Classical Music Martinets

Started by Holden, Today at 02:01:50 PM

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Holden

On mentioning Georg Szell in the 'Finales' thread and what I said about his Tchaikovsky 4 recording it brought to mind other conductors who were perceived as dictatorial, uncompromising and/or possessed of a savage tongue. Names that come to mind as both definite and possible candidates include Reiner, Toscanini, Karajan, Carlos Kleiber, Beecham, etc - the past is virtually littered with these dictators of the podium.

I'm setting up this thread for posts about those dictator conductors of the past, what they did, what they said and what others said about them. The following link makes for interesting reading but something as simple as
Szell sat through a Philharmonia concert under and ailing Klemperer. He was due to take over the orchestra the next day  and at the end on encountering the orchestra leader snapped "Get a good nights sleep, you have a hard day tomorrow."  would be great.

The witticisms of Thomas Beecham make for good reading one of my favourited being his description of the harpsichord sounding like "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof".

This article from Slipped Disc gives us some idea of Szell the conductor

https://slippedisc.com/2018/08/was-georg-szell-as-horrid-as-described/
Cheers

Holden