Len Fehskens [[log in to unmask]] replies to me:

>>Yet they play this music with a lifelessness that makes even the
>>youngest of music lovers envious listening to the recorded mono masters.
>
>Once again I am reminded that I am in the company of sophisticates in
>comparison to whom I have wooden ears.

I never said that at all.  In fact just as I have defended modern music
so too I would refute any argument that said that our contemporary
conductors are hopelessly incompetent.  I am for one a great admirer of
many contemporary conductors such as Boulez, Rattle, Herreweghe, Suzuki,
Asahina, and Harnoncourt.  They are all musicians who teach me something
new, unlike these Barenboims et al.  who just want to repeat the formulae
of past musicians.

>I go to concerts regularly, even Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts
>conducted by the routinely maligned Seiji Ozawa, and I am enthralled.

i must say that Ozawa simply pales by comparison to the almost
completely unknown (at least outside of Japan) Asahina who really is
simply extraordinary.  However even I can enjoy concerts with Edo de Waart
conducting the Sydney Symphony on a good night, even if I do prefer Simone
Young.  When you hear music making live it is always easy to be swept away
by the occasion.  Having said that I have managed to sit through live
performances of the Beethoven 5th with de Waart in the Sydney Opera House,
Wand conducting the Eroica in the Gasteig Munich, and Andre Previn
conducting the LSO in the Brahms 4th while thinking to myself all the way
that I wished I had stayed home and listened to my crackly ancient 1940's
recordings of Ye Olde by Furtwaengler.  I wish I didn't have such horribly
critical ears.

Especially with the resurrection of much older music we have wonderful
things today that cannot be found in the first half of the 20th century.
Still I just don't think that the conductors of our age, wonderful though
they are, quite compare to those active during that time.  I was born in
the space age and belong to a digital generation (I have never brought an
LP in my life) but still am just amazed how damned good conductors were
whose careers belong mainly to the first half of last century such as
Scherchen, Weingartner, Furtwaengler, Mengelberg, Walter, Busch, Muck, E.
Kleiber, Toscanini, Mitropoulis, and Horenstein.  I discovered many of them
as a student who couldn't afford the more expensive full price CD issues
only to get a nasty shock when I did get hold of full price issues.  Even
the less celebrated conductors of the time such as Schuricht, van Beinum,
van Kempen, de Sabata, Konwitschny, Webern, Strauss, Coates, Fried, Reiner,
Abendroth, Elmendorff, Krauss, and Leinsdorf were still really just
absolutely brilliant.  I should also throw in Koussevitsky, Stokowski,
and Beecham if only to avoid upsetting somebody...

So by all means go and be swept away by concerts.  It is only when you
place these musicians in the leveling ground of recorded media that you
really notice that conductors of the first half of the century really were
just so much more consistently inspirational.  Try taping a radio broadcast
of a live event you attended and compare it to some of the conductors
I have mentioned.  You might say that if I could hear more of many
contemporary musicians performing live I might be forced to temper my
claims.  However I think of it differently.  Inspirational though the
musicians of our times can be in concert, I wish I could have heard some of
those concerts such as the live 1940's Furtwaengler Beethoven and Bruckner
9th's:  now that would be something!  Even though sonically ridiculously
primitive, once the ear becomes accustomed it then becomes startlingly
apparent that nothing I have heard live even remotely compares with the
frightening level of intensity captured on old mono recordings.  I can
only dream of what they were like in concert.

There are some list members who can tell tales of having heard conductors
such as Horenstein conduct Mahler, who would doubt that any conductor today
can match him in this repertoire.  Horenstein died not long after I was
born but given the documentary evidence of recordings I can confirm that
what they say is often absolutely correct.  Let nobody say the fondness of
memory or worse still senility has exaggerated the excellence of those
older musicians.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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