Quoting Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]>:

>Furthermore, there aren't that many conductors today worth recording
>in the standard rep.  I still don't know why Levine gets work, and the
>same goes for several others.  Does anybody look forward to Spano's
>Brahms cycle, as good a conductor as he is, when you can get Furtwaengler,
>Szell, Celibidache, Giulini, Horenstein, Markevitch, Kubelik, Stokowski,
>Toscanini, and Walter?

Steve has a point, to a point.

The world of recordings and their easy availability has made for somewhat
of a museum mentality I think.  We needs must remember that all the old
geezers in the above paragraph were once young, untried and inexperienced.
What we have from them now is the work of mature master artists, and of
course, it's wonderful.  But I wonder had Walter or Furtwaengler recorded
the Brahms symphonies in the first five years of their careers, would
we be so into them now?  I doubt it.

I think it's a bit wrong to simply dismiss younger artists as invalid
or incapable before they have had the advantage of the kind of maturity
that we know in the conductors mentioned above.

Kevin