# Conductors who just don't cut the mustard



## EDaddy

I'm sure it's safe to say we all have our handful of conductors whom we have come to love and respect over the years for their various contributions and interpretations of classical symphonies, but is there a conductor (it can be more than one) that just really falls flat for you, either consistently or on a specific body of work?

An example for me is Genaddi Rozhdestvensky in his reading of Bruckner's 8th with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra. I'm not sure how it is that this version would be the how I would originally hear Bruckner's 8th for the first time, but it was, and it nearly ruined the symphony for me. In fact, for a long time I just assumed it was the symphony I didn't like; it wasn't until quite sometime later that I would hear it again, this time in the ever-so-skilled hands of the great, late magic Wand... and it was like hearing an entirely different symphony for the first time. And this time it was a transcendent experience.

Anyone have any similar experiences?


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## Becca

Zubin Mehta and it is not for want of having heard him in concert, I attended many of his Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts when he was music director and at this distance in time, my only specific recollections are negative.

Eugene Ormandy - On number of occasions I got to know a piece via an Ormandy recording and found myself underwhelmed. Then, when hearing the piece from another conductor, realized just how much was missing in the Ormandy version. In some cases it even made me go to the score to confirm my later impressions.


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## Albert7

http://maximiannocobra.net/main/it/biografia/maximianno-cobra.html


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## Marsilius

Seiji Ozawa invariably underwhelms. Gustavo Dudamel overwhelms - but in the wrong way.


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## Autocrat

Otto Klemperer's Mozart recordings with New Philharmonia Orchestra are, IMO, pretty ordinary displays. Maybe he could have followed his son into TV.

Also, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra never sounded so bad as under Edo de Waart.


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## elgar's ghost

I agree that some of Rozhdestvensky's Bruckner on Russian Revelation can be jaw-dropping for often the wrong reasons - for example, in the finale of the 5th the brass section in particular is so out of synch that it sounds like it's in canon with itself. It's as if Gennadi had fled from the rostrum early and headed for the sanctuary of the Green Room while snatching away all of the copies of the score, thus leaving the orchestra to their own devices. In fact, I'm wondering if some of the players had already made lengthy use of the stronger refreshments on offer and then suddenly realised that they actually had a symphony to perform. For the morbidly curious I would still suggest that they approach with caution.

I DO like Rozhdestvensky as a conductor, though - some of his Shostakovich and Prokofiev is great to listen to.


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## Triplets

Many prominent Conductors have hits and misses. Rozdestevensky can be revelatory in other repertoire. Ormandy made several hundred great recordings along with routine jobs. Mehta and Ozawa were both exciting in their younger days and lost their mojo in middle age


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## Musicophile

Maybe I'm being sacrilegious here, feel free to stone me, but I've yet to hear a Leonard Bernstein recording that fully convinces me. To be fair, he had outstanding charisma and good looks.


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## isorhythm

Musicophile said:


> Maybe I'm being sacrilegious here, feel free to stone me, but I've yet to hear a Leonard Bernstein recording that fully convinces me. To be fair, he had outstanding charisma and good looks.


Have you listened to a lot of his Mahler?


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## D Smith

Every conductor will have hits and misses. I was privileged to hear Rozhdestvensky conduct Shostakovich live and it was unbelievably amazing. I also have several recordings of his that leave me cold. I generally adore Bernstein, but a few of his later attempts with Tchaikovsky for example are really bad. I do think it makes a big difference if you can watch a conductor and see how he or she interacts with an orchestra at a concert to really appreciate them. In an ideal world, music is best experienced live.


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## EDaddy

elgars ghost said:


> I DO like Rozhdestvensky as a conductor, though - some of his Shostakovich and Prokofiev is great to listen to.


Agreed. He seems to have a firm grasp of the Ruskies in general. He probably ought to stick with that.


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## EDaddy

isorhythm said:


> Have you listened to a lot of his Mahler?


