Are these really the conductors of the year?
mainThe Royal Philharmonic Society has unrolled the shortlist for its annual awards.
The three conductors named are:
Dalia Stasevska
Jonathon Heyward
Martyn Brabbins
The first was seen at the BBC Proms, the second is promising and the third led ENO’s brave drive-in Bohème at Alexandra Palace.
But how many votes of RPS members did it take to put them there? And does your heart beat any faster to see them nominated?
Are they really the best batons of 2020?
How about – if it’s UK only –
Mirga (CBSO)
Welber (BBC Phil)
Alpesh Chauhan (Birmingham Opera)?
We got bigger bang out of all three before Covid descended.
More woke nonsense.
The first two do deserve to be on the list because Stasevska is a woman and Heyward is a person of color. As for Brabbins, I’m afraid he shouldn’t be there as he meets all the requirements that should disqualify him, that is: male, white, western and straight.
That said, if you really are the best, you don’t need any awards, it’s common sense.
At this point and to cite an example, in the literary world there are more awards than writers. Let’s hope that classical music does not reach such absurdity.
“Deserve to be on the list because one is a woman and the other is a POC?” What rubbish. Accomplishment should be the only measurement.
Did you really just miss the sarcasm in a post that is dripping with it from start to finish?
What about the people who downvoted the original post?
How many of them missed the sarcasm?
And how many of them spotted the sarcasm and disapproved of sarcasm about this topic?
That’s the worrying part.
Ah, but the up and down voting on this site is a science in its own right. It allows one to make a point without revealing what it is.
you missed the sarcasm…
Long live sarcasm.
I watched her flapping her arms about, like a helicopter with a broken rotor. She didn’t look comfortable or at ease. Those musicians could have done that Proms without her.
Without being a musician in the orchestra you can’t really tell whether she is getting them to play as she wants. All the great conductors have their own style, some seemingly bizarre.
Funny. That isn’t what the musicians thought.
Heyward is an outstanding young conductor! Please check out his performance before passing comment!
You completely missed the British-styled humour! LOL.
How charming, lovely to have your opinion Darrell.
Martyn Brabbins is brilliant. Don’t know and don’t care about the others.
Martyn Brabbins is a conductor of great experience and ability, with a distinguished discography, an eager willingness to tackle the unusual, and a keen proponent of British music, in the Vernon Handley mould. I think he qualifies!
This time there is a token whiteman (M. Brabbins).
Racism really??
Not really. Just a calling out of woke nonsense.
Martyn Brabbins conducted the ENO Mask of Orpheus at the end of last year. He deserves to be at the top of the list for that accomplishment alone. His conducting, along with the outstanding playing of the orchestra and the great singing, made up for the superficial staging and resulted in one of the most memorable evenings I’ve had at the opera for many years – and my tastes tend not to go beyond 1883.
Mine stop at the death of Mozart but I take your meaning.
Sadly, I don’t know the other two, but Martyn Brabbins is a fantastic conductor. He has been underrated, possibly because he is an unassuming, modest man with no huge ego! I love working with him and our collaborations have always been of the highest caliber. He would absolutely get my vote and I am happy he is finally getting the recognition he truly deserves.
Brabbins is quite fantastic, I agree.
What everyone said. Brabbins is a quiet hero and definitely deserves a gong or two.
Martyn Brabbins is an outstanding conductor in the concert hall, in the opera house and in recording. You rarely hear anything other than unqualified praise for him. His support and promotion for British music puts him alongside Vernon Handley and Richard Hickox and for that we should be profoundly grateful.
It’s an insult to Brabbins to put him on this list, and at the bottom.
Miss Delia should get all three places. First, because she is politically correct and anti-British; second, because she is female; and third, because she cannot conduct, which is wonderfully, wonderfully anti-elitist.
Indeed. Tick, tick, tick.
But to even mention her in a list with a conductor with so many fascinating recordings to his credit (not least the Hyperion concerti) is an insult (to him).
Not to mention, anti-musical. Where did they find her and why?
What a lot of racist and misogynistic comments! I had the pleasure of witnessing Jonathan Heyward conducting LSO a couple of weeks ago and he was mesmerising and the music was outstanding! I am not sure what qualifications you all have that enable you to share such viscous comments! You do not represent most of us!!! Get a life!!!!!
“Viscous comments”?
Terrible lack of transparency, i do agree!
Never saw Dalia Staveska conducting and was curious about her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V15Ivig5Nok She starts the concert with two beats saying one! Two! Was she thinking she was conducting sightseeing amateurs ? I’m flabbergasted.
The worst of the worst.
I would like to know how many of you writing racist/misogynistic posts have actually played under these conductors, or indeed, had any first hand experience with how they work? …
It seems to me like you’re hiding behind anonymity in order to soothe your own damaged egos that have been challenged by someone else’s success.
…
It doesn’t make any of you look good, it’s embarrassing.
By way of reference, out of the 527 recordings listed on PrestoCD website, for Karajan, only 14% had awards and of these barely 25% were given Building a Library. Just fancy that. Rattle scored higher.
In comparison, 50 years ago, my nominees of Young Conductors of the Year of 1970 —
Claudio Abbado
Zubin Mehta
Trevor Pinnock
We have NOBODY today.
Very well predicted, papageno! Pinnock really and truly did hit the big-time! ( not)
I hope Mr LeBrecht is proud of himself for hosting such an invitation for out and out racists to platform their vicious and outdated racist viewpoints! Shame on you!!!! You are a disgrace and you owe this talented young man Jonathan Heyward a huge apology!! I hope that this gets treated as the racist crime it is!
Nonsense. And few are all that interested in Jonathan Heyward who, whatever his talents, will have to face whatever the world throws at him whether Mr “LeBrecht” hosts it or not. Grow up.
No-one criticises Jonathan Heyward anywhere on this thread.
You have done better this time. You have not confused vicious and viscous, and you have not attached the general dismay at Miss Delia to any purported racism (which I don’t notice at all in the comments). Keep up the good work!
Normal Lebrecht posed a rhetorical question (provocative to be sure) in response to an announcement of three conductors beginning to make their way in a field hardly anybody really understands, and not for the first time has elicited a flurry of opinions. It does make me curious to see for myself what these aspirants are really like. Politics aside, the answer lies in the way the actual listeners are moved — or not — by the performers they craft with the musicians they are lucky enough to conduct.
Martyn Brabbins at 61 is hardly beginning his career – he has a solid record of achievement over many years.
One could argue that he has been grossly overlooked over the years in favour of more, er, fashionable, podium ‘stars’.
All 3 have worked during covid so names up front in selection panel minds….. still a depressing choice when you see the choice in the UK at large….
Martyn Brabbins is an excellent conductor, with a wide range on repertoire terms, prepared to take on unfamiliar pieces. He perhaps suffers from this and not becoming a specialist in fewer areas. I have heard some really great performances from him, largely on radio or tv rather than commercial recordings. Far preferable to some of ‘highly elevated’ modern maestros ( whose names I will not mention).
The RPS makes a name for itself in passing over some of the great artists of our time in favour of the trendy or the safe – Malcolm Arnold being a notable example in the previous gen; these days figures like Paul Lewis, Mahan Esfahani, Christian Zacharias, Janine Jansen, Trevor Pinnock. One only has to look at their juries, though, to see that it’s just a middle-class love-in nowadays.
There must be some PC angle. That’s the only way you get nominated for an award nowadays. Talent doesn’t matter anymore. Your chromosomes and pigmentation do.