# What conductor has the most diverse catalogue?



## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

I don't think this question has ever been asked before but I was wondering what conductor has the most diverse catalogue or repertoire? For me, the answer would be Neeme Järvi. Just a quick glance at his catalog you will find:


Stenhammar, Rubenstein, Weiner, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Busoni, Beethoven, Strauss, Atterbeg, Prokofiev, Ibert, Martinu, Sibelius, Saint-Saens, Fucik, Offenbach, Suchon, Alfven, Bartok, Halvorsen, Raff, Scharwenka, Svendsen, Chadwick, Dvorak, Mahler, Ives, Chabrier, Schmidt, Scriabin, von Suppe, Wagner, Parry, Korngold, Tamberg, Gade, Schnittke, Daugherty, Kapp, Weber, Kabalevsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Nielsen, Brahms, Stravinsky, Grieg, Steinberg, Barber, Part, Smetana, Fibich, Honegger, Langgaard, Schuman, Roussel, Kodaly, Reger, Hindemith, Britten, Bruckner etc. etc. etc.

So what do you all think?


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Your candidate is a very likely winner ... Others that come to mind would be Rozhdestvensky - Bernstein, Svetlanov and Ormandy probably less so ...


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

And of course Jorge Meister back in the Louisville LP days, but I'm not sure he did record standard repertoire too.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

joen_cph said:


> Your candidate is a very likely winner ... Others that come to mind would be Rozhdestvensky - Bernstein, Svetlanov and Ormandy probably less so ...


I like your suggestion of Rozhdestvensky mostly because he did take some risks but was probably mostly a conductor or Russian music. Bernstein and Ormandy played it pretty safe most of the time and stuck with the great war horses.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Kevin Pearson said:


> I like your suggestion of Rozhdestvensky mostly because he did take some risks but was probably mostly a conductor or Russian music. Bernstein and Ormandy played it pretty safe most of the time and stuck with the great war horses.


Actually I agree with joen_cph ... Rozhdestvensky had a surprisingly wide repertoire for a Soviet era conductor. Remember that at various times he was the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Vienna Symphony. I have recordings of, or have heard him conduct works as disparate as Nielsen, Janacek, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Bruckner, Honegger etc. In interviews he said that he was always looking for new and interesting repertoire. Having said that, I doubt anyone could outdo Neeme Jarvi!


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Well, besides the many Russians, back in the old Melodiya days, Rozhdestvensky did a good deal of French music - Milhaud, Honegger, Satie, Berlioz, S-Saens, Chausson, Ravel, Sauguet, probably more. He also did Scandinavian music - Nielsen, Sibelius, Langgaard, Grieg and probably more. And the Germans/Austrians, including Bruckner, Beethoven, R. Strauss, J.Strauss, Mozart, Weber, Webern, Suppe, Schubert, Mendelsson, Haydn, Hindemith, Schumann, Mahler. Liszt and Bartok. Some Americans and South-Americans, including Gershwin, Ives, Hallfter. De Falla, Janacek, etc. Those are just mentioned in the first 10 pages of 27 on his (incomplete) Discogs site + what I remembered quickly.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/283125-Gennadi-Rozhdestvensky?page=10

Ormandy did a fair share of lesser known contemporary repertoire, at least until say 1965 or so. He also did some Baroque stuff etc.

Bernstein did a lot of contemporary/20th century repertoire in the CBS years.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Jarvi does have a great many names to his credit, but that doesn't necessarily add up to a wide diversity. Kevin's list does not include anything prior to the 1800's.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Karajan had a pretty wide range too

https://www.discogs.com/artist/283122-Herbert-von-Karajan?page=1


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

But he avoided contemporary works (very little repertoire composed after 1950, if any), and lesser known composers generally.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

joen_cph said:


> But he avoided contemporary works (very little repertoire composed after 1950, if any), and lesser known composers generally.


Possibly true, but his DSCH #10, written in 1953, is likely the best-selling recording of that work and is generally admired.


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## Kollwitz (Jun 10, 2018)

Mackerras had a pretty broad repertoire.