Realizing your question was directed at someone else, I still feel compelled to chime in. Not being a particularly big Mahler fan myself (I can listen to and enjoy some of his work if I'm in the right mood and willing/able on that particular day to ignore the sections that otherwise make me wanna go :scold... I nevertheless find Bernstein's 1967 reading of his 9th with the NY Phil to be beyond compare. At least from the handful of critically acclaimed recordings I either own or have heard, nothing else touches it. He really nails Mahler's 5th as well.


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## Manxfeeder

EDaddy said:


> Agreed. He seems to have a firm grasp of the Ruskies in general. He probably ought to stick with that.


Yeah. I agree with your thoughts on his Bruckner. But he is the one who opened up to me the Glazunov symphonies.

Back to the topic, I probably shouldn't say this publicly, but Marin Alsop's recordings pretty consistently disappoint me. She's too nice, or maybe the term should be even-tempered. I don't get edge-of-my-seat moments from them.


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## Becca

Rozhdestvensky has quite an affinity with Scandinavian composers such as Nielsen, Riisager, etc. I have also seen him in concert and been impressed.


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## Celloman

Manxfeeder said:


> Back to the topic, I probably shouldn't say this publicly, but Marin Alsop's recordings pretty consistently disappoint me. She's too nice, or maybe the term should be even-tempered. I don't get edge-of-my-seat moments from them.


Have you listened to her Samuel Barber recordings on Naxos? They are some of the best available recordings of this music, in my opinion. You might say that Barber is her cup of tea - she "gets" him better than most conductors.


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## Manxfeeder

Celloman said:


> Have you listened to her Samuel Barber recordings on Naxos? They are some of the best available recordings of this music, in my opinion. You might say that Barber is her cup of tea - she "gets" him better than most conductors.


I have. That's why I said "pretty consistently." Not all of her recordings are disappointing, but with a lot of them, they seem to have been done better by someone else.


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## DavidA

Must say Celi doesn't cut it for me with his funeral speeds.


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## superhorn

George Szell was a phenomenally skillfull technician and a strict disciplinarian who trained the Cleveland orchestra into what may have been the most technically polished ,precise and clear-sounding orchestra ever . No wonder Pierre Boulez liked working with them so much .
But unfortunately , many of his recordings seem to me more like autopsies than living , breathing interpretations . Despite the amazing polish , there's something dry, grayish and brittle about the sound he got from the orchestra ; the phrasing is exaggeratedly clipped and the brass players, especially the horns and trumpets , peck at the notes rather then producing a round, sustained tone .
Everything sounds so wooden and tightly controlled ; like a dress shirt which has had too much starch
applied to it . 
Ive liked recordings he made with other orchestras such as the Concertgebouw, the Vienna Phil. and the LSO more . He seems to be able to loosen up more and let the music breahe better .


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## DavidA

superhorn said:


> George Szell was a phenomenally skillfull technician and a strict disciplinarian who trained the Cleveland orchestra into what may have been the most technically polished ,precise and clear-sounding orchestra ever . No wonder Pierre Boulez liked working with them so much .
> But unfortunately , many of his recordings seem to me more like autopsies than living , breathing interpretations . Despite the amazing polish , there's something dry, grayish and brittle about the sound he got from the orchestra ; the phrasing is exaggeratedly clipped and the brass players, especially the horns and trumpets , peck at the notes rather then producing a round, sustained tone .
> Everything sounds so wooden and tightly controlled ; like a dress shirt which has had too much starch
> applied to it .
> Ive liked recordings he made with other orchestras such as the Concertgebouw, the Vienna Phil. and the LSO more . He seems to be able to loosen up more and let the music breahe better .


Szell was a phenomenal accompanist. Just listen to him in (eg) Brahms with Serkin, Fleisher and Curzon
He was also remarkably irascible. Once accompanying Glenn Gould he got irritated with Gould fussing about the height of his chair and remarked: "Mr Gould, perhaps if you could shave one sixteenth of an inch off your derrière then we could get on with this rehearsal!"


