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The choices of the 151 conductors varied as widely as would opinions here, but the top 10 symphonies chosen were:
1. Beethoven Symphony No 3 (1803)
2. Beethoven Symphony No 9 (1824)
3. Mozart Symphony No 41 (1788)
4. Mahler Symphony No 9 (1909)
5. Mahler Symphony No 2 (1894 rev 1903)
6. Brahms Symphony No 4 (1885)
7. Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (1830)
8. Brahms Symphony No 1 (1876)
9. Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 (1893)
10. Mahler Symphony No 3 (1896)
So I pose the question, which version of Beethoven's "Eroica" do you prefer? [And note the question was not which is the "best", a nonsensical idea for such a subjective subject]
What can be more subjective than music? It reflects our individual tastes, says he enjoying many thousand albums on a Meridian Sooloos Server.
Follow Ups:
n/t
1st mov't a bit stodgy. Otherwise his 2nd and 4th movts are fascinating; I was actually reminded of Shosty.
I mean, I had it myself and quickly jettisoned it. But don't take my word for it. Take this Amazon customer's:Hectically paced, poorly executedReally, I don't want to rain on your parade, but I wish you'd elaborate as to what's so compelling about particular recording. (It went by so fast, I guess I could have missed something!)
Hermann Scherchen belongs with Jascha Horenstein in that quirky category of great conductors who recorded with such poor orchestras that it's often hard to listen to the results. Considering how truly terrible the Vienna Symphon[y] (Pro Musica) was in the Westminster era, you have to tiptoe carefully indeed to avoid some real train wrecks. Even the Vienna Staatsoper orchestra, which is supposed to be composed of members of the Vienna Philharmonic, was veyr [sic] raggedy in those days. This is a breakneck Eroica performed without much technical finesse, yet among Scherhcen's [sic] Beethoven readings, it is typical in both respects.
Ironically, it's Scherchen's insistence upon precise arriculation, tempi and rhythm that caught my ear. Scherchen is also attuned to B's momentary moods, which often turn on a dime, not to mention the humor.
Is everything perfect? No, but when it comes to making B live and breathe, IMHO Scherchen is Schnabel's equal.
You should revisit the mono set; at least the 5th and 8th. You can download them at Pristine. The precise articulation and rocksteady rhythm of the 1st mov't of the 5th is stunning and actually rekindled my love for the old warhorse.
The critic reminds me of those critics who dismiss Karajan as "too beautiful" or Haitink as "always dull." Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. He picked up a soundbyte somewhere and ran with it.
PS, if there is one Scherchen dud, it's the 6th: too fussy.
Of course, as I suggested in the previous post, maybe the whole performance went by too fast. ;-)
So now you're saying it's the MONO set that's so good? I'm not claiming it's impossible (if there's one thing that Scherchen was, it was unpredictable!), but it's still hard for me to believe. Nevertheless, I may try to download that mono Fifth from Pristine at some point.
I guess you COULD say that Scherchen makes Beethoven breathe. However, as with Schnabel, I'm breathing too - sometimes really fast as I begin to panic at how soon the next technical mishap will show up. ;-)
Just to check my own memory, I'm listening to the stereo 3rd as I type. I'm not hearing clunkers, intonation problems or ragged entrances. Can you provide specific measures as examples?
Yes, the infamously fast last movt--the only Scherchen about which most people have read --oops--**heard** (ahem) is a slightly bumpy ride but not representative of the whole and mostly mono cycle.
In any case, do try the 5th someday: if it doesn't float your boat then Scherchen's B isn't for you.
Lately though, I've been enjoying Karajan's 60s cycle immensely, and I'm not a cycle kind of guy, nor was I expecting it to be so vital and alive.
It was when DG reissued all that Westminster stuff in their vaults - maybe only 15 years! ;-)
As I mentioned, I no longer have the recording, so, for the most part, I can't provide the measure numbers, but just as a general rule, I do remember a general sloppiness and lack of clarity to the playing that, at least to me, really stood out, not to mention a lack of weight in the orchestra's tone. And if there's one piece that needs weight, regardless of how fast you're going, it's the Eroica - think of inspired spot where the first violins linger, sotto voce, on that solitary A-flat at measure 157 in the slow movement, followed by a powerful fortissimo A-flat in cellos and basses in the next measure. That's one place I do remember as being wimpy and lame in the Scherchen performance - at least compared to other performances.
