Jim Lee:

>What Mehta did bring to the orchestra was a higher profile through the
>marketing done about him.

I really don't think it was merely a question of marketing, although
marketing didn't hurt.  I remember a fine Strauss recording, a pretty
good Tchaikovsky, and a lovely Bruckner 4.  His Turandot isn't shabby
either.  While Mehta may not be as great a Straussian as Szell or Reiner,
a Tchaikovskian as towering as Mravinsky, or a Brucknerian on the order
of Jochum, Tintner, or Furtwaengler, he's by no means a musical nebbish.

Somebody (I forget whom) just quoted "The good is the enemy of the great."
That seems to be what most anti-Mehtans have against him.

>What he also did was make some absolutely dreadful appointments, a process
>he repeated in NY.

Care to name names? Right now, at any rate, the NY Phil probably has one
of the greatest collections of individual players in the world.

Steve Schwartz