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## PeterF

Interesting to see the diversity of views. Szell and Ormandy are two conductors I very much like.
Mehta and Ozawa are two that I find underwhelming.


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## Weston

superhorn said:


> George Szell was a phenomenally skillfull technician and a strict disciplinarian who trained the Cleveland orchestra into what may have been the most technically polished ,precise and clear-sounding orchestra ever . No wonder Pierre Boulez liked working with them so much .
> But unfortunately , many of his recordings seem to me more like autopsies than living , breathing interpretations . Despite the amazing polish , there's something dry, grayish and brittle about the sound he got from the orchestra ; the phrasing is exaggeratedly clipped and the brass players, especially the horns and trumpets , peck at the notes rather then producing a round, sustained tone .
> Everything sounds so wooden and tightly controlled ; like a dress shirt which has had too much starch
> applied to it .
> Ive liked recordings he made with other orchestras such as the Concertgebouw, the Vienna Phil. and the LSO more . He seems to be able to loosen up more and let the music breahe better .


I have had the same experience. For a long time some of my Beethoven symphonies were Szell, and I found no passion in them. They are merely adequate.


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## EDaddy

superhorn said:


> George Szell was a phenomenally skillfull technician and a strict disciplinarian who trained the Cleveland orchestra into what may have been the most technically polished ,precise and clear-sounding orchestra ever . No wonder Pierre Boulez liked working with them so much .
> But unfortunately , many of his recordings seem to me more like autopsies than living , breathing interpretations . Despite the amazing polish , there's something dry, grayish and brittle about the sound he got from the orchestra ; the phrasing is exaggeratedly clipped and the brass players, especially the horns and trumpets , peck at the notes rather then producing a round, sustained tone .
> Everything sounds so wooden and tightly controlled ; like a dress shirt which has had too much starch
> applied to it .
> Ive liked recordings he made with other orchestras such as the Concertgebouw, the Vienna Phil. and the LSO more . He seems to be able to loosen up more and let the music breahe better .


I agree with you, but only in certain instances. There are some recordings Szell did with the CSO that I think have never been topped, or in some cases even equaled. His version of Mozart's Elvira Madigan with Casadesus is THE definitive version for me. I have yet to hear another conductor/orchestra that matches it. His Eroica and 9th by Beethoven are stellar as well. However, I find his Beethoven 5th to be... meh. It is as you describe. So I'm sure there are others as well, but when he was on he was _on_.


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## EDaddy

Weston said:


> I have had the same experience. For a long time some of my Beethoven symphonies were Szell, and I found no passion in them. They are merely adequate.


I'd be interested to know which symphonies they were.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Becca said:


> Zubin Mehta and it is not for want of having heard him in concert, I attended many of his Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts when he was music director and at this distance in time, my only specific recollections are negative.
> 
> Eugene Ormandy - On number of occasions I got to know a piece via an Ormandy recording and found myself underwhelmed. Then, when hearing the piece from another conductor, realized just how much was missing in the Ormandy version. In some cases it even made me go to the score to confirm my later impressions.


Essential Recordings:


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## StlukesguildOhio

Autocrat said:


> Otto Klemperer's Mozart recordings with New Philharmonia Orchestra are, IMO, pretty ordinary displays. Maybe he could have followed his son into TV.
> 
> What!!!???
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> Klemperer's Cosi fan tutte is absolutely marvelous, while his Zauberflote is unsurpassed.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Musicophile said:


> Maybe I'm being sacrilegious here, feel free to stone me, but I've yet to hear a Leonard Bernstein recording that fully convinces me. To be fair, he had outstanding charisma and good looks.


Beyond his Mahler (already mentioned) I would add his Beethoven, Haydn, Bizet, Gershwin, and the series of recordings of American and Latin-American composers: Harris, Thompson, Diamond, Copland, Villa-Lobos, Barber, Ives, William Schuman, etc...