BTW, there's a story about Kempe rehearsing that same spot (measures 157-158 in the slow movement) with the RPO, where, instead of just giving the downbeat at 158, he moved his arm from side to side too (a gesture, I would think, that encouraged the players to go for maximum tone at this point). This confused one of the double bass players, who raised his hand and asked Kempe if he could avoid all that side-to-side motion because it was confusing for the double-bass player to determine exactly where the beat was at that point. Kempe kind of smiled at him and promised to be more clear at that spot in the actual performance. The actual performance rolled around, they got to measure 158, and Kempe conducted it exactly the same way he had in rehearsal! (This story was related by another member of the orchestra who said that Kempe was entirely right to conduct it this way and got exactly what was needed from the orchestra!)
BTW, if I have to go mono, I'd much prefer the Markevitch / Symphony of the Air performance (also on a DG reissue). Regarding those Karajan 60's performances on DG, I agree.
observation. Maybe digital remastering blurred everything. : )
I should have added in the original post, there were 20 listed and may mentioned by posters here are in that 20. Apologies but I was too lazy to type in numbers 11 to 20.
And here is another list, from of all places TWITTER!!!
http://www.classical-music.com/article/10-greatest-symphonies-all-timeaccording-twitter
And, other one to irritate some people - THE TOP 20 CONDUCTORS!!!
Reported at http://www.instantencore.com/buzz/item.aspx?FeedEntryId=134698
BBC Music Magazine offered as its cover story this month a rare best-of list: their editor's poll of the top twenty conductors of all-time. Even allowing the publication its specialized readership of orchestra aficionados, it seems like an unlikely accomplishment. How can you possibly rate the best working conductors against each other, let alone conductors of various eras? On reflection, however, it struck us as both a fun and informative catalogue, especially for a reader who doesn't know his Furtwängler from his Haitink.
So, for the uninitiated, let us introduce you to some of music's great conductors, and tell you a bit about why top five names are worth knowing. Use it to impress your friends during your next swank dinner party.
1. Carlos Kleiber (Austrian, 1930-2004)
ORCHESTRA: Vienna Volksoper, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Zurich Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Bavarian State Opera
WHAT TO KNOW: An enfant terrible of the music world, his long rehearsal times and tendency to cancel appearances on a whim made seeing a Kleiber performance a truly rare experience.
2. Leonard Bernstein (American, 1918-1990)
ORCHESTRA: New York Philharmonic
WHAT TO KNOW: New York drama critic Harold Clurman put it best: "Lenny is hopelessly fated for success."
3. Claudio Abbado (Italian, b. 1933)
ORCHESTRA: La Scala, London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna State Opera, Berlin Philharmonic
WHAT TO KNOW: Von Karajan's successor at Berlin is a master of turn-of-the-century Vienna, including being perhaps the greatest living interpreter of Mahler.
4. Herbert von Karajan (Austrian, 1908-1989)
ORCHESTRA: Berlin Philharmonic
WHAT TO KNOW: The long-tenured conductor of the world's most famous orchestra is estimated to be the top-selling artist in classical music, with some 200 million record sales bearing his name.
5. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Austrian, b. 1929)
ORCHESTRA: Vienna Symphony (as cellist), La Scala, Vienna State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic
WHAT TO KNOW: Among history's more well-informed conductors, he was an acclaimed cellist and an early music pioneer before making his conducting debut in 1970.
The rest:
6. Simon Rattle (British, b 1955)
7. Wilhelm Furtwängler (German, 1896-1954)
8. Arturo Toscanini (Italian, 1867-1957)
9. Pierre Boulez (French, b. 1925)
10. Carlo Maria Giulini (Italian, 1914-2005)
11. John Eliot Gardiner (British, b. 1943)
12. John Barbirolli (British, 1899-1970)
13. Ferenc Fricsay (Hungarian, 1914-1963)
14. George Szell (Hungarian, 1897-1970)
15. Bernard Haitink (Dutch, b. 1929)
16. Pierre Monteux (French, 1875-1964)
17. Yevgeny Mravinsky (Russian, 1903-1988)
18. Colin Davis (British, b. 1927)
19. Thomas Beecham (British, 1879-1961)
20. Charles Mackerras (Australian, 1925-2010)
Missing anyone? Who do you think should be on the list? Comment and let us know.
