Eighteen CD box sets. Seventeen conductors. One-hundred sixty-two days. Five and a half months.
Here are the conductors (in alphabetical order) to whom I’ll listen during the course of my latest musical adventure:
Claudio Abbado (1933-2014)
Daniel Barenboim (1942-)
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
Herbert Blomstedt (1927-)
Karl Bohm (1894-1981)
Andre Cluytens (1905-1967)
Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1954)
Bernard Haitink (1929-)
Eugen Jochum (1902-1987)
Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) – twice, from two legendary cycles: 1963 and 1977
Otto Klemperer (1885-1973)
Franz Konwitschny (1901-1962)
Pierre Monteux (1875-1964)
Simon Rattle (1955-)
George Szell (1897-1970)
Gunter Wand (1912-2002)
David Zinman (1936-)
My criteria for choosing these particular conductors over all others was not necessarily scientific, nor was it totally random. Some of them – Barenboim, Furtwangler, Haitink, Jochum, Karajan, Klemperer, Konwitschny, for example – were conductors that were part