Charlie Rose

REMant  10/18/2012 02:24 PM Report

It is entirely unlikely that big orchestras these days ever play anything new to other orchestra conductors, particularly not those with as long a CV as Slatkin. Of course, they have different conceptions of the work, but that happens with nearly any guest conductor, and guest conducting is a very big business nowadays. Indeed, I would imagine most orchestras can play most of what appears on subscription programs with no conductor at all. The reason is that audiences always want to hear the same stuff over and over, and orchestras are keen to record the same, using these concerts to prep for recording sessions. But many orchestras have developed quirks of long-standing, particularly the Chicago, Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Mengelberg, who conducted the last for 40 years or so, was idiosyncratic to say the least.

Beethoven's Fifth is a very bad example to take in considering so-called great conductors, because the best recordings these days are not by those considered among the greats. The Kleiber's, father and son, have a lock on traditional performance, though one has to bring in Toscanini, Weingartner, Walter, Furtwangler, Jochum, Bohm, Klemperer Karajan and Wand, but aside from more traditional performances by Rattle, Haitink, and Chailly, the best in the past few decades are by "lesser knowns" and lesser known ensembles: Gardiner, Norrington, Harnoncourt, Zinman, Herreweghe, Mackerras, Paavo Jarvi, Bruggen, and Dausgaard, all either on period instruments or modern ones tuned that way.