Ten Super Conductors

The Top Ten Maestros I've Seen

Claudio Abbado at work.

Hi folks. I finally got to hear Gustavo Dudamel conduct this weekend. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to put up my top ten list of great conductors that I've seen lead an orchestra or an opera.

I'll try to add what I've seen them conduct, as I can best remember it. In a few cases, there are just too many performances, so I've picked a notable one. Oh and the order is completely arbitrary as I thought of them for the list.


1) Claudio Abbado: Berlin Philharmonic, Mahler Symphony No. 3; Bruckner Symphony No. 9

2) Giuseppe Sinopoli: Dresden Staatskapelle. Tone poems and opera excerpts by Richard Strauss. Sinopoli is one of my favorite, underrated composers. He died in 2001, collapsing in the pit while conducting Act III of Aida in Berlin.

3) Daniel Barenboim: Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Tristan und Isolde; Mahler 5 and 7 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

4) Pierre Boulez: Ravel's L'enfant et les Sortileges with the Cleveland Orchestra and Suzanne Mentzer.

5) Riccardo Chailly: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra: Mahler Symphony No. 7

6) James Levine: Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra. More performances that I can count at the Met, but all of the Wagner operas, especially Parsifal and Lohengrin.

7) Bernard Haitink: Mahler Symphony No. 9 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At Symphony Hall when I lived in Boston, probably in 1996.

8) Sir Colin Davis: Program of English music with the New York Philharmonic featuring works by Vaughan Williams (the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis) Michael Tippett and Edward Elgar.

9) Kurt Masur: Many performances with the New York Philharmonic. Pressed to pick one: The St. Matthew Passion or Debussy's La Mer. And he led a superb Bruckner Seventh last season.

10) Riccardo Muti:"The Pines of Rome" with the New York Philharmonic. Simply devastating.

The Next Ten: Alan Gilbert, Christian Thielemann, William Christie, Zdenek Macal, Valery Gergiev. Seiji Ozawa, John Eliot Gardiner, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Gustavo Dudamel and Sir Simon Rattle.

Buona Salute, Maestro Muti!

Riccardo Muti at Avery Fisher Hall.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2009.

We here at Superconductor would like to take a pause in our regularly scheduled blogging to extend wishes for a swift recovery to Riccardo Muti, the acclaimed conductor who was scheduled to begin his first season as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

 Mr. Muti had occupied the post for exactly two weeks before being forced to cancel his fall appearances at Orchestra Hall due to an unspecified acute stomach condition--possibly gastritis. He flew home to Italy in order to consult with his doctors, and will hopefully make a full recovery.

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has shuffled its program lineup slightly, substituting in three different conductors, and changing one program entirely to focus on the Mahler Seventh Symphony under the baton of Pierre Boulez.

A performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto featuring Anne-Sophie Mutter was led by the soloist as the musicians followed her bow. It was Ms. Mutter's first time conducting the Chicago forces. When it was time to play the Mozart symphony that was next on the program, the orchestra followed their concert-master's bow and played without a conductor.

Mr. Muti, 69, is the first conductor to hold the position of Music Director since it was vacated by Daniel Barenboim in 2006. He has previously held posts at La Scala and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and has conducted acclaimed concerts with the New York Philharmonic. In February of 2010 he made a long-awaited appearance at the Metropolitan Opera, conducting Verdi's Attila.

We hope that Mr. Muti makes a full recovery, and is back making music on our shores again very soon. 

Concert Review: The Dude Takes Carnegie Hall

Venezuela meets Vienna in a diverse orchestral program.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
At 29 years of age, conductor Gustavo Dudamel is the bright hope of Western music. His infectious enthusiasm and fearless choices of repertory have ignited renewed international interest in the arts. On Saturday night, the Venezuelan maestro brought his unique perspective to Carnegie Hall, to make music with the much more tradition-bound, mostly male Vienna Philharmonic.

Gustavo Dudamel. Photo © Chris Christodoulous

The result was electric.

