"Robert Stumpf, II" <[log in to unmask]>writes: >...the Staatskapelle is a great orchestra, just shy of >being one of the top ten. ... Of the East German orchestras I think Leipzig is edging Dresden (while Berlin, of course, still dominates). But the orchestras of La Scala and the National Theater here in Munich, though primarily opera bands, do also perform symphonic music, and do both genres extremely well. The Tonhalle in Zurich and the the two leading symphony orchestras in Munich belong somewhere up there, too--a likelihood betokened by the fact that they've been handled by top-rated conductors for almost the entire spans of their existences--in the case of the Philharmonic, for more than a century. Denis Fodor