The conductor with the wealthiest audience
mainWe’ve just been informed that the state of Liechtenstein has a new chief conductor.
He is Stefan Sanderling, 51, son of the much-loved Kurt Sanderling who was a confirmed socialist, choosing to spend his life in the USSR and the German Democratic Republic.
Liechtenstein is where capitalists go to protect their gold from the greedy taxman.
Stefan, who succeeds Florian Krumpöck, will not be the best-paid in his profession, but his audience certainly are.
His late father may permit himself a wry little smile up there, in the heavenly workers’ paradise.
Kurt Sanderling was a Prussian-born Jew. He fled Hitler’s Reich in 1936, after being fired from his repetiteur job at the Deutsche Oper because he was a Jew.
His relocation to the USSR was primarily motivated by the anti-semitic hatred of the Third Reich. His post-war activities were by no means confined to ‘socialist’ countries. He was Chief Guest Conductor, and subsequently Conductor Emeritus of the Philharmonia in Londo, with whom he recorded a fine set of Beethoven PCs with Uchida, and a complete Beethoven symphony set. He also worked with the Los Angeles Phil as Guest Conductor…hardly a Marxist enclave!
Sorry, but your memory is faulty. Sanderling did record a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies with the Philharmonia, financed by the tobacco group Du Maurier, but his Philips set of the Beethoven piano concerti with Mitsuko Uchida involved two other orchestras, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Personally, I would nominate Gianluigi Gelmetti of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra for the title of “conductor with the wealthiest audience”.