Mimi Ezust in a posting remarked:

>>The best orchesrta conductors are not easily satisfied,
>>either.  They demand the best work from their musicians...

...to which James Zehm replied:

>However some just do this rather noisy and foul, what is tragedy for the
>involved musicians but what we would be allowed to laugh at....of course
>I am thinking of such prominent orchestra leaders as Wagner, Beecham,
>Toscanini and Celibidache.  I am sure the listmembers have their gems out
>there.

Even though I'm not sure I get Mr. Zehm's meaning, the conductors'
names that he drops certainly would qualify for inclusiuon in Mimi's "the
best." And what marked these musicians was their insistence on drill, on
rehearsal so that their reading of what was to be performed came through in
the end to the audience which conducmtors and musicians were to address.
Of the four names we're talking about only Celi can pass as a conductor
contemporary with most of us on this list.  Having experienced him over the
span of many years both in rehearsal and in performance I'll warrant you
that most of what you'll get to hear of Celi's will have been scrupulously
constructed.  Here in Munich,and before that in Stuttgart and Berlin, he
rehearsed 12-15 hours before taking a concert piece into performance (=
recording because he almost never did studio recordings).  If you then
attended the last of the three,four performances you would have heard a
concert inculcated for about 20 hours.  This is something that even the
most sophisticated,trained of ears on this list just don't seem to want to
credit.  Conductors like Wand and Celibidache do/did require from their
orchestras precisely the sort of performance that they heard in their
mind's ear.  Moreover, Celi and Wagner went further than that and directed
their musicians to play in such a manner that the conductors themselves
could then properly play the acoustics of the hall.  This really, reallly,
reallly, should be kept in mind when buying, say, a Celi recording.
There's something in there that the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am school school
of today's jetset maestros just doesn't bring to the task.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]