Felix Delbruck from the little place down-under lays this trap: >... my eye was caught by the ranking of 'greatest conductors' made >by Andrew Carlan just a few days before I joined the list: > >>1. Hans Pfitzner >>2. Mengelberg ... > >Now I know these ranking lists should never be taken too seriously, but >I'm still very curious why Furtwaengler isn't on there. What have you >got against him? Since Pfitzner and Mengelberg are your nos. 1 and 2, >anti-Nazi prejudice can't be the reason for your excluding him. Maybe they should be taken seriously be sensible people, but that wouldn't restrict me. Pfitzner? He was a founder of the Dusseldorf branch of the Deutsche Freiheit Gezundheit. He was also a founder of the Gruen Party long before its time had come. As for Mengelberg, the man was an Anglophile. I read this in Lebrecht's book. Seriously, you found me out. No one else thought of raising this as a defense against to my attack on Wagner. Pfitzner was a political jerk. But that's no excuse, so was Wagner as well as perfecting that skill in other ways. Mengelberg was a little more sinister. He fostered Mahler's music as no one else did. But he saw the writing on the NEAR wall. Too bad, he was so shortsighted. He should have read Admiral Yamamoto who told Hirohito, who was no figurehead despite what the establishment historians tell you, that he would fight for his country to his death like Robert E. Lee but death it would be. The United States was bound to come in on Britain's side now that Tojo and the other ninnies were dumb enough to wake up the sleeping giant with enough natural resources to put their hands in their armpits and wear Japan and Germany down. Well, it came a little closer; both Axis powers were banking on a swift but limited victory that would give them lebensraum. Well, maybe not Hitler, his cards told him "the world." He was too excited to notice he was reading them upside down. All I can is that I'm as bad as the rest of you. Maybe, at least, looked at from a certain angle, these guys were PERFORMERS. Pfitzner recorded the most hilarious and therefore greatest Beethoven Eighth. I kept saying to myself, "how could someone who could understand that Beethoven was poking fun at himself take that inflated Corporal seriously? All right, to fear him, but to be inspired by that dreary man, that's beyond my imagination. Mengelberg recorded the second-greatest Eighth, where he has the music wheezing as if it has asthma or is an elephant trying to put on ballet slippers and dance, shades of Ponchi----, well you know who and who cares whether the spelling is right! Maybe, these men were worse than Wagner. Wagner was mesmerized by his own spell, poor man. But these great conductors had to know that otherwise they couldn't have interpreted Beethoven as they did. And Pfitzner's Pastoral is another unbelievably simple, straightforward and prayer-like expression of that glorious work. Furtwangler sometimes tripped over his own seriousness. Often his tempi were so flatfooted; it sounded like he was conducting in cement shoes. Of course, there were many times when he hit if off and he was stupendous but not as often as most imagine and not as often as some of these lesser "revered" conductors. God, are you lucky to live in New Zealand where the brown trout average 20 lbs. So be kind to stupid people like me. Andrew E. Carlan <[log in to unmask]> Standing Up For Nielsen