Do Conductors Have A Shelf Life?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There are those who maintain (or even improve) their standards with age - Toscanini, Furtwangler, Barbirolli, Stokowski, Marriner, Colin Davis…

and those who were at their best when younger - Maazel, Mehta, Klemperer…

Re the more general question of the attitude of conductors in general, my experience has been limited, but I've found that cronyism plays a big part in the world of music, and conductors can be as guilty as anyone in whom they hire and fire, etc.

[visualnickmos]

There are those who maintain (or even improve) their standards with age - Toscanini, Furtwangler, Barbirolli, Stokowski, Marriner, Colin Davis…

.....and Boult! His last 'Planets' recording

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

.....and Boult! His last 'Planets' recording

I felt his last Planets recording lacked momentum when compared with his 1966 reading. But his Elgar Apostles/Gerontius and his final Parry recording are truly wonderful, though there were no earlier versions of these by him.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Too many Conductors seem to span their last years trying to match or exceed their earlier work (Karajan) and come up short, imo.

This is a statement often made in reference to Karajan - I wonder in what ways his recordings of Don Giovanni, Nielsen #4, Eine Alpensinfonie, Un Ballo in Maschera, Saint-Saen's #3, Mozart's C minor Mass, Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Bach's Magnificat, or the Haydn Paris Symphonies "come up short" against his "earlier work".

The fact that Karajan continued to explore new repertoire even in his final decade makes such assertions untenable, and even when applied to what might be called the Karajan core repertoire (the "Primary Triads" of his Musical thinking, to which these distant regions always return) they don't hold water against the evidence. Tempi, balance and weight alter in the last recordings - the "slow" movements of the Beethoven Sixth and Ninth Symphonies are swifter and lighter than in the earlier recordings (one reviewer even going so far as to suggest that Karajan wasn't as hostlle to every aspect of HIPP as he was to the timbres of period instruments) and the Eighth Symphony has a raging defiance that sheds new light on this "little" Symphony.

Trying to exceed his earlier work is probably a good thing for Musicians, but not solely what Karajan set out to achieve in his last recordings (and in the last concerts if if the Radio archives are taken as evidence) - more a re-reading of the scores, which reveal new insights which he seeks to communicate to his audiences. Karajan's career ended well short of his "sell-by" date - as the posthumous sales figures further suggest.

Of course, whether or not these insights are themselves regarded as "com[ing] up short" in comparison with the earlier work is a matter of the "o" in rfg's "imo" - but then, so is the value of those earlier recordings and performances. My point here is that away from individual opinion, Karajan's later recordings and performances are different from his earlier ones - he continued to seek and to find and to communicate new truths in the scores.

[jayne lee wilson]

Absolutely with fhg here... just listen to the incandescence of those last Brahms 1sts (1988, Tokyo on DG, London on Testament) or the Verklarte Nacht! Seeking a different truth, yes, and there's an excellent Symphony in C on the disc with the Psalmen-Symphonie too, albeit from a few years earlier...

"Old men ought to be explorers..."

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If Karajan did have a weaker period, it wasn't right at the end of his life, but a little earlier. This roughly coincided with the early digital era, when DG was not at its best, but the engineers cannot be blamed for lapses in ensemble, like the scramble in Nessun Dorma in the Domingo/Karajan Turandot. Of course, this was the period when his relationship with the BPO was deteriorating, so that could have been a factor too. Those late recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic show HvK at his best.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Absolutely with fhg here... just listen to the incandescence of those last Brahms 1sts (1988, Tokyo on DG, London on Testament) or the Verklarte Nacht! Seeking a different truth, yes, and there's an excellent Symphony in C on the disc with the Psalmen-Symphonie too, albeit from a few years earlier...

"Old men ought to be explorers..."

Or Not farewell, but fare forward - unless we think that TS Eliot had passed his shelf-life, too?