Contents
- Author’s Note
- Conductors born in the 1850s
- SIR GEORGE HENSCHEL
- ARTHUR NIKISCH
- ROBERT KAJANUS
- MAX FIEDLER
- KARL MUCK
- Conductors born in the 1860s
- ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ ARBOS
- GABRIEL PIERNÉ
- FRANZ SCHALK
- FELIX WEINGARTNER
- RICHARD STRAUSS
- ARTURO TOSCANINI
- LORENZO MOLAJOLI
- MAX VON SCHILLINGS
- HANS PFITZNER
- SIR HENRY J. WOOD
- Conductors born in the 1870s
- LEO BLECH
- OSKAR FRIED
- WILLEM MENGELBERG
- ALEXANDER VON ZEMLINSKY
- SIEGMUND VON HAUSEGGER
- ALFRED HERTZ
- FREDERICK STOCK
- SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
- SIR LANDON RONALD
- SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY
- SELMAR MEYROWITZ
- PIERRE MONTEUX
- ETTORE PANIZZA
- PABLO CASALS
- BRUNO WALTER
- ARTUR BODANZKY
- OSSIP GABRILOWITSCH
- TULLIO SERAFIN
- SIR THOMAS BEECHAM
- PHILIPPE GAUBERT
- SIR HAMILTON HARTY
- GAETANO MEROLA
- FRANTISEK STUPKA
- Conductors born in the 1880s
- D. E. INGHELBRECHT
- CARL SCHURICHT
- BRUNO SEIDLER-WINKLER
- ALBERT COATES
- LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI
- IGOR STRAVINSKY
- HERMANN ABENDROTH
- ERNEST ANSERMET
- NIKOLAI MALKO
- FRITZ STIEDRY
- VACLAV TALICH
- SAMUIL SAMOSUD
- ALBERT WOLFF
- VITTORIO GUI
- OTTO KLEMPERER
- HANS WEISBACH
- WILHELM FURTWAENGLER
- FRANCO GHIONE
- ROBERT HEGER
- GENNARO PAPI
- PAUL PARAY
- GEORGE GEORGESCU
- PIERO COPPOLA
- HANS KNAPPERTSBUSCH
- FRITZ REINER
- SIR ADRIAN BOULT
Author’s Note
The concertgoers are arriving and for their encouragement of this rather daunting project I would like to thank Ricardo Hernandez, Kirke Mechem, Amy Firman the site designer, Martin the site engineer, Richard Wahlberg the sound engineer and longtime colleague, Elaine Fuller, Richard Troeger, Ray O’Brien, Tom Rubbert, Fred Maroth, Greg Bottini, William Corbett Jones, John McCarthy, Scott Foglesong, Mark Zier and Macy, Ray and Karen Houck, Malcolm Margolin, Chris Buckley and Patricia Vanderberg, Lise Ostwald, Anna Randall, Christy B., Tara Szabo, Susan Kelley, Karen Buckter, JJ Hollingsworth, Nikki Ballenger and family, Rob Tausk, Phil Saltonstall, Kim McMillon, Kat Parrick, Julie Gilden, Peggy Salkind, Jean Alexis Smith, Sally Hanley, Connie Crawford, Juliana Duncan, Dan Duncan, Dick and Melissa Bruins, Suzanne Klotz and “El Greco,” Richard Pult, Kent Nagano, Sir Charles Mackerras, John Mauceri, Alden Gilchrist, Russ Irwin, Tom Reynolds, Harvey Sachs, Andrew Porter, Edward Greenfield, James Gaffigan, Brent Assink, Kip Cranna, Steven Dibner, Rowland Rebele, John Rockwell, John Bautista, “Bob Kebob,” Marilyn Mercur, all the gang at Browser Books, John Bloomfield and all the Hamptonians, Alison Bloomfield, Julia Bloomfield, Cathy Furniss, all the gang at Norbeck, Peters and Ford in Vermont and the lamented Tower Classical in San Francisco, and the late Anne Bloomfield, Julia Mayer Bloomfield, William Bass, Peter Ostwald, Alan Rich, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Antonio de Almeida, János Ferencsik, Harold Rosenthal, Alexander Fried and Alfred Frankenstein — and Prof. Leonard Ratner for teaching me what I needed to know. Also, many thanks to James Fuller for technical support! And for photos thanks to Berlin Photo Archive, Fred Maroth and the San Francisco Public Library.
To borrow a wording from James Salter, I’ve tried in these 97,000 words to “reach out and touch tenderly a great number of things,” swirling as the collectivity of orchestral performance can be. As Orhan Pamuk would say – here we must substitute our conductors for the “consoling streets of Istanbul” – I’ve tried to “capture their chemistry.” Another phrase I’m fond of is Graham Robb’s “unexampled sludge of preconceptions” – suffice to say I’ve sought valiantly to abandon any such gremlins in my thinking.
If any of the recorded excerpts presented in this book infringe a copyright, please send us an e-mail and it will be removed at once.