Satoshi Akima (for whom I retain the greatest respect) suggests:

>Try taping a radio broadcast of a live event you attended and compare it
.to some of the conductors I have mentioned

I have, and the experience retains its vitality.  I would suggest that
these performances can't be "ranked" by some objective/linear scale of
quality or "inspirationality".  They are just different.  And how we
react to them is, I suspect, more a matter of our values than of anything
inherent in the performance itself.  Anyone who believes otherwise has
only to compare the reactions of multiple critics/observers to the same
performance.  To accept the role of values and still insist that (modulo
gross incompetence on the part of the performers) one performance is
clearly "better" than another is to insist that those values are "better"
than some others.

len.