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## StlukesguildOhio

superhorn said:


> George Szell was a phenomenally skillfull technician and a strict disciplinarian who trained the Cleveland orchestra into what may have been the most technically polished ,precise and clear-sounding orchestra ever . No wonder Pierre Boulez liked working with them so much .
> But unfortunately , many of his recordings seem to me more like autopsies than living , breathing interpretations . Despite the amazing polish , there's something dry, grayish and brittle about the sound he got from the orchestra ; the phrasing is exaggeratedly clipped and the brass players, especially the horns and trumpets , peck at the notes rather then producing a round, sustained tone .
> Everything sounds so wooden and tightly controlled ; like a dress shirt which has had too much starch
> applied to it .
> Ive liked recordings he made with other orchestras such as the Concertgebouw, the Vienna Phil. and the LSO more . He seems to be able to loosen up more and let the music breahe better .


Blasphemy!



Szell's recordings of selected Mozart's symphonies and piano concertos, selected Haydn symphonies, Beethoven's symphonies and piano concertos with Fleisher, Brahms' piano concertos, & Schumann's symphonies all rank IMO among the finest ever, while his Strauss' Last Four Songs with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf is unrivaled. Pretty good for a conductor in my book.


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## Musicophile

isorhythm said:


> Have you listened to a lot of his Mahler?


I did, any while I think we should all be grateful that he "revived" Mahler to the general audience, I'm not a big fan of his Mahler interpretations either.


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## Musicophile

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Beyond his Mahler (already mentioned) I would add his Beethoven, Haydn, Bizet, Gershwin, and the series of recordings of American and Latin-American composers: Harris, Thompson, Diamond, Copland, Villa-Lobos, Barber, Ives, William Schuman, etc...


To be fair, I'm not very much into American composers, so I cannot really judge his performance there. But his Beethoven isn't my cup of tea, and Haydn I get easily bored of if not played HIPP.


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## EDaddy

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Autocrat said:
> 
> 
> 
> Otto Klemperer's Mozart recordings with New Philharmonia Orchestra are, IMO, pretty ordinary displays. Maybe he could have followed his son into TV.
> 
> What!!!???
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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> Klemperer's Cosi fan tutte is absolutely marvelous, while his Zauberflote is unsurpassed.
> 
> 
> 
> Hear! hear! :tiphat:
Click to expand...


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## DavidA

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Autocrat said:
> 
> 
> 
> Otto Klemperer's Mozart recordings with New Philharmonia Orchestra are, IMO, pretty ordinary displays. Maybe he could have followed his son into TV.
> 
> What!!!???
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> Klemperer's Cosi fan tutte is absolutely marvelous, while his Zauberflote is unsurpassed.
> 
> 
> 
> The problem is by the time K got round to recording these works he was getting slower and slower. In Cosi in particular you can see his head going into the score to bring out another felicity. With the Flute there are some marvellous things. The women are absolutely marvellous but the men are less than marvellous. (Perhaps if the women of K's and the men of Bohm's could have been combined then we would have had an all-time winner.) Again K is slow but this is better suited to the piece. To say it is a classic is true. To use the word 'unsurpassed' is stretching things.
Click to expand...


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## Itullian

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Autocrat said:
> 
> 
> 
> Otto Klemperer's Mozart recordings with New Philharmonia Orchestra are, IMO, pretty ordinary displays. Maybe he could have followed his son into TV.
> 
> What!!!???
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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> 
> Klemperer's Cosi fan tutte is absolutely marvelous, while his Zauberflote is unsurpassed.
> 
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> 
> Yup, my favorites.
Click to expand...


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## EDaddy

Itullian said:


> StlukesguildOhio said:
> 
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> 
> Yup, my favorites.
> 
> 
> 
> I second that. The best!
Click to expand...


