It's hard to take Lebrecht seriously.  Apart from gratuitous insults
("Stokowski put the con in conducting") and the like, his works are riddled
with howlers.  Care for an example? Consider The Karajan Case, in his
'Maestro Myth'.

   "There was only one prize he [HvK] still wanted from Berlin:
   Furtwangler's title of artistic director...  when they [Christian
   Democrats] were routed in December 1989 by a coalition of Socialists
   and Green environmentalists, he greeted the new cultural senator with
   a brusque letter of resignation." (p 125 in my edition)

Alas for Lebrecht, von Karajan died on 16 July 1989.

Such shoddy scholarship knocks his opinions senseless, time and again.
List members may well share Lebrecht's views, and that's fair enough;
basing them on his 'facts' is quite a different matter.

Charles Barber