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It gets into the whole question of the relationship between marketing and actual talent and insight

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on January 2, 2016 at 10:53:57

In Reply to: Conducting NYP is an undesirable gig? posted by Rick W on January 2, 2016 at 09:54:46:

Occasionally, a conductor whom I'd never heard of will be named as a new music director of a well known orchestra. This has happened with Eiji Oue in Minnesota, Ludovic Morlot in Seattle, and, yes, Alan Gilbert in New York. I doubt that anyone sees live performances of a number of different orchestras on a week-in, week-out basis, so it's presumptuous for anyone to compare conductors in this way. I think what most of us do is to rely on recordings (or one-off performances we've seen) for such comparisons, and on that basis, I'd say that Eiji Oue seemed to be a good conductor in Minnesota (on the basis of his Reference Recordings) - certainly as good as many of the "bigger" names who were around at that time. Regarding Alan Gilbert in NY, I haven't heard enough of his recordings/performances to say - although I will mention in passing that that New Year's Eve concert carried on PBS day before yesterday was a pretty shoddy affair IMHO - maybe more so because of the soloists than because of the orchestra (although I guess I wasn't quite as distracted by Nathan Lane's narration in Carnival of the Animals as some critics were!). I also congratulate the Berlin Philharmonic on naming the relatively little known Kirill Petrenko as their next conductor, rather than some "big name" (i.e., heavily marketed name) like Muti or Haitink - not that Muti or Haitink are bad, but I feel that many unknown conductors and musicians can make music at just as high a level.

I would also be disinclined to trust a "panel" of critics in assessing "the best" conductors and orchestras (in your link). So many of these assessments get bogged down into mere personal preference, or, worse, non-musical factors such as national chauvinism, etc. Moreover, as I've mentioned in the past, the very concept of a "best" performance or performer is a lazy notion which caters to the rich and their frantic desire for "excellence" (without necessarily knowing much about the subject, and arrogantly assuming that they can simply buy "the best"!). As Pythagoras used to say, "There is no royal road to geometry!" - or to music or to many other things in life! ;-)

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