Hugh Canning writes:

>even though one would think it obvious to any musician that Rattle is
>without question Barenboim's superior as a symphonic conductor.

My naive question is, Is this really so? (And it's a genuine question,
i.e., there is no insinuation that the claim is false.) A word about
where I'm coming from.  Rattle is a black box as far as I'm concerned:
I've never heard any of his performances, and I will admit to a certain
prejudice: I tend to discount British reviews of British artists, as I,
rightly or wrongly, suspect that they are inflated.  And since I have
not encountered many reviews of Rattle's conducting outside of British
publications, I really don't know what to think.  Barenboim I know a
bit better: I think I have overcome early negative ideas implanted by
unsympathetic reviewers, and I have heard him live and on recordings.  I
know he is not uniformly well thought of, but he has engendered a certain
amount of respect for some of his conducting work.  Since some of that work
is in the conducting of Wagner's operas (his TRISTAN and RING are pretty
well regarded), I am assuming that Canning's specification of "symphonic
conductor" is intended to grant that Rattle is not so obviously a superior
opera conductor.  But some of Barenboim's work-- I am thinking of his
Bruckner, Brahms, and Beethoven 7th--has received very favorable (but
admittedly not uniformly favorable) attention.  So I ask, is Rattle's
superiority to Barenboim really without question?

Nick
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