Bob Kasenchak writes of this thread:

>Ah, well. Reading all your lists was great (to say nothing of revealing).

Yes, it was.  Partly for its exceptions.  I don't remember seeing
Celibidache or Chailly on any list and was surprised the way the
once-mighty tended to be treated just as also-rans.  Back in the days
when the defining buzz emanated not from the records but from exchanges
of view inside an esoteric circle of experts and initiates, names like
Furtwaengler, Toscanini,Walter, Weingaertner, Beecham, Busch, Strauss set
the tone and the taste.  Then when Toscanini and Furtwaengler's successor
at Berlin/Vienna, Karjan, systematically began recording and performing on
radio, the defining elemnet became electronic.  It must be for this reason
that some of these lists struck me as relying on experience with recordings
rather than with the live heritage.  I can see why a Harnoncourt, or a
Mackerras, or a Boulez, should make the running, and in a high placing, at
that.  These are thoroughly grounded musicians confident enough of their
craft to apply imagination to what they do and thereby contribute to the
shaping of of classical music as it seeks to keep time with the times.
Their kind indeed belongs up in the ratings with the giants who saw
classical music safely into our own, modern age.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]