\n I’ve also intentionally been a little bit arbitrary and perverse with the numerical ranking. Definitive and defensible, this is not!<\/p>\n 1. <\/strong>Wilhelm Furtwangler<\/strong><\/p>\n Furtwangler was the greatest musical storyteller ever to stand before an orchestra. At his best, his performances have un-matched sweep and drama. He also got about the most powerful, elemental, primal and robust sound in history out of the orchestras he worked with, especially the Berlin Philharmonic. The radio broadcasts of his WW II era Beethoven symphonies may be the greatest recordings ever made.<\/p>\n PROS- Incredible ear for sound and articulation. Tremendous sense of legato. Incredible architectural clarity. Near genius at rubato. Mojo-a-gogo.<\/p>\n CONS- Sometimes the tempo risks he takes with temp don\u2019t work and the performances collapse into mannerism. Not strong on more classical Beethoven\u00a0 symphonies like 4 and 6. (The video sample below is both amazing and upsetting), but his dramatic Beethoven (3, 5 and 9) is incomparable.<\/p>\n