Misunderstood/neglected/ignored conductors

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

'Stanley Popr' was surely STANLEY POPE who was - I believe - the assistant conductor at the CBSO back in the days of Hugo Rignold.
I played for H.Rignold a couple of times in the 1960s, but never for S. Pope.

Well, is it my fault that some idiot designed the keyboard with "E" next to "R"?!

Thanks for this, waldhorn: I only "know" of Mr Pope because of a 45-rpm-sized "single" record of a couple of Pomp & Circumstances with his photo on the cover that a friend owns.

EDIT: That's the one, cloughie! (and Pabs - more than "a couple" of Marches, then!)

[amateur51]

The fact that the Cleveland applauded Wyn Morris does not surprise me. They would have gone out of their way to applaud anyone who was not Georg Szell.
HS

The point of my post is that Wyn Morris is unlikely to have won the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the interest of George Szell and the Cleveland orchestra if he was the total dud that you seem to be saying he was, HS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2OSXvWtZm0

[pilamenon]

Does anyone know/remember John Snashall? I have an LP of him conducting mid-20th century English string music - McCabe, Leighton, Cruft.

[Richard Tarleton]

...and Welser-Most seems to have been a success there!

Nothing wrong with Welser-Most, cloughie! He just didn't get on with the LPO. It happens. I've heard him conduct magnificent Wagner performances with Zurich Opera.

[umslopogaas]

All this talk about conductors - not all of it complimentary - reminds me of a conversation I once read somewhere, sorry but I dont know who the musicicans were:

Musician 1 " Hello George, what were you playing this afternoon?"

Musician 2 "Oh, the usual Beethoven and Schubert stuff."

Musician 1 "Who was conducting?"

Musician 2 "John, I forgot to look."

[Pabmusic]

All this talk about conductors - not all of it complimentary - reminds me of a conversation I once read somewhere, sorry but I dont know who the musicicans were:

Musician 1 " Hello George, what were you playing this afternoon?"

Musician 2 "Oh, the usual Beethoven and Schubert stuff."

Musician 1 "Who was conducting?"

Musician 2 "John, I forgot to look."

A lovely story. It's no doubt been told many times, but it appears in 'Raising the Wind' - a film by the Carry On team, that's been mentioned on another post. The script was by Bruce Montgomery (aka Edmund Crispin).

[Roehre]

Nothing wrong with Welser-Most, cloughie! He just didn't get on with the LPO. It happens. I've heard him conduct magnificent Wagner performances with Zurich Opera.

Happens more.
Notorious Mismatch: Rattle and the Concertgebouw orchestra.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I have some of those Pickwick 'DDD' CD issues and am decidedly grateful to Pickwick for issuing them. I has assumed that the "DDD" as a simple oversight concious attempt to deceivein the packaging design process, rather than a concious attempt to deceive.

bryn: don't assume there was a "conscious attempt to deceive" - the Trade Descriptions Act offence created offences of what lawyers call "strict liabilty" (no requirement to prove any element of mens rea) but subject to a diligence defence. This means that they might get away with a one-off accident but not gross carelessness in their labelling all across a project range.

We never really established whether there was any such intention. When interviewed, a director simply denied any error had occurred. He had obtained from Wallich what the contract said were digital tapes of the recordings and that meant as far as he was concerned that they were DDD (I'm really not making this up). When I told him the recordings were definitely made prior to the earliest commercial digital tapings (1979 IIRC) he said they could still be experimental recordings! Yep, from 1965 so just rewrite the history of digital media everyone Faced with this attitude we really had no option but to prosecute.

It was fun going to our expert witness, a well-known recording engineer and university tutor on sound engineering, at his home in N London and playing him the DDD discs. He was blind, which presented a few obstacles to getting admissible evidence, so I had to take him and play him the recordings, including some of my own LPs with what I knew, but still had to prove, were the same tracks. He had mega-state-of-art-hi-fi and sat there saying things like "That's Dolby mistracking there for sure." I reckon to have pretty sharp ears but I couldn't tell what he was talking about. But one of the more interesting afternoons in my TSO career for sure

While I was there he was visited by a couple of guys from a CD copy who wanted to go through hiws ENORMOUS disc collection looking for examples of the then-new phenomenon of 'bronzing'. He had an equally enormous LP collection and as I left I saw the original LP of the Baker/Morris Knaben Wunderhorn songs which he'd just been listening to on CD. I tiptoed on without pointing this out...

[ardcarp]

It's amazing how 'conductor' threads spawn such interest!

Louis Fremaux was (as I recall) Hugo Rignold's successor with the CBSO. It was a time when, with the arrogance of youth, I was critical of all conductors. But M. Fremaux turned around the CBSO from being a second-rate provincial orchestra into the instrument that Rattle inherited. So whether they liked him or not....tough! (Anyone remember Harold Gray, incidentally?)

Barry Wordsworth seems to be getting a mediocre rating here; the word 'competent' being used as some sort of criticism. Had he called himself Boris Wankovski [real name, incidentally!] and had thrown a few tantrums, maybe he'd be up there with the greats.

John Pritchard I greatly admired. He achieved the heights rather late in life, I think, having served his time conducting an amateur orchestra (in Derby?) and being a chorus-master (at Glyndebourne?). He was thoroughly competent and workmanlike...and for me those epithets are meant as a complement.

I wonder if HS and others who have served under great (and otherwise) conductors would care to comment on how the following impact on players?

Musical competence
Interpretive skills
Inspiration
Big reputation
Big ego
Confrontation
Fear
Collaboration
Being friendly

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Barry Wordsworth seems to be getting a mediocre rating here; the word 'competent' being used as some sort of criticism. Had he called himself Boris Wankovski [real name, incidentally!] and had thrown a few tantrums, maybe he'd be up there with the greats.

No, he wouldn't.

But it is noticeable that most of the names mentioned so far in this Thread as being "neglected/misunderstood/ignored" have all worked in the UK. There may well be similar Threads in other countries suggesting names we've not heard of (and maybe "Pritchard" might have a slightly sniggerable double entendre in Serbo-Croat!)

Rato Schupp, anyone?

(Just to be clear; Boris Wankowski isn't Bazza's "real name, incidentally", is it?!)

[umslopogaas]

Thanks Pabmusic (#66). I've just tracked down my source, in Chambers Music Quotations: it was James Agate to Alec Whittaker, first oboe in the BBC SO.

Here's another one, again from a lost source (might have been these boards).

Leonid Kogan and David Oistrakh are having a drink and discussing Brahms' violin concerto.

Oistrakh: "Leonid, could you play the Brahms concerto after one vodka?"

Kogan: "Of course David, of course."

Oistrakh: "But Leonid, could you play it after two vodkas?"

Kogan: "Certainly, David."

Oistrakh: But Leonid, after three vodkas?"

Kogan: "Yes, David, I could."

Oistrakh: "But, after four vodkas?"

Kogan: "No David. But I could conduct it!"

[amateur51]

Günther Herbig is not often seen on concert platforms or CDs in UK but he's a conductor whom I rate highly

[Alison]

The two most underrated conductors in the world ever are surely Mark Wigglesworth and James Loughran.

[Panjandrum]

The two most underrated conductors in the world ever are surely Mark Wigglesworth and James Loughran.

Ever?

[Alison]

Ever?

Ok then, maybe chuck in Ronald Corp as well !!

(Btw, fantastic post re Tommy Service on the other thread. Message of the year without a doubt )