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## PeterF

I tend to generally avoid recordings by Herbert von Karajan. Hard to define exactly why, but have never been enthusiastic about most things I have heard by him. In fairness there are some limited exceptions.


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## Guest

I liked Mehta.

I dunno about the quality of performances, but certainly the repertoire took a big hit when he left.

There's a recording of him out there somewhere on some fourth or fifth rate label of Mussorgsky's _Pictures at an Exhibition_ which I think is incomparable. So I won't.

I don't recall liking any of his NYP recordings, though.

As for Ormandy, his undeniable strength was with more modern repertoire, oddly enough. He didn't do very much of it, some Nielsen, some Ives, and so forth, but he did it really well by simply playing it as if this were perfectly normal stuff, delightful to listen to, making perfect sense. Listen to anyone else's Nielsen sixth, for instance. Then listen to Ormandy's. Brilliant. Totally confident, totally unapologetic, totally secure playing from the orchestra.

I don't go much for "bench-mark" kinda talk, as y'all know, but this one is so obviously bench-marky....


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## Alfacharger

some guy said:


> I liked Mehta.
> 
> I dunno about the quality of performances, but certainly the repertoire took a big hit when he left.
> 
> There's a recording of him out there somewhere on some fourth or fifth rate label of Mussorgsky's _Pictures at an Exhibition_ which I think is incomparable. So I won't.
> 
> I don't recall liking any of his NYP recordings, though.
> 
> As for Ormandy, his undeniable strength was with more modern repertoire, oddly enough. He didn't do very much of it, some Nielsen, some Ives, and so forth, but he did it really well by simply playing it as if this were perfectly normal stuff, delightful to listen to, making perfect sense. Listen to anyone else's Nielsen sixth, for instance. Then listen to Ormandy's. Brilliant. Totally confident, totally unapologetic, totally secure playing from the orchestra.
> 
> I don't go much for "bench-mark" kinda talk, as y'all know, but this one is so obviously bench-marky....


Mehta had a fine pair of Paine recordings with the NYP.


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## Autocrat

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Autocrat said:
> 
> 
> 
> Otto Klemperer's Mozart recordings with New Philharmonia Orchestra are, IMO, pretty ordinary displays. Maybe he could have followed his son into TV.
> 
> What!!!???
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Klemperer's Cosi fan tutte is absolutely marvelous, while his Zauberflote is unsurpassed.
> 
> 
> 
> I should have been more specific, was thinking only of symphonies. I don't listen to opera much.
Click to expand...


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## Orfeo

EDaddy said:


> I'm sure it's safe to say we all have our handful of conductors whom we have come to love and respect over the years for their various contributions and interpretations of classical symphonies, but is there a conductor (it can be more than one) that just really falls flat for you, either consistently or on a specific body of work?
> 
> An example for me is Genaddi Rozhdestvensky in his reading of Bruckner's 8th with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra. I'm not sure how it is that this version would be the how I would originally hear Bruckner's 8th for the first time, but it was, and it nearly ruined the symphony for me. In fact, for a long time I just assumed it was the symphony I didn't like; it wasn't until quite sometime later that I would hear it again, this time in the ever-so-skilled hands of the great, late magic Wand... and it was like hearing an entirely different symphony for the first time. And this time it was a transcendent experience.
> 
> Anyone have any similar experiences?


Edo de Waart in Glazunov's "The Season" which is not as brilliant as Svetlanov or as ebullient as Jarvi. The Scenes de Ballet is likewise underwhelming for me. I think the recording, rather lifeless and dull, is much the blame for this.

That said, Rozhdestvensky's reading of Bruckner's Eighth with his orchestra is finely done, with well-judged tempi, fine sense of architecture, and some powerful playing. The strings are undernourished and the brass tends to be too unsteady in places, however. And the recorded sound is adequate but nothing more. It's not in the premiere league as far as I'm concerned, but in many ways, I prefer it to Jochum's DG & EMI recordings, which are too spontaneous for this work (Jochum did better later on by the mid-1980s).


