Don Satz starts me thinking:

>What does Chris think of conductors who are still with us such as
>Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Herreweghe, Wand, etc.

This could be the start of a good thread if people are willing to do more
than list and give their reasons.  I put my names into three categories:

Really, really, really good (in no particular order):

Christoph Eschenbach:  A superb pianist, particularly of chamber music,
who made the transition to conducting.  For me, music primarily moves,
and no one's better than Eschenbach at getting music to do just that.

Christoph von Dohnanyi:  A great technician and an interpreter committed to
rethinking a score.  You may not agree with Dohnanyi's results, but they're
not really dismissable.  To me, one of the few conductors who makes music
matter, in the same way that books and ideas do.

Franz Welser-Moest:  After a pretty rocky start, I think he's coming into
his own.  W-M is the great exponent of the singing line, and he gets it
without sacrificing rhythm.  His recording of Schmidt's Buch mit sieben
Siegeln - bristling with all sorts of traps - shows that, even relatively
young, he's a technical master.  Interpretively speaking, he's at least
good, and the Schmidt shows a conductor of enormous potential.

Simon Rattle:  A great Mahler conductor, and at least superior when he does
other composers.  The only thing that bothers me about him is a relatively
narrow repertoire.  However, he's still a young man, as conductors go.
Time will tell.

Michael Tilson Thomas:  A tremendous breadth of repertoire.  People have
compared him to Bernstein (and Thomas, no fool, has exploited this to his
advantage), but I find Thomas a much cooler-headed conductor.  Bernstein's
great recordings were like getting punched in the gut.  Thomas's great
recordings are beautiful, rather than sublime (to use the old distinction).
No music seems alien to him - and in that, he is indeed like Bernstein.
However, Bernstein is now his biggest problem.  People - as you can tell,
even me - always want to bring in the comparison.  He's going to have to
work like mad to break free, and if he does, I think we'll find that he is
a very great conductor indeed.

Michael Gielen:  With Dohnanyi, to me the greatest interpreter of modern
music currently on the scene.  He not only gets precise playing, but
*musical* playing that leads to revelatory perfomance.  Scores that have
always sounded like mud become beautiful music under his direction.  I
don't know how well he does with standard rep, but that's not my sine qua
non of great conducting.  I want him to record all of Schoenberg and Berg
at least, and then to tackle Boulez and Carter.  He could significantly
hasten acceptance of these composers among classical-music junkies.

Very good:
James Paul:  About the only reason I didn't put him in the category above
is because I've never heard him with a major orchestra.  Again, a conductor
who gets the orchestra to sing and second-rank orchestras to play better
than they know how.  A musical line as graceful, subtle, and strong as
George Szell's.

Klauspeter Seibel:  I've come across his work solely through good luck.
He's the music director of my local symphony.  A protege of Bernstein,
he has a great breadth of repertoire.  The Louisiana Philharmonic, while
professional calibre, is, to put it as kindly as possible, the greatest
ensemble in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
However, they play really well for Seibel.  Furthermore, some of the finest
interpretations of standard works I've ever heard have come from this
combo:  a Tchaikovsky 4th that for once didn't go on one "fate motive" too
long in the first movement; a Dvorak "New World" that brought out daring
new sounds, rather than a sweet, comfortable rehash; the best Beethoven
"Eroica" I've ever heard, which finally made emotional sense to me of the
first movement (not even Furtwaengler did that for me).

Nicholas Harnoncourt:  For my money, the most incisive and provocative
of the HIP pioneers.  Like Dohynanyi, he gets you to confront music as if
you've never heard it before.  His Beethoven set promises great things.

Gergiev:  A superb opera conductor, now engaged in bringing to Western
consciousness the masterpieces of Russian opera.  Everything I've heard has
excited me.  I haven't heard him do instrumental stuff, but his opera work
has made me look forward to it.

Jahja Ling:  I've heard him only with the Cleveland Orchestra - one of
the top three in the world (I say that only to avoid home-town bragging) -
which would play pretty well without a conductor.  However, his repertoire
is broad and he's confident.  I won't bet on him as a future great, but he
*is* quite fine.

Kent Nagano:  A very good opera conductor and one who deals in a bright,
clear sound and sharp rhythm - always plusses to me.  What I miss in him
right now is interpretive depth, but he's still young.

John Eliot Gardiner:  I've found him variable.  His recordings of the
Baroque are superb - glorious string tone even playing HIP.  His forays
into other areas have been okay, but not particularly exciting.

Trevor Pinnock:  To me, one of the great musicians of my time.
Rhythmically amazing - he makes Baroque music swing.  However, a limited
repertoire.

Giuseppe Sinopoli:  My first listen to this conductor blew me away.  He
actually got the orchestra to *breathe.* I fell for his Mahler 2nd and
Brahms German Requiem.  However, he runs the danger of becoming a one-trick
pony.  I've been finding it hard lately to distinguish one of his accounts
from another.

Pierre Boulez:  I've always admired the composer (excepting the piano
sonatas).  The conductor came as a surprise to me, and what a surprise!
This is the legendary first recording of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps
with the ORTF.  It blew me away.  Same with the Les Noces follow-up, even
though sung in French.  What impressed me was the combination of exciting
rhythm with textural clarity.  Lately, however, he has come more to
concentrate on pretty sounds and clear texture, and the narrative line has
gotten dropped.  His readings have become static, as if music were painting
rather than a story in time.  I don't like it.

Capable:
Zubin Mehta:  A brilliant conductor when young, hopes were high for him.
He hasn't, unfortunately, come near to what many expected of him, but he's
still got a jolt or two in him, particularly in opera.

James Levine:  I won't say he's the dullest conductor in the world, only
because I haven't heard everybody.  Nothing really wrong with his work, but
nothing blazingly right about it either.  The worst I can say of him is
that I don't look forward to any of his performances.  Mayo on Bunny Bread
(or substitute your own mass-produced soft white bread here).

Kurt Masur:  As it turns out, an orchestra builder of great ability.  I was
surprised that the New York Phil had picked him as Mehta's successor, since
I thought his Leipzig recordings okay but not special.  It turns out to
have been one of the smartest things that orchestra did.  The ensemble,
traditionally an embarrassment, has become world-class and the tone warmer
and fuller.  He leaves this first-rank orchestra better than he found it.

Steve Schwartz