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