Can you spare a tenor? Kaufmann sings ALL of Das Lied...

[Darkbloom]

I was possibly a bit dismissive in calling them gimmicks: I'm glad that Kaufman recorded the Lieder, especially since it seems unlikely he'll be recording the complete operas in the foreseeable future.

Lebrecht is basically the Nigel Dempster of classical music. He made a bit of a name for himself in the mid-90s with his Maestro Myth book and the one that came after it. Those books are very readable (as is the one on Covent Garden) but they are riddled with factual inaccuracies and a determination to prove his central thesis that forces NB to ignore anything that doesn't fit in with it. His reputation was destroyed when one of his books was pulped because of libellous comments he made about Naxos supremo Klaus Heymann. About ten years ago, the BBC indulged him with a radio show in which he debated such pointless topics as 'Is Sport the New Art?' But he doesn't make waves nowadays, unless it's via the Slipped Disc blog, in which he makes such asinine assertion as 'Carlos Kleiber wasn't a great conductor.'

He once described himself as a 'polemicist'. Yeah, right....

I don't have much time for Lebrecht either, but I think his main point about Kleiber was his tiny repertoire and how justified we are in calling someone 'great' on such a small body of work. He's made many fatuous points but this was one of his less idiotic ones, I think.

[Conchis]

I don't have much time for Lebrecht either, but I think his main point about Kleiber was his tiny repertoire and how justified we are in calling someone 'great' on such a small body of work. He's made many fatuous points but this was one of his less idiotic ones, I think.

The body of work Kleiber conducted narrowed as he grew older - something he had in common with a lot of 'big name' conductors, though he didn't reach the grand old age of, say, Gunter Wand. There was also the fact that - again like many great conductors - he disliked the recording studio, so many of his interpretations only surivive as bootlets/radio broadcasts or on video. He was supposedly the supreme conductor of Verdi's Otello, but a projected recording was repeatedly postponed and finally cancelled and he as good as disowned his (outstanding, imo) recording of Tristan. But I think on the basis of what he did, Kleiber was undoubtedly a great conductor, whatever that term means.

[Barbirollians]

His Das Lied von der Erde might have been great but the recorded sound on the VSO live recording is so bad it is difficult to tell .