Your pick for Berlin??

[King Karajan]

Just curious to know if there's anyone who would rather have seen Jansons as opposed to Rattle in Berlin?

[PSmith08]

I would rather have seen Daniel Barenboim take both the Philharmonie and the Staatsoper, but he seems to be doing some pretty neat stuff on the Unter den Linden: he might like having that venue and that band. His Mahler discs with the Staatskapelle Berlin have been quite excellent, but I wouldn't necessarily demean his Bruckner cycle (among other stuff) with the Philharmoniker.

To answer your question, Jansons would have been preferable to Rattle. Almost anyone would.

[M forever]

Good thing the Philharmoniker know better than anyone else who is best for them. Jansons is a great conductor and very much respected by the orchestra since his debut with DSCH5 (which I heard, it was really great), but he is far too "conventional" for that job, and so is Barenboim, almost to a fault.
The BP are very much aware of their very exposed place in the cultural scene of Berlin in particular and Germany in general and that the orchestra is expected to uphold the good old tradition on the one hand but also make clear that on the other hand, part of that tradition is constant reevaluation of itself rather than repetition and stagnation. That role is defined for and felt by them even stronger now that Berlin is the capital of Germany again and has moved back into the focal point of Europe with the opening of the EU towards the East. In other words, Berlin is now the place again where it all comes together and happens, as in the 20s before the Nazis took over. Such a place needs all sorts of cultural diversity and while Barenboim actually fits very well with the Staatsoper and he has been very good for the Staatskapelle (which basically totally surprised everyone in Berlin, yours truly included, but that's a different story), they nicely represent the more conservative part of the spectrum. But for the Philharmoniker, Rattle is much better. He tries a lot of things, not all of them seem to work out so well, but some do, and that's the wole point.
That has nothing to do with what one thinks about the individual gentlemen as musicians in general. I personally am not at all a big fan of Rattle's work, some of it is really good, some strikes me as odd. Which it may or may not be, but that's not the point of this discussion. It is not about their individual strengths and weaknesses, but how they fit into the cultural spectrum of Berlin. Which is something which is very hard to understand for outsiders not acquainted with the culture and character of that city.
Jansons fits much better with Munich, a much more conservative and unexperimental city with his greatest classical hits programs of Brahms 1 in the first and Zarathustra in the second half. He is a great guest conductor for the BP, but not a good principal conductor. Same with Thielemann. Although a Berliner, he really mentally fits much better into the scene in Munich in the way he sees himself as the Great White Hope of the German romantic tradition. Or maybe he would fit well with the Staatsoper, but not the Philharmoniker. I am pretty sure they will want to have him there when Barenboim takes off, then there will be a total Wagnerpalooza there, and I am pretty sure he will come, a man who has a portrait of Friedrich II in his study will not be able to resist residing in the historic Staatsoper next to all the reconstructed historic Prussian buildings.

The only other conductor I personally could see for the BP at this time would be Chailly, maybe.

[not edward]

I would tend to agree (in a more simplistic manner) with the idea of Jansons as a better guest conductor than principal conductor. I used to split my time between Edinburgh and Pittsburgh, and as a result got to see Jansons and the PSO both at home and on tour. It was striking how the performances in Pittsburgh tailed off quite rapidly after a great start--in particular I remember the difference between an outstanding Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and a lifeless run-through a few years later--while the performances I heard on tour remained consistently impressive.

[bhodges]

I actually like Rattle a great deal, even if as M notes, not all of his ideas seem to work all of the time.  But he is a good conductor for taking risks, and I admire that.  He also brings some unusual repertoire to the orchestra: their performance of Asyla (Thomas Adès) at Carnegie recently was sensational, and Rattle also gave an unconventional, memorable reading of the Mahler Fourth with Magdalena Kožená. 

At Carnegie this fall they are doing a lot of Mahler: prefacing the Tenth Symphony with Kurtág's Stele, opening the Ninth with Seht die Sonne by Magnus Lindberg, and doing a new Adès piece prior to Das Lied von der Erde.  Assuming one is in the mood for three nights of Mahler ( ), this is fascinating programming. 

--Bruce