ArkivMusic's list shows:

Tomaso Albinoni (2),
Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga (1)
Johann Christian Bach (1)
Béla Bartók (1)
Ludwig van Beethoven (5)
Vincenzo Bellini (4)
Hector Berlioz (1)
Georges Bizet (1)
Ernest Bloch (1)
Alexander Borodin (1)
Johannes Brahms (6)
Benjamin Britten (3)
Max Bruch (5)
Alfredo Catalani (4)
Emilio de Cavalieri (1)
Frédéric Chopin (3)
Francesco Cilèa (2)
Eric Coates (7)
Léo Delibes (4)
Frederick Delius (13)
Ernö von Dohnányi (2)
Gaetano Donizetti (7)
Antonín Dvorák (17)
Sir Edward Elgar (8)
Gabriel Fauré (1)
John Field (1)
César Franck (3)
Umberto Giordano (1)
Mikhail Glinka (2)
Christoph W. Gluck (1)
Frederick Gluck (2)
Charles Gounod (8)
Edvard Grieg (1)
Franz Xaver Gruber (2)
George Frideric Handel (50)
Franz Joseph Haydn (5)
Johann Wilhelm Hertel (2)
Gustav Holst (2)
Engelbert Humperdinck (3)
Leos Janácek (28)
Zoltán Kodály (2)
Edouard Lalo (1)
Ruggero Leoncavallo (1)
Albert Lortzing (1)
Mackerras, Charles, Sir (1)
Sir Charles Mackerras (2)
Gustav Mahler (4)
Bohuslav Martinu (4)
Jules Massenet (3)
Felix Mendelssohn (6)
André Messager (1)
Giacomo Meyerbeer (5)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (62)
Modest Mussorgsky (4)
Otto Nicolai (2)
Jacques Offenbach (2)
Giacomo Puccini (29)
Henry Purcell (6)
Max Reger (1)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (2)
Camille Saint-Saëns (2)
Franz Schubert (7)
Jean Sibelius (4)
Bedrich Smetana (5)
Johann Strauss Sr. (2)
Richard Strauss (2)
Igor Stravinsky (5)
Josef Suk (3)
Arthur Sullivan (20)
Franz von Suppé (2)
Donald Swann (1)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (12)
Georg Philipp Telemann (2)
Ambroise Thomas (3)
Giuseppe Torelli (1)
Traditional (4)
Giuseppe Verdi (9)
Henri Vieuxtemps (1)
Antonio Vivaldi (2)
Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani (1)
Jan Vaclav Vorisek (2)
John Francis Wade (2)
Richard Wagner (1)
Sir William Walton (1)
Carl Maria von Weber (2)
Graham Whettam (1)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

KenOC said:


> Possibly true, but his DSCH #10, written in 1953, is likely the best-selling recording of that work and is generally admired.


Yes, he even did it twice for DG. I don´t know if it´s/they are the best selling versions though.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Does Jarvi excel at specific repertoire, or is he a safe generic conductor across a wide swath? He does have the advantage of recording for good labels like Chandos that produce great sounding CDs.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

starthrower said:


> Does Jarvi excel at specific repertoire, or is he a safe generic conductor across a wide swath?


I'd say he's a safe conductor best known for quantity.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Rozhdestvensky is preferable to the slick and safe Jarvi. Although I have several Jarvi discs I listen to. His Prokofiev piano concertos set is one I enjoy. Of course it features great soloists.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

joen_cph said:


> But he avoided contemporary works (very little repertoire composed after 1950, if any), and lesser known composers generally.