Sir John Barbirolli ; Leonard Bernstein ; Pierre Boulez ; Claudio Abbado ; Sir Thomas Beecham ; Sir Colin Davis ; John Eliot Gardiner ; Carlo Maria Giulini ; Bernard Haitink ; Nikolaus Harnoncourt ; Herbert von Karajan ; Carlos Kleiber ; Sir Charles Mackerras ; Pierre Monteux ; Yevgeny Mravinsky ; Sir Simon Rattle ; George Szell ; Arturo Toscanini ; New York Philharmonic ; North Carolina Symphony ; Deutsche Oper Am Rhein ; Early Music Now ;
What can be more subjective than music? It reflects our individual tastes, says he enjoying many thousand albums on a Meridian Sooloos Server.
Carlos Kleiber is maybe the most overrated conductor I've ever heard..... He never got good articulation out of an orchestra, and everything is just "glossed over"...... And he never performed the Beethoven Ninth.....
I never cared for Simon Rattle either..... To say he was better than George Szell or Fritz Reiner is laughable.....
There are a lot of great conductors NOT on this list..... Reiner, Serge Koussevitzky, Bruno Walter, Kirill Kondrashin, Charles Dutoit, Antal Dorati, Leopold Stokowski...... It's like this group was concocted by a naive Millennial.....
Heck, I'd even toss Semyon Bychkov and Valery Gergiev in there..... Who I both would take over Simon Rattle, let alone Carlos Kleiber.
The British homerism is just too obvious on that list. More than 1/4 of the greatest conductors of all time are all from one tiny country? Who else would put on their own list Rattle, Gardiner, Davis, Beecham, Barbirolli and MacKerras (an Aussie who conducted several British orchestras and last night at the Proms)?
Your list of notable omissions highlights the absence of Russians. In addition to the names you mention as contenders -- Kubelik, Bohm, Jansons, Chailly, Klemperer, Jarvi, Mitropoulos, Jochum ......
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
Can't believe I left out Klemperer and Bohm..... These were two giants.... Klemperer's Schumann Four was almost definitive..... And one of the great Beethoven conductors in my humble opinion.
I find Shostakovich and Bruckner to be a bit hard to crack, at least for me. If there were to be a Bruckner, it would be the 8th, IMO.
You have to pick just 10, so very hard. How do you have a list of the ten greatest symphonies without Beethoven's 5th?(or 6th and 7th) Or Schubert's Great C-Major (which over my life time has moved around from 9th, to 8th to 7th and then back to 9th again). Or any one of Dvorak's last 3 symphonies?
One poster mentioned Stravinsky - I don't think he would crack the top ten, not his symphonies - if we were looking at the top ten orchestral works then Firebird and the Rite of Spring would need to be considered.
Last - no representation from the father of the symphony? None of his would probably crack the top 25....
Symphonies placed in a numeric ranking?
Music is not a race. There is no medal for any place.
It was a poll of conductors. If you polled orchestra musicians to find out which pieces they most enjoy playing, the results would surely be different.
And we already know from classical radio listener polls that those folks have a different set of favorites, heavily influenced by the programming choices of the stations.
And if you polled people who attend live concerts, you'd get yet another list.
It's all just opinion. Everybody has their personal favorites and I'm pretty sure each one of us would have a different list.
In fact, I seem to remember a thread or two, some years ago, in which Asylum members offered up their personal favorites.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
New York's last all-classical music radio station, WQXR, has pretty much adopted a top 500 format. If you're an experienced listener and concert goer, you seldom hear anything you haven't heard many times before. Their listeners' favorites, which you get to know well thanks to their many polls, are predictable. Our cockatiel is a fan. Of course, he loves repetition.
Orchestral players are often on the other end of the spectrum. They don't want to hear anything they have to play too often.
Lots of Eroica's that I enjoy hearing. For a long time, Jordi Savall's recording was the one I listened to most.
I certainly don't agree that the 4th movement is weak. I have a strong response to the Contradance theme every time that I hear it.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I'd put Symphony of Psalms in there. And at least one Shostakovich.Plus Brahms 2 is my favourite.....
I really can't take Mahler seriously - overblown, pretentious, full of quasi-gravitas.... And don't start me on Bruckner...
