Which conductor/performer/composer would you most like to have met?

[Petrushka]

I'm not sure how good Karl Böhm's English was but when I met him in December 1978 in his Albert Hall dressing room he wished me a happy Christmas in heavily accented English.

Actually, the language barrier might be a problem with meeting some of our idols. Did Mahler manage to speak English during his time in New York does anyone know?

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not sure how good Karl Böhm's English was but when I met him in December 1978 in his Albert Hall dressing room he wished me a happy Christmas in heavily accented English.

Actually, the language barrier might be a problem with meeting some of our idols. Did Mahler manage to speak English during his time in New York does anyone know?

A good question! And did Sibelius speak German when he and Mahler talked through their differences on the symphony in that famous meeting in 190...6?

I once had a dream in which i interviewed Francis Poulenc. On waking I realised I had been speaking perfect French! - which would probably have been unnecessary as Poulenc did speak English, albeit in a very broken accent - though less broken than the very gutterally French Arthur Honegger!

[BBMmk2]

Conductors: Bernstein, Mahler, Klemperer, Barbirolli, HvK., Antal Dorati, Carl Schurict, Rudolf Kempe.

Composers: Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Mahler, Shostakovich, Debussy, Prokovief, Rimsky, Elgar, Britten, RVW, Debussy, etc........

[Pabmusic]

Celibidache is quite a recent discovery for me, but his unique approach to music is really interesting...

Here's a site with a lot about phenomenology of music - Celibidache's philosophy. The conductor Konrad von Abel was pupil who refuses to record:

http://www.musikmph.de/artist_management/abel/phenomenology.html

[Serial_Apologist]

Here's a site with a lot about phenomenology of music - Celibidache's philosophy. The conductor Konrad von Abel was pupil who refuses to record:

http://www.musikmph.de/artist_manage...omenology.html

Most interesting that, Pabs: it reminds me of the old zen conundrum about meditation as consisting in direct awareness shorn of preconceptions being akin to medecine which won't work if one thinks about an elephant when taking it.

I imagine Ceilbidache's philosophy to coincide with Cage's dictum that all that one can do is listen.

[ahinton]

I'm reminded of the occasion when a newspaper sent along a reporter to interview the pianist Shura Cherkassky in his tiny flat in The White House, an hotel at the top of Great Portland Street, London.

He plied the diminutive maestro with one or two of his questions, all of which Shura had heard many times before.

Shura finally lost patience and said

"Ah, we don't want to talk about this stuff, it's boring. Now, let me show you my suits"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaU6Zihf7S4

Thanks so much for posting this. The Schulz-Evler is really little more than a piece of attractive and charming piano-candyfloss and not a patch on the gloriously refined contrapuntal sophistication and complex elegance of the three magnificent Strauss waltz "pianisings" (as Grainger might have called them) upon which Godowsky conferred the grandiose-sounding but by no means inappropriate titles "Symphonic Metaomorphoses on ***", of which I heard Cherkassky himself play two on separate occasions - yet Cherkassky being what he was at his best - and one of my principal pianistic heroes is the very least of what he was (and still is) - had the facility to turn anything into gold, as so often he actually did. He was once shown a Schumann transcription of mine and rather amusingly (if obviously also disappointingly!) observed that it was well written but that he didn't approve of altering Schumann's works (an interesting remark given that he "altered" that composer's Études Symphoniques most imaginatively every time he played them!)...

[Madame Suggia]

I'd like to have met Svetlanov and Janacek.

[ahinton]

Pour moi? Well, Arnold Schönberg, for sure, even though I'd have been the most useless tennis player ever to have been in his company. Shostakovich. Yes - Shostakovich. And Busoni.

[Beef Oven!]

Pour moi? Well, Arnold Schönberg, for sure, even though I'd have been the most useless tennis player ever to have been in his company. Shostakovich. Yes - Shostakovich. And Busoni.

I played Busoni's piano concerto this evening. Not a piece that I've taken to down the years, but I really enjoyed it. Must play it more often.

What is it about Busoni that makes you want to meet him?

[Ferretfancy]

I played Busoni's piano concerto this evening. Not a piece that I've taken to down the years, but I really enjoyed it. Must play it more often.

What is it about Busoni that makes you want to meet him?

Not a lot!

[Mahler's3rd]

Gustav Mahler and I would have asked him "Given you conducted the first Ring Cycle at Covent Garden, would you liked to have conducted it at Bayreuth and with hindsight would you liked to have written an opera"

[verismissimo]

There are so many you really wouldn't want to meet... Anyone for Beethoven?

[pastoralguy]

Yehudi Menuhin. A great human being as well as a truly great musician.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Vaughan Williams of course as well as Bernstein & Copland and also Koussevitsky. From pre-20th century it would have been fascinating to have met Schubert an enigmatic character and F J Haydn.

[teamsaint]

Gesualdo anyone?