I'm guessing that one of the then-newest works recorded by HvK was Carl Orff's _De temporum fine comoedia_, which was composed and revised by 1973, but the work itself strikes me as somewhat anomalous compared to most of his repertoire.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Bernstein's impressively diverse discography includes works by these composers: Alford, Arne, Larry Austin, Johann Sebastian Bach, Bagley, Barber, Bartók, Beethoven, Bellini, Ben-Haim, Berg, Berlioz, Bernstein, Bizet, Blitzstein, Bloch, Boito, Borodin, Boulez, Brahms, Henry Brant, Britten, Brubeck, Burlingame Hill, Bruckner, Cage, Carter, Chabrier, Chadwick, Chausson, Chavez, Cherubini, Copland, Corigliano, Dallapiccola, De Lisle, Debussy, Del Tredici, Denisov, Diamond, Dinicu, Dukas, Duparc, Dvořák, Elgar, Enescu, Falla, Fauré, Feldman, Fernandez, Foss, Franck, Gershwin, Glière, Glinka, Goldmark, Gounod, Grieg, Grofé, Guarnieri, Handel, Handy, Harris, Haydn, Henze, Hérold, Edward Burlingame Hill, Hindemith, Holst, Honegger, Humperdinck, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Ives, Janáček, Ligeti, Liszt, Lopatnikoff, MacDowell, Mahler, Markevitch, Mascagni, Mendelssohn, Mennin, Messiaen, Meyerbeer, Milhaud, Mozart, Mussorgsky, New York Philharmonic (sic), Nicolai, Nielsen, Offenbach, Piston, Ponchielli, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Respighi, Revueltas, Rezniček, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rorem, Rossini, Roussel, Rózsa, Ruggles, William Russo, Saint-Saëns, Satie, Schubert, Schuller, Schuman, Shapero, Shchedrin, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Smetana, John Stafford Smith, Sousa, William Steffe, Johann Strauss, Jr., Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, von Suppé, Tchaikovsky, Ambroise Thomas, Thompson, Thomson, Varèse, Vaughan Williams, Verdi, Villa-Lobos, Vivaldi, Josef Franz Wagner, Richard Wagner, Carl Maria von Weber, Webern, Wolf-Ferrari, Xenakis, and alphabetically last and arguably least, Charles A. Zimmerman.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Bernstein's impressively diverse discography includes works by these composers: Alford, Arne, Larry Austin, Johann Sebastian Bach, Bagley, Barber, Bartók, Beethoven, Bellini, Ben-Haim, Berg, Berlioz, Bernstein, Bizet, Blitzstein, Bloch, Boito, Borodin, Boulez, Brahms, Henry Brant, Britten, Brubeck, Burlingame Hill, Bruckner, Cage, Carter, Chabrier, Chadwick, Chausson, Chavez, Cherubini, Copland, Corigliano, Dallapiccola, De Lisle, Debussy, Del Tredici, Denisov, Diamond, Dinicu, Dukas, Duparc, Dvořák, Elgar, Enescu, Falla, Fauré, Feldman, Fernandez, Foss, Franck, Gershwin, Glière, Glinka, Goldmark, Gounod, Grieg, Grofé, Guarnieri, Handel, Handy, Harris, Haydn, Henze, Hérold, Edward Burlingame Hill, Hindemith, Holst, Honegger, Humperdinck, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Ives, Janáček, Ligeti, Liszt, Lopatnikoff, MacDowell, Mahler, Markevitch, Mascagni, Mendelssohn, Mennin, Messiaen, Meyerbeer, Milhaud, Mozart, Mussorgsky, New York Philharmonic (sic), Nicolai, Nielsen, Offenbach, Piston, Ponchielli, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Respighi, Revueltas, Rezniček, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rorem, Rossini, Roussel, Rózsa, Ruggles, William Russo, Saint-Saëns, Satie, Schubert, Schuller, Schuman, Shapero, Shchedrin, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Smetana, John Stafford Smith, Sousa, William Steffe, Johann Strauss, Jr., Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, von Suppé, Tchaikovsky, Ambroise Thomas, Thompson, Thomson, Varèse, Vaughan Williams, Verdi, Villa-Lobos, Vivaldi, Josef Franz Wagner, Richard Wagner, Carl Maria von Weber, Webern, Wolf-Ferrari, Xenakis, and alphabetically last and arguably least, Charles A. Zimmerman.


And this is why I started this thread. Although I am a fan of Bernstein you rarely ever see anyone post a Bernstein recording outside of the main composers. I see the same recordings mentioned on Talk Classical again and again and again and again and again. Rarely does anyone ever post anything more obscure and little known.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Bernstein conducting Xenakis! I'd love to see that! Lenny was an open minded guy so it doesn't surprise me. He did a great job on Verdi's Falstaff, and the Schuman symphonies.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

If we are allowed to cover the period starting in the 1920's, I suspect that Otto Klemperer would win easily. During his time in Berlin he ran the Kroll Opera which was renowned for being on the cutting edge. It was only in his last 15+ years that his repertoire, at least the recorded part of it, was much narrower and mostly Austro-German, although there are still some oddities if you look in the right places!


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Herman Scherchen


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

Becca said:


> If we are allowed to cover the period starting in the 1920's, I suspect that Otto Klemperer would win easily. During his time in Berlin he ran the Kroll Opera which was renowned for being on the cutting edge. It was only in his last 15+ years that his repertoire, at least the recorded part of it, was much narrower and mostly Austro-German, although there are still some oddities if you look in the right places!


What was in my mind was "recorded" catalogue. I'm sure many conductors in their professional lives with their own orchestras performed many works that they were not exactly known for but when it came to recordings it seems most opted for what was "safe".


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I think Bernstein beats Jarvi by a country mile on the number of composers recorded, especially when it comes to the Americans, such as Charles Ives. Most of the lesser-known composers are rarely mentioned by other conductors as well and I very much see that in Bernstein's favor. He was a musical adventurer and iconoclast. But he and Aaron Copland didn't like the music of Alan Hovhaness.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

For Klemperer, in addition to all the expected, I have found recordings of...

Auber
Offenbach
Weill
Stravinsky
Debussy
Handel
Janacek
Bartok
Verdi
Gershwin
De Falla
Gluck
Albeniz
Puccini
Ambroise Thomas
Edward German
Chopin
Purcell

Not a long list but I know that it only scratches the surface of what he did pre-WW2


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Trevor Pinnock.

