Welcome back to our survey of the Real Top 20 Conductors. We are down to our final five spots, and making the final decisions about who is in and who is out is getting ever more fraught. No matter how you cut it, this is a silly exercise- what could be more impossible than identifying the \u201cbest\u201d or \u201cmost important\u201d members of a given field!<\/p>\n
One thing I haven\u2019t worried about at all is who is the best “over-all” conductor. Most of the artists on this list are here for a specific thing or two that they do really well- we\u2019re not going to be all that interested in Futrwangler\u2019s Ravel or Beecham\u2019s Mahler. Bernstein and Karajan, probably the two most \u201cmodern\u201d conductors on the list are also the most modern in the sense of being the most versatile and complete.\u00a0 Both conducted a huge range of repertoire from all cultures and historical periods. Claudio Abbado in our time has taken this even further- he seems to be good at everything, and to at one time or another, seems to have recorded almost everything. He accompanies beautifully, excels in opera, seems unflustered by extremes of complexity and now is doing a lot of early music.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in the day,\u201d one could be much more specialized. Conductors could have \u201cfachs\u201d just like singers, and the results could be revelatory. Orchestras used to consider this when choosing conductors- a smart orchestra would have a Music Director, Principal Guest Conductor and Laureate Conductor whose fachs were all different and complimentary. Asahina is on this list because he does a tiny corner of the repertoire with a sound and emotional impact that defies description. Should we penalize him for what he didn\u2019t do, or didn\u2019t do as well?\u00a0 At the end of the day, I suppose versatility is a valuable skill (one I\u2019ve worked hard to develop in my own work), and it is to be considered just as other skills like \u201cgreat Brucknerian\u201d or \u201cfantastic ear.\u201d I don\u2019t dismiss it, but it\u2019s not the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n
There are other considerations for me- primarily my own personal safety. I\u2019ve avoided discussing living conductors out of an astute sense of self-preservation, but what about my friends and colleagues’ passions? Leave off George Szell and J.S may never speak to me again. If Gerhard were alive, he wouldn\u2019t forgive me putting George Szell on the list! Leave off Suitner, and E.K. might never forgive me. Omit Barbirolli and I can never return to the Manchester area again (I have been warned!)…<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, the real purpose of this list is just to encourage readers to check out the work of some interesting people.\u00a0 The best part of the BBC Musig Magazine feature is the listing of all the judges Top 3\u2019s. That listing is so infinitely more interesting, valuable and important <\/strong><\/em>than what you get when you tally up all those votes into a Top 20. With the judges I know well, my reactions ranged from plenty of \u201cof course\u2019s\u201d for things like David Zinman\u2019s selection of Pierre Monteux (his teacher, who he adored and revered), \u00a0or James Judd\u2019s selection of Furrtwanger, Kleiber and Barbirolli, which seems like a perfect balance of his tastes, talents and interests manifest in his own work. I was surprised but completely psyched to see Tadaaki Otaka,, who we all love here in Cardiff (I once conducted the offstage brass for him in Mahler 2), mention Carl Schuricht and Lovro von Matacic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vp2A299nljA<\/p>\n Yuri Temirkanov\u2019s list is also surprising- not a Russian on it! I can only hope one conductor’s top 3 was an April Fool’s joke, but I won’t say who in case I’m wrong and he’s just insane.<\/p>\n