Norman Lebrecht replies to me:

>>I never cared for Klemperer's Mahler or, for that matter, his performances
>>of 19th-century music in general.  I always thought him at his noticeably
>>better best in modern stuff.
>
>Which, to my view, illustrates the futility of comparing conductors on
>record.

Perhaps true in the case of some conductors, of whom I cheerfully admit
Klemperer could have been one.  On the other hand, it's the only chance
most of us ever get, and I do admit there are some stunning Klemperer
recordings - just not of Mahler, Brahms, or Beethoven.

>Klemperer, whom I had the good fortune to hear once as a kid

I never had the chance to hear him live, since he and I were never in the
same places at the same time.  All I know of his music-making is from
record.

>To judge a conductor's work on the basis of studio recordings is about as
>useful a measure of artistic merit as comparing one picture postcard with
>another.

Again, that's true only of some conductors.  There are conductors who do
better in the studio - who, indeed, become more "themselves" in the studio.
It's two different venues and two different processes.  I wouldn't presume
to rank these processes in terms of artistic merit, and therefore I find
subsequent ranking of conductors based on a preference for one venue or
another as tenuous as a house of cards built on top of a vaudevillian's
spinning plates.

Steve Schwartz