Maestros advertising machines
mainChristian Thielemann’s advertisement for the new VW-Golf calls to mind the commercial endorsements by conductors in more innocent times.
Remember Hebert von Karajan’s slogan for CD ‘all else is gaslight’?
Or Andre Previn’s TV ads for low-tech television sets?
Any other maestros come to mind?
Herbert Blomstedt for National Semiconductor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfeZm56C-zE
Oh, that’s Bernie Kopell?
Never mind.
Arthur Fiedler for the GE ‘Slumber Line’ air conditioner. According to an old friend in the BSO, ‘that guy would do anything for a buck’.
Christopher Hogwood did colour supplement adverts for Liberty waistcoats.
Jaap van Zweden recently did an Audi commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jM6_BViTqw
Arthur Fiedler did some…for Boeing 747 and some brand of whisky,don’t remember which one.
Max Goberman conducting the Vienna Symphony playing the Oscar Meyer wiener song over 50 years ago.
Gunter Wand ad in Berliner Zeitung around 1985, for Mouton Cadet. He liked “tapping the Claret” as John Drummond found out!
Kazem Abdullah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRqX8JDWzEI
Esa-Pekka Salonen for Apple.
Arthur Fiedler also did a commercial for Florida orange juice.
There’s a young African-American conductor — apologies to him that I can’t remember the name – who is seen on screen conducting a symphony orchestra, this in a commercial for the GM Denali.
This one (posted only a few days ago) with Itzhak Perlman is pretty “flaky” 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svlCYY1SD8g
Kurt Mazur for Trojan’s extra sensitive condoms.
I suspect that you meant Kurt Masur (not Mazur). Link please.
Trojan toggies were not available in the DDR. They had to make do with inner tubes from Trabbie tyres!
Well, that explains A LOT!!!!
Sir Adrian Boult I recall, appeared sponsoring spats from Dunmore & Locke in 1942. I remember as nanny brought us a Battenburg cake from F & M.
I seem to recall Sir Thomas Beecham appeared in an ad in the Gloucestershire Echo, about 1949 endorsing Piles ointment. Must have been for poor old RVW.
The late Lorin Maazel had a deal with Rolex, I seem to remember. The ads often appeared in Gramophone and Blackwoods Magazine.
Pinchas Zukerman with a vodka ad in NY Times
I remember seeing an advertising of Accoustic Research where Karajan was promoting their speakers. That was more than forty years ago.
Who can forget Hans von Bülow’s commercials for Krippenmeyer’s Tincture of Iodine?
Or Beecham’s Pills. (Oh, he really was a pill himself!)
Well if Sir Thomas had followed a career in the laxative business, I am sure he would have made it run as regular as clockwork! I gather Wilhelm Furtwaengler liked taking Beechams pills, all that Bratwurst etc very bad for the innards. They met up at Bayreuth in 1936, Furts was doing Lohengrin.
I recall a print ad that Sir Colin Davis did for Rolex Watches.