Nick Perovich wrote:

>Which conductors are you inclined to group together as naturally akin?

Your categories are nice and pigeonholey but once you've succeeded in
sorting the maestros out, what then? For me the only categories that matter
are the ones that grab me and the ones that don't.  So the ones in the
former category include Furtwaengler, Toscanini, Walter, Reiner, Bernstein,
Mravinsky, Monteux, Szell, Barbirolli, Stokowski, Boult, Klemperer, Beecham
and a few others that I probably can't think of right now.  The ones that
don't include Mehta, Dutoit, Ormandy, Muti, Haitink, Dorati, Paray, Maazel,
Solti, Harnoncourt, Leinsdorf, Barenboim, Masur.  Of course I don't like
everything the conductors in the first group do, and I don't dislike
everything from the second group.  None of these persons are or were
incompetent.  Some of them were more flamboyant than others.  But the
ones in the first group carry me farther into the music than those in the
second, even if I don't always agree with their approaches.  I don't know
the styles of everyone--certain ones I've avoided because of something I've
read (yeah, I know it's stupid), like Rattle.  Others I find interesting to
listen to, like Boulez and Gardiner, but their aesthetic sometimes eludes
me.  (In Boulez's case his engineers and producers may be at fault.)

Chris Bonds