... 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
...


Just kidding


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Here are 18 of the most talented, revolutionary and formidable classical legends of all time - the great conductors. What of these qualify (yes, some are already in discussion above)?

Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) ...
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. ...
Sir Simon Rattle (1955-) ...
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) ...
Seiji Ozawa (1935-) ...
Claudio Abbado (1933-2014) ...
Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) ...
Adrian Boult (1889-1983)


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

> Trevor Pinnock.


Maybe most diverse in the realm of period performance conductors?


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Maybe most diverse in the realm of period performance conductors?


In that case I would say Christopher Hogwood.


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## Rmathuln (Mar 21, 2018)

If the number of composers is the qualification I think Marriner wins the contest hands down:

COMPOSERS
Adolphe Adam (3)
Richard Addinsell (1)
Henricus Albicastro (1)
Tomaso Albinoni (18)
Anonymous (1)
Thomas Augustine Arne (3)
Malcolm Arnold (3)
Daniel-François Auber (1)
Charles Avison (3)
Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1)
Johann Christian Bach (3)
Johann Sebastian Bach (76)
Heinrich Josef Baermann (2)
Samuel Barber (6)
Béla Bartók (3)
Arnold Bax (2)
Ludwig van Beethoven (24)
Vincenzo Bellini (2)
Richard Rodney Bennett (1)
Hector Berlioz (7)
Franz Berwald (1)
Thomas Beveridge (1)
Georges Bizet (9)
Howard Blake (2)
Luigi Boccherini (5)
Giovanni Bononcini (1)
William Boyce (4)
Johannes Brahms (8)
Frank Bridge (2)
Benjamin Britten (15)
Max Bruch (6)
George Butterworth (3)
Antonio Caldara (2)
Joseph Canteloube (1)
Giacomo Carissimi (1)
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (4)
Pietro Antonio Cesti (1)
Emmanuel Chabrier (3)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1)
Ernest Chausson (1)
Luigi Cherubini (3)
Paul Chihara (2)
Frédéric Chopin (2)
Jeremiah Clarke (2)
Aaron Copland (3)
Arcangelo Corelli (5)
Peter Cornelius (2)
Henry Cowell (2)
Paul Creston (2)
Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1)
Vincent D'Indy (1)
Harold Edwin Darke (2)
Ferdinand David (1)
Henry Walford Davies (1)
Claude Debussy (7)
Léo Delibes (1)
Frederick Delius (8)
Gaetano Donizetti (1)
Nico Dostal (2)
Paul Dukas (3)
Francesco Durante (1)
Henri Dutilleux (1)
Antonín Dvorák (7)
George Dyson (1)
Sir Edward Elgar (13)
Manuel de Falla (1)
Gabriel Fauré (15)
Gerald Finzi (5)
John Foulds (1)
Giovanni Gabrieli (1)
Henry John Gauntlett (1)
Francesco Geminiani (1)
George Gershwin (1)
Gordon Getty (1)
Tommaso Giordani (3)
Mauro Giuliani (4)
Alexander Glazunov (1)
Reinhold Gliere (1)
Mikhail Glinka (1)
Christoph W. Gluck (5)
Benjamin Godard (2)
Charles Gounod (2)
Percy Aldridge Grainger (3)
Edvard Grieg (31)
Andrea Grossi (1)
Franz Xaver Gruber (1)
Johan Halvorsen (1)
George Frideric Handel (55)
Franz Joseph Haydn (21)
Michael Haydn (1)
Dave Heath (1)
Victor Herbert (2)
Johann Wilhelm Hertel (2)
Paul Hindemith (1)
Gustav Holst (2)
James Hook (1)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (3)
Jacques Ibert (2)
John Ireland (1)
Charles Ives (3)
Gordon Jacob (1)
Leos Janácek (2)
Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda (1)
William James Kirkpatrick (1)
Zoltán Kodály (1)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (2)
Ernst Krenek (1)
Conradin Kreutzer (1)
Franz Lehár (2)
Paul Lincke (1)
Paul Lineke (1)
Henry Charles Litolff (1)
Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1)
Francesco Manfredini (1)
Jules Massenet (12)
Nicholas Maw (1)
Nicholas Maw (1)
Nikolai Medtner (2)
Felix Mendelssohn (20)
Saverio Mercadante (1)
Karl Millöcker (2)
Johann Melchior Molter (1)
James Moody (1)
Leopold Mozart (3)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (140)
David Mullikin (1)
Modest Mussorgsky (1)
Johann Neruda (1)
Otto Nicolai (1)
Louis Niedermeyer (1)
Carl Nielsen (2)
Jacques Offenbach (6)
Johann Pachelbel (16)
Giovanni Pacini (1)
Niccolò Paganini (2)
Amilcare Ponchielli (1)
David Popper (1)
Elisabeth Poston (1)
Michael Praetorius (1)
Sergei Prokofiev (5)
Giacomo Puccini (2)
Henry Purcell (5)
Sergei Rachmaninov (9)
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1)
Maurice Ravel (10)
Ottorino Respighi (6)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (7)
Joaquin Rodrigo (14)
Giuseppe Romanino (1)
Gioachino Rossini (16)
Edmund Rubbra (1)
Camille Saint-Saëns (7)
Antonio Salieri (1)
Pablo de Sarasate (2)
Erik Satie (3)
Alessandro Scarlatti (1)
Arnold Schoenberg (3)
Franz Schubert (3)
Erwin Schulhoff (1)
Robert Schumann (4)
Dmitri Shostakovich (3)
Jean Sibelius (9)
Bedrich Smetana (2)
Carl Stamitz (1)
Johann Wenzel Stamitz (1)
John Stanley (1)
Robert Stolz (2)
Gottfried H. Stölzel (2)
Johann Strauss Jr. (3)
Richard Strauss (7)
Igor Stravinsky (7)
Josef Suk (2)
Arthur Sullivan (4)
Franz von Suppé (6)
Giuseppe Tartini (1)
Vilem Tausky (1)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (25)
Georg Philipp Telemann (7)
Michael Tippett (4)
Giuseppe Torelli (2)
Traditional (6)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (22)
Pavel Josef Vejvanovsky (1)
Giuseppe Verdi (3)
Henri Vieuxtemps (1)
Heitor Villa-Lobos (6)
Antonio Vivaldi (29)
John Francis Wade (1)
Richard Wagner (2)
Sir William Walton (11)
Peter Warlock (3)
Unico Graf Van Wassenaer (2)
Carl Maria von Weber (5)
Anton Webern (2)
Henri Wieniawski (1)
Dag Wirén (3)
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1)
Carl Zeller (2)


