Classical Court From Perotin to Prokofiev (and beyond), performed by Caruso to Khatia, it's all here.

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RE: Look, I have the Harnoncourt/BPO mammoth Schubert box on blu-ray

Posted by Mel (A) on June 12, 2020 at 07:07:38

In Reply to: Look, I have the Harnoncourt/BPO mammoth Schubert box on blu-ray posted by Chris from Lafayette on June 11, 2020 at 22:28:29:

On the subject of getting a top notch conductor, do you think the NYPO board is sufficiently different from the Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Pittsburgh (and on and on) boards?

There has never been an issue about the ability of the NYPO to attract great individual players. The City is teaming with talented musicians. The pity of it is that the classical musical scene is so limited. I have seen obvious pick-up groups do very well playing in very awkward quarters. NY needs another, and modern, hall. But the NYPO has a reputation of doing it their way and not the conductor's way. IIRC it was Celibidache who, based on its reputation of the day, called its members "mafioso."

We attended very often during the Masur (who was quickly recruited when Abbado refused to come) era as we had a friend on the symphony staff. Sat all over the terrible hall. Sometimes we could see the cellos sawing away and could hear nothing. Masur was b-o-r-i-n-g. He was IMO the personification of a kapellmeister with a very limited repertoire that was worth hearing. I remember, like it was yesterday, getting angry at his conducting of Kodaly and thinking he had absolutely no understanding of its folk roots. Rarely, by the way, would we get through a concert in those days without missed notes on the French horns. What explains that? We would try to opt for guest conductors--a great one of the era there was Temirkanov. When we paid it was usually for Carnegie.

It's arrogance. Recall the story of the sold-out BENEFIT performance (for the players' own pension fund, no less) led by Gilbert Kaplan (with no fee, of course) and the notorious and well publicized resistance to someone who had conducted the Mahler 2 all over the world, and had recorded it twice including with the VPO. Of course, he was not a "conductor" but, in fact, the performance was favorably reviewed. However he had to pull hairs to pull it together. Referring even to the very first bars he was quoted, in a long article on the subject, as saying to meet the prolonged resistance, "Why don't we just play it the way Mahler wrote it."

You have written that van Zweden recorded a disappointing Beethoven fifth, a staple of the repertoire. So I will ask you again. Why do you think they have not attracted a first rank conductor in his or her prime over all these years?

Edits: 06/12/20

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