I'd love to put La Mer in the on the basis of "Symphonic Sketches"....
Incidentally - can anyone post the rest of the top 20?
Edits: 08/20/16
I really can't take Shostakovich seriously - overblown, pretentious, full of quasi-gravitas. . . deliberately stupid (oh, but don't you know he's depicting some dimwitted apparatchik? - you have to read the book to be informed!). I find it funny that you object to Mahler, but are fine with Shostakovich, who extends some of the same Mahlerian musical gestures into bathos much more often than Mahler himself does! ;-)
Symphony of Psalms is OK - hardly belongs in a top ten list though.
BTW, here's the rest of the list (with the "top" recordings that the BBC Music Magazine reviewers picked):
20- Bruckner #7 (Royal Concertgeboux/Haitink)
19- Beethoven #6 (LCP/Norrington)
18- Brahms #2 (LPO/Jurowski)
17- Shostakovich #5 (BBC Nat'l Orch of Wales/Wigglesworth)
16- Beethoven #7 (Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim)
15- Mozart #40 (Scottish Chamber Orch/Mackerras)
14- Sibelius #7 (Lahti/Vanska)
13- Bruckner #8 (Royal Concertgebouw/Chailly)
12- Brahms #3 (Gewandhaus/Chailly)
11- Beethoven #5 (Vienna/Kleiber)
Some of those choices for top recordings strike me as nothing less than bizarre, but it looks like we both got our wishes on this portion of the list. Well, still no Stravinsky! ;-)
And when I do, I'm reminded as to the reason.
Sibelius 7th is the top one Sibelius on this list - not the 2nd or the 5th.
"I find it funny that you object to Mahler, but are fine with Shostakovich, who extends some of the same Mahlerian musical gestures into bathos much more often than Mahler himself does! ;-) "
Shostakovich is more lean and tormented, Mahler is weirdly sentimental in that kooky Germanic way. If you must have that, I prefer R Strauss or Berg or..... well almost anyone else.
And anyway, Shostakovich has great endings. The ending of Symphony 6 is my favourite of any symphony. Mahler's 3rd is for me one of the most ridiculously pompous. All it needs (and gets) is Lenny waving his arms round wildly like he's drowning.
As you might have gathered I don't listen to Mahler much, but being open minded by nature I did try his symphonies again. His 2nd scored highly so I started there. Didn't get on very well until I came across Boulez on YT. Now, his Mahler I can relate to. None of Lenny's flatulent excesses - it's all lighter, more tuneful, less grandiose, more music and less theatre.There is hope - I can live with Boulez's vision..... Next stop Gielen. I gather he's more analytic and less schmaltzy..
Update: Listened to Gielen's 2nd right through. Love it. Now on his 4th....... liking it too..... Clearly I've been listening to the wrong conductors up to now. This changes things
Edits: 08/20/16
Anyway, glad you're getting into Mahler more thru other conductors. One of my fave composers.
Yes! The books of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and even Solzenitsyn, that is. Those grim, wintry Russians with their ironic, black humor.
If you can't get into that frame of mind, even the best of Shostakovich isn't as worthwhile. Try a large tumbler of straight vodka to make his music, and the world and life generally, easier to take.
I was referring to Volkov and his ilk. ;-)
nt.
"The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains" -Paul Simon
Hi,
On your list,"13- Bruckner #8 (Royal Concertgebouw/Chailly)", what label is this on, is it CD or SACD?
Vahe
Be that as it may, there are so many outstanding Eroicas, I couldn't even begin to list them all.
These are just some I'm thinking about at the moment.
.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
I've always thought Beethoven's "Eroica" was overrated, mainly because the final movement never really did much for me...... I thought it was amongst the "weakest" movements of his nine symphonies.
But then again, my third-favorite Beethoven symphony is his Fourth (behind his Ninth and 7th)..... Which most conductors would rank at the bottom......
nt.
Mark in NC
"The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains" -Paul Simon
When the B-4 is given a good read, it's an enthralling work.......
I agree with Ivan303's choice for the Eroica (the LP sounds better than the CD).
Hmmmm; Mahler 3 before 5 or 6? Shostakovich 5 before 10?
Christoph von Dohnanyi on Telarc?
OK, it's on my list but who know where?
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