The careers of young conductors and the state of the industry

Yakov Kreizberg. YK is making the rounds. He conducted the Mahler 5th with LA and later in the season with Detroit and both performances struck me as first-rate.

Rich Sauer

YK has shown extraordinary interpretations in the Brahms (#2), Shostakovich (#11) and Bruckner (#9). He has had several chances at North American orchestras but word is that he addresses musicians in profane and abusive ways.

I think you may be oversimplifying the reason why young conductors are being bypassed for major posts. Here are some thoughts that influenced the Indianapolis SO search:

Repertoire: many of the young ones can handle the bigger and splashier pieces, but absolutely slaughter the baroque, classical and early romantic repertoire.

Lack of experience as music director for an orchestra - directing an opera house or company isn't the same thing

Some are not ready for the community outreach and educational demands. They need to be able to teach the musicians and stimulate community interest.

That said, major orchestras are generally committed to signing a certain number of really young guest conductors uin order to get them some exposure. In this context, I would count about 20 major orchestras in the US alone.

Bob Orr

. Who else? Surely we aren't to believe that the only good

But there are plenty of middle-aged conductors who are unrecorded. Fabio Luisi of the OSR. I have no idea if Mr. Luisi can be counted as one of the immortals of the baton, but he is very active in Europe. Heinrich Schiff, Zoltan Kocsis and Olli Mustonen are conducting too...hard to asses their work without recordings. When did Daniel Gatti last issue a CD?

Rich Sauer

To name a couple of Finns: Vanska (or is he too old to be 'young', Oramo. Franck is making a career in Europe too.

It's tough for young conductors, period. to learn their trade they need orchestras, and conducting courses like that at the Royal Academy of Music, London, may use mirrors and pianos instead. The conductors that do get experience as postgrads with student orchestras tend to go into the theatres, or start their own orchestras, or become assistants in the provinces, conduct for tours and then hopefully get work on the radio. CDs are something that a lot of musicians make and market themselves these days. The young conductors that record commercially are a very small minority, as you say.

Mogrelia has struck me as a particularly fine ballet conductor, based on his recordings of Giselle and Sleeping Beauty for Naxos.

Marc Perman

<snip>

To be more precise, there is a fair amount of records, also recent, with Fabio Luisi conducting, including several operas of Verdi (Alzira, Jerusalem, Aroldo), and Bellini (Puritani). I personally own a copy of a wonderful edition of Berlioz's 'La damnation de Faust'. With OSR there is also a 3 CDs complete recording of Honegger symphonies, recorded in 1999 and issued in 2001.

... or maybe I could not catch your point: in this case I apologize.

best regards