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## HaydnBearstheClock

EDaddy said:


> Agreed. He seems to have a firm grasp of the Ruskies in general. He probably ought to stick with that.


Please don't say 'Ruskies', that sounds denigrating. No offence intended.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Maximianno Cobra has been the no. 1 conductor to avoid for me for the past few years ever since I came across him and his rather silly and obviously flawed ideas on rhythm and tempo in music.

My no. 2 would be Karajan. Even though there's nothing _wrong_ about his interpretations, I just find that they (and his sound) don't appeal to me.

No. 3 may very well be Adrian Boult, but I will investigate him further before I make this claim. This spot might end up going to Karl Böhm for his Beethoven and Mozart, but his opera recordings (especially Wagner and Strauss) outshine almost every other conductor in that repertoire so it'll be hard to include him here.

Actually I just remembered exactly who my no. 3 conductor to avoid is.

Christian Thielemann. Unfortunately his Beethoven cycle, and much of his other recordings, really bores me. This really is the only case where I would prefer to listen to Karajan for Beethoven's symphonies.


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## phlrdfd

some guy said:


> As for Ormandy, his undeniable strength was with more modern repertoire ....


I would say there were some major composers Ormandy arguably didn't cut the mustard for, including Beethoven. But he also had a lot of strengths; not all of it modern, although I agree that he was good with that. But he was a very good Brahms conductor (I noticed recently that Sony has re-issued his Brahms symphony recordings from the 60s. It's a Japanese release, but is available on American Amazon at a relatively reasonable price from Japanese exporters). I'd put him up there with anyone for Sibelius and Prokofiev. Not sure if they fit into the modern category. His Sony Pictures at an Exhibition is one of the best. 
Unfortunately, some of his best recordings are from the late mono era (early to mid 50s) and have never been released on CD.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has had some ups and downs during the 35 years since Ormandy retired as Music Director. During his 40 year tenure (44 if you count the first four, when he shared the orchestra with Stokowski), while he left a mixed record of recordings ranging from great to not cutting-the-mustard, the Orchestra never stopped being regarded as among the top orchestras in the world.


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## Sappho

Ingo Metzmacher. Argh! I've never beheld another conductor who had so little musicality. When he conducts Messiaen, he merely prances around while the orchestra does what it pleases two full bars ahead. When he conducts Schubert (Heaven forbid!), what comes out is so frumpy, rigid and uptight as if Schubert had been a celibate Prussian. Just NO!



PeterF said:


> I tend to generally avoid recordings by Herbert von Karajan. Hard to define exactly why, but have never been enthusiastic about most things I have heard by him. In fairness there are some limited exceptions.


Beethoven's symphonies, I take it? I even liked the way he conducted _Don Giovanni_. In many other works he seems to be too prone to rush, in my opinion.


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## hpowders

I've always been bored to tears over anything conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, finding his interpretations to be dull and eccentric.


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## Orfeo

hpowders said:


> I've always been bored to tears over anything conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, finding his interpretations to be dull and eccentric.


His Bruckner is fine, but nothing really special (to my ears anyhow). I do like his take on Bax's Third Symphony. And his Sibelius is quite legendary.


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## superhorn

How about conductors who can cut the ketchup ? LOL !!!


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## GreenMamba

superhorn said:


> How about conductors who can cut the ketchup ? LOL !!!


I didn't want to say anything, but since you brought it up..."muster."


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## EDaddy

*In response to post #39:*

_Does it?_ Never even occurred to me. Certainly not my intention and apologies if it was taken that way. I use the term with absolute reverence and respect, as I have nothing but, especially when it comes to the incredible music the great Russian composers have contributed over the last century and a half or so.

Sorry if offence was taken. I will reconsider future use of the word.

Addendum: I took Russian History from an amazing professor I really liked and respected who used the term "rusky" in a most affectionate manner, so I guess I've never equated it as being derogatory in any way. FWIW.


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