At first glance, Mr. Dudamel's programming choices were puzzling:

• An obscure opera overture by Rossini. 
• A symphonic triptych from Cuban composer Julián Orbón. 
• One of Leonard Bernstein's orchestral oddities from 1980. 
• To close, two of Ravel's "greatest hits." 

With its emphasis on the 20th century, the program forced the orchestra to stretch itself and think outside the box, and this was all to the good.


The Rossini overture served as the sprightly curtain-lifter, preparing the audience for the Three Symphonic Versions by Orbón. These pieces, dating from 1954, combined neo-classical Western ideas with medieval church polyphony and driving Latin rhythms. It sounded like Vaughan Williams or Gustav Holst sending back musical postcards from some imaginary tropical resort.

The biggest challenge for the musicians was Bernstein's Divertimento, a boisterous set of salutes to the composer's hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Bernstein pulled out the parts of the kitchen sink for this piece and threw them into the mix. One short movement quotes the oboe obbligato of the Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Another is an Aaron Copland-esque movement titled "Turkey Trot." The heavy brass were featured in atmospheric noir piece simply labeled "Blues." Throughout, the orchestra rose to the occasion and demonstrated its quality, playing unfamiliar music with thorough, professional skill.

The Pavane pour un infante défunte continued the symphonic arc of the program, serving as a slow movement in contrast to the Bernstein work. The piece also showcased the trademark horn tone of the Vienna Philharmonic, with their unique instruments squarely to the fore. Again, Mr. Dudamel displayed precise control over his forces, regulating the dynamic level and producing a beautiful blend of wind,strings and brass. The Bolero brought the evening to a proper climax. Mr. Dudamel's intimate relationship with this orchestra was evident, as they followed his cryptic stick movements and hand gestures to conjure a tower of sound.

After a thunderous ovation, Mr. Dudamel came back with his index finger raised to indicate "one more." He led the superb Vienna strings in music closer to their hearts: the all-plucked Pizzicato Polka by Johann Strauss.

Concert Review: Hammer Crushes You

Alan Gilbert brings the heavy in Mahler's Sixth.

Le maître de la marteau: Alan Gilbert. Photo © 2010 Chris Lee.

Thursday night's New York Philharmonic featured Alan Gilbert's unique take on Gustav Mahler's heaviest symphony: the Sixth.
The Sixth is known as Mahler's "Tragic" Symphony, and it climaxes with one of the percussionists setting up a wooden box and whacking it with a really big hammer. The heavy thud is a disturbing sound, as the "hammer of fate" stops the music in its tracks.

Although the opening march suffered from some balance problems, Mr. Gilbert recovered to lead an angular movement that alternated between crashing power and tender caresses in the strings. The famous second theme, a musical depiction of the composer's wife Alma, was played with real tenderness. The "Alma" theme battled with the determined Mahler march, and ultimately lost.


The second movement focused on a dialogue between the oboe and the strings. Sections duetted like lovers under the moon in the Austrian countryside. But the Andante ended on a bitter-sweet note, preparing the audience for the darkness that was about to fall. The Scherzo roared, shuddered and stomped before lurching into a series of twisted waltzes in the two trio sections. This is Mahler at his rawest, achieving a level of pathos that he would not reach again until his Ninth Symphony.

The finale, featuring the three hammer blows, was slow to develop, deliberately frustrating the listener. As the hero struggled towards glory and found love, the hammer came crashing down. The sickening, heavy thud was played by percussionist Daniel Druckman who whacked a giant mallet into a wooden box.

The hammer's impact is a violent, disturbing effect. Heard three times, it obliterates the music's progress and fells the hero in his tracks. Mahler may have planned for as many as five hammer strikes originally. He then decided on three, but settled on two for superstitious reasons. Leonard Bernstein popularized the addition of a dramatic third blow. In Mr. Gilbert's sure hands, the Sixth had a bruising power of its own, a message of universal despair that echoes in the heart.