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Here are 18 of the most talented, revolutionary and formidable classical legends of all time - the great conductors. What of these qualify (yes, some are already in discussion above)?
> 
> Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) ...
> Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. ...
> ...


Is that a joke? Boult? Maazel?? Gergiev??? Ozawa???? Someone must have been smoking something!

(I won't even comment about Mirga who I like and respect, she may well get there in 20+ years but ... good grief!)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Here are 18 of the most talented, revolutionary and formidable classical legends of all time - the great conductors. What of these qualify (yes, some are already in discussion above)?
> 
> *Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) .*..
> ....


Stokowski left an extremely varied and considerable recorded legacy too, yes.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I should think that Rattle will have one helluva large and varied back-catalogue by the time he pops his clogs. Agreed about Marriner. He's made so many varied recordings. He's a 'Jack of all trades' , master of very few, though.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

I wonder what influence the orchestra/record label concerned had in influencing how varied the catalogue was


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> But [Bernstein] and Aaron Copland didn't like the music of Alan Hovhaness.


Lark, it appears Bernstein took a balanced approach. When Walter Simmons asked him whether he ever intended to perform anything by Hovhaness Bernstein replied, "Some of Hovhaness's music is very, very good, and some is very, very bad." Still, he left even the very, very good stuff unperformed.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Haydn man said:


> I wonder what influence the orchestra/record label concerned had in influencing how varied the catalogue was


In Bernstein's case at Columbia, his contract gave him carte blanche to record whatever he wanted. The company did not want to record Liszt's Faust Symphony thinking it would be a financial disaster - and it was. If he didn't want to record something then it didn't get done, either. When he went to DG it was a similar set up, but then he started demanded that concerts be recorded live, and also put on video. No other conductor has ever had the freedom he did.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

I would guess Marriner had freedom given he founded the ASMF and built its reputation. Must have helped when negotiating recording contracts


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> I'd say he's a safe conductor best known for quantity.


Not quite. For instances,


He's very good with the music of Richard Strauss, Shostakovich, Glazunov, Scandinavian composers (esp. Nielsen, Stenhammar, Alfven, Sibelius)
Quite excellent in Prokofiev, Kalinnikov, and Tubin (and even Creston)
His Bruckner and Ives are fine, but nothing more.
His French, although very limited, is okay.
In other words, I cannot think of a bad recording featuring this very fine Estonian. And it would be nice for Estonian Radio (Eesti Raadio) to unearth and make available vintage recordings Neemi and other conductors (like his brother Vallo) made during the LP days (like works of Auster, Eller, Kapp (Artur, Villem, Eugene), Sumera, Lemba).


