Aaron J Rabushka [[log in to unmask]] wrote:

>If you can get any Wagner conducted buy Bruno Walter go for it!

Well, as far as I am concerned Walter conducted the standard set that
circulates of Wagner ouverture and preludes this late in his career.  I
recently read a small biography that mentioned that Walter was not much
of a musician in the end.  In his late career he was said to have been as
death as Beethoven.

The little biography also dabbled with "the angry conductors" of Toscanini,
Reiner and Walter - these conductors who weren't ashamed to scold a
musician totally in front of the whole orchestra.  But the biographer
argued that Walter was the worst of those, as Reiner and Toscanini at least
had some sort of outer, concret, reason when they did.  Walter just seemed
to need to please his own need for "all lights on me" that he often also
pretended that a musician played wrong just to get a chance to give him a
scolding.  Peculliar family, those great conductors.

Mats Norrman
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