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> Your candidate is a very likely winner ... Others that come to mind would be Rozhdestvensky - Bernstein, Svetlanov and Ormandy probably less so ...


Svetlanov for sure. He was very good with the music of Alfven, Villa-Lobos, and his Russian repertoire is amongst the widest ever. Others:


Vernon Handley, maybe.
Both Riccardo Muti and Vladimir Fedoseyev are impressively diverse.
Jascha Horenstein also.
Kyrill Kondrashin was on his way, I would argue. But political circumstances and his untimely demise robbed him and us of that. A similar claim can be made regarding Ferenc Fricsay.
Both Charles Dutoit and Igor Markevitch are worth a thought. Ashkenazy even.
James Levine or Boulez? I wonder.
Martyn Brabbins: getting there.
Ari Rasilainen: getting there.
Jose Serebrier: still doing his thing.
Yan Pascal Tortelier: worth a thought.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Possibly true, but his DSCH #10, written in 1953, is likely the best-selling recording of that work and is generally admired.


I think we forget Karajan himself financed the (again best selling) recordings he made of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern. He certainly wasn't a modern specialist in the same way as Boulez but there is this misconception he never conducted modern music.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Speaking of Svetlanov, who I call the Karajan of Russia because of how prolific and prestigious he was (not really conducting style), I went and looked up his stats:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/832992-Evgeni-Svetlanov?filter_anv=0&subtype=Albums&type=Releases

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/evgeny-svetlanov-mn0001630890/discography

400 albums purely conducted by him, and also a few dozen with shared work. Some are re-releases. But that's still really impressive. And he was a Russian specialist. Hard core, man.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Kevin Pearson said:


> And this is why I started this thread. Although I am a fan of Bernstein you rarely ever see anyone post a Bernstein recording outside of the main composers. I see the same recordings mentioned on Talk Classical again and again and again and again and again. Rarely does anyone ever post anything more obscure and little known.


In fact, Bernstein was a champion of contemporary music and was a friend to many of his contemporary composers on that list, in many cases a close friend. I'm sure the only thing that keeps that list from being much longer is that he devoted so much of his career to things other than conducting, especially composing, performing, lecturing and teaching.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

He ain't going to win - I reckon Neville Marriner has the longevity and range to beat him - but the Polish conductor Antoni Wit deserves a mention, partly because of all the interesting stuff he has recorded on Naxos. His Arkivmusic list is:

COMPOSERS
Béla Bartók (3)
Ludwig van Beethoven (5)
Alexander Borodin (1)
Johannes Brahms (10)
Frédéric Chopin (18)
Antonín Dvorák (10)
Manuel de Falla (1)
Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (8)
Edvard Grieg (2)
Leos Janácek (4)
Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (4)
Wojciech Kilar (5)
Witold Lutoslawski (14)
Gustav Mahler (14)
Felix Mendelssohn (1)
Olivier Messiaen (2)
Krzysztof Meyer (1)
Stanislaw Moniuszko (2)
Moritz Moszkowski (1)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1)
Modest Mussorgsky (1)
Akira Nishimura (1)
Ignace Jan Paderewski (1)
Krzysztof Penderecki (27)
Sergei Prokofiev (11)
Sergei Rachmaninov (7)
Maurice Ravel (7)
Camille Saint-Saëns (4)
Robert Schumann (13)
Dmitri Shostakovich (6)
Jean Sibelius (1)
Bedrich Smetana (6)
Richard Strauss (3)
Karol Szymanowski (13)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (20)
Giuseppe Verdi (1)
Richard Wagner (1)
Carl Maria von Weber (1)
Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1)
Henri Wieniawski (4)
Bernard Zweers (1)

He has certainly been a busy chap over the past couple of decades!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Günter Neuhold:

J.S. Bach: St. Matthew Passion
B. Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle, Concerto for Orchestra
A. Berg: 3 Orchestral Pieces, Opus 6
H. Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust
J. Brahms: Brahms: Symphony 1
A. Bruckner: Symphony 4
C. Franck: Symphony in D minor
Z. Kodály: Hary Janos Suite, Dances of Galanta
F. Liszt-F. Schreker: Concerto for Jazz Band etc.
G. Mahler: Mahler: Symphony No. 1, 2, 3, 5
H. Marschner: Der Vampyr
G. Puccini: Madama Butterfly (1904)
W. Rihm: Portrait Concert
A. Schnittke: Piano Concerto
A. Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder (reduced orchestra by Erwin Stein)
F. Schreker: Chamber Symphony
E. Schulhoff: Piano Concerto
Josef Strauss, Johann Strauss: "Strauss Dynasty"
I. Strawinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps
P.I. Tschaikowsky: Symphony No 5
G. Verdi: Messa da Requiem
R. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
Wolf-Ferrari: La Vita Nuova


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Stokowski has to be near the top of the list, if not at the apex. An extraordinarily long recording career, highly prolific, and not afraid to take chances. I read somewhere recently that there was an astonishing number of pieces, including contemporary ones, that he learned and performed/recorded once, in addition to thoroughly covering the standard repertoire.


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## SomeAustrianBloke (Nov 1, 2018)

jdec said:


> Trevor Pinnock.
> 
> ...
> .
> ...


Naaaaa... Karl Richter!


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I don't know if anyone mentioned Neville Marriner but here's his list of composers from Arkiv Music; it stretches from Renaissance to late 20th century. I know from attending his concerts he also conducted all the major composers not listed here.

Adolphe Adam (3)
Richard Addinsell (1)
Henricus Albicastro (1)
Tomaso Albinoni (18)
Anonymous (1)
Thomas Augustine Arne (3)
Malcolm Arnold (3)
Daniel-François Auber (1)
Charles Avison (3)
Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1)
Johann Christian Bach (3)
Johann Sebastian Bach (76)
Heinrich Josef Baermann (2)
Samuel Barber (6)
Béla Bartók (3)
Arnold Bax (2)
Ludwig van Beethoven (24)
Vincenzo Bellini (2)
Richard Rodney Bennett (1)
Hector Berlioz (7)
Franz Berwald (1)
Thomas Beveridge (1)
Georges Bizet (9)
Howard Blake (2)
Luigi Boccherini (5)
Giovanni Bononcini (1)
William Boyce (4)
Johannes Brahms (8)
Frank Bridge (2)
Benjamin Britten (15)
Max Bruch (6)
George Butterworth (3)
Antonio Caldara (2)
Joseph Canteloube (1)
Giacomo Carissimi (1)
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (4)
Pietro Antonio Cesti (1)
Emmanuel Chabrier (3)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1)
Ernest Chausson (1)
Luigi Cherubini (3)
Paul Chihara (2)
Frédéric Chopin (2)
Jeremiah Clarke (2)
Aaron Copland (3)
Arcangelo Corelli (5)
Peter Cornelius (2)
Henry Cowell (2)
Paul Creston (2)
Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1)
Vincent D'Indy (1)
Harold Edwin Darke (2)
Ferdinand David (1)
Henry Walford Davies (1)
Claude Debussy (7)
Léo Delibes (1)
Frederick Delius (8)
Gaetano Donizetti (1)
Nico Dostal (2)
Paul Dukas (3)
Francesco Durante (1)
Henri Dutilleux (1)
Antonín Dvorák (7)
George Dyson (1)
Sir Edward Elgar (13)
Manuel de Falla (1)
Gabriel Fauré (15)
Gerald Finzi (5)
John Foulds (1)
Giovanni Gabrieli (1)
Henry John Gauntlett (1)
Francesco Geminiani (1)
George Gershwin (1)
Gordon Getty (1)
Tommaso Giordani (3)
Mauro Giuliani (4)
Alexander Glazunov (1)
Reinhold Gliere (1)
Mikhail Glinka (1)
Christoph W. Gluck (5)
Benjamin Godard (2)
Charles Gounod (2)
Percy Aldridge Grainger (3)
Edvard Grieg (31)
Andrea Grossi (1)
Franz Xaver Gruber (1)
Johan Halvorsen (1)
George Frideric Handel (55)
Franz Joseph Haydn (21)
Michael Haydn (1)
Dave Heath (1)
Victor Herbert (2)
Johann Wilhelm Hertel (2)
Paul Hindemith (1)
Gustav Holst (2)
James Hook (1)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (3)
Jacques Ibert (2)
John Ireland (1)
Charles Ives (3)
Gordon Jacob (1)
Leos Janácek (2)
Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda (1)
William James Kirkpatrick (1)
Zoltán Kodály (1)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (2)
Ernst Krenek (1)
Conradin Kreutzer (1)
Franz Lehár (2)
Paul Lincke (1)
Paul Lineke (1)
Henry Charles Litolff (1)
Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1)
Francesco Manfredini (1)
Jules Massenet (12)
Nicholas Maw (1)
Nicholas Maw (1)
Nikolai Medtner (2)
Felix Mendelssohn (20)
Saverio Mercadante (1)
Karl Millöcker (2)
Johann Melchior Molter (1)
James Moody (1)
Leopold Mozart (3)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (140)
David Mullikin (1)
Modest Mussorgsky (1)
Johann Neruda (1)
Otto Nicolai (1)
Louis Niedermeyer (1)
Carl Nielsen (2)
Jacques Offenbach (6)
Johann Pachelbel (16)
Giovanni Pacini (1)
Niccolò Paganini (2)
Amilcare Ponchielli (1)
David Popper (1)
Elisabeth Poston (1)
Michael Praetorius (1)
Sergei Prokofiev (5)
Giacomo Puccini (2)
Henry Purcell (5)
Sergei Rachmaninov (9)
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1)
Maurice Ravel (10)
Ottorino Respighi (6)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (7)
Joaquin Rodrigo (14)
Giuseppe Romanino (1)
Gioachino Rossini (16)
Edmund Rubbra (1)
Camille Saint-Saëns (7)
Antonio Salieri (1)
Pablo de Sarasate (2)
Erik Satie (3)
Alessandro Scarlatti (1)
Arnold Schoenberg (3)
Franz Schubert (3)
Erwin Schulhoff (1)
Robert Schumann (4)
Dmitri Shostakovich (3)
Jean Sibelius (9)
Bedrich Smetana (2)
Carl Stamitz (1)
Johann Wenzel Stamitz (1)
John Stanley (1)
Robert Stolz (2)
Gottfried H. Stölzel (2)
Johann Strauss Jr. (3)
Richard Strauss (7)
Igor Stravinsky (7)
Josef Suk (2)
Arthur Sullivan (4)
Franz von Suppé (6)
Giuseppe Tartini (1)
Vilem Tausky (1)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (25)
Georg Philipp Telemann (7)
Michael Tippett (4)
Giuseppe Torelli (2)
Traditional (6)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (22)
Pavel Josef Vejvanovsky (1)
Giuseppe Verdi (3)
Henri Vieuxtemps (1)
Heitor Villa-Lobos (6)
Antonio Vivaldi (29)
John Francis Wade (1)
Richard Wagner (2)
Sir William Walton (11)
Peter Warlock (3)
Unico Graf Van Wassenaer (2)
Carl Maria von Weber (5)
Anton Webern (2)
Henri Wieniawski (1)
Dag Wirén (3)
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1)
Carl Zeller (2)

FYI Marriner was either the third- or fourth-greatest selling recording artist in classical music history depending on your source. The only conductors knows to have sold more are Toscanini and Karajan and perhaps Ormandy.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Now you are being lazy. The list can be found on page 2 in this thread ...


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I didn't read the earlier post and was making the point Marriner's repertoire stretched 500 years. I doubt you'll find another like that.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Well, besides the vast repertoire of many choir conductors, Gardiner is a bit of a parallel to Marriner. With the Baroque as a main focus at first, but then developed the repertoire into Romanticism and mid-20th Century, yet even recorded works back from the Codex Calixtinus, 12th Century.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/833722-John-Eliot-Gardiner?page=1
https://www.discogs.com/Gardiner-Pilgrimage-To-Santiago/release/6924513

Among the elder conductors, Stokowski and Scherchen probably had the biggest repertoire era-wise, but I don't think it went back much further than around 1600, or the later 16th century.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I am going with Bernstein.

But one conductor who has not been mentioned is Levine (even with his bad background, he should be considered).

He has an impressive record with the traditional works and as an opera conductor, but he in not frighten by the more adventurous music. He is an excellent Carter conductor and did a great job with Cage's _Atlas eclipticalis_.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> I am going with Bernstein.
> 
> But one conductor who has not been mentioned is *Levine* (even with his bad background, he should be considered).
> 
> He has an impressive record with the traditional works and as an opera conductor, but he in not frighten by the more adventurous music. He is an excellent Carter conductor and did a great job with Cage's _Atlas eclipticalis_.


I did mention him (post no. 38). What I failed to mention, upon reflection, was *Antal Dorati*. He's worth a thought also. *Sir Colin Davis *and *Sir Georg Solti *sprang to mind as well.


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## pcnog11 (Nov 14, 2016)

What about Vladimir Ashkenazy?


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

pcnog11 said:


> What about Vladimir Ashkenazy?


As a musician, his range of interests is fairly wide (remember, he made numerous recordings as a pianist).

As a conductor, his range of interests is fairly narrow (nowhere near Svetlanov or Rozhdestvensky even on Russian music). The scope of repertoire on the podium is closer to, say, Temirkanov.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Lark, it appears Bernstein took a balanced approach. When Walter Simmons asked him whether he ever intended to perform anything by Hovhaness Bernstein replied, "Some of Hovhaness's music is very, very good, and some is very, very bad." Still, he left even the very, very good stuff unperformed.


Hi Rick. I appreciate knowing that very much. Good for them. Hope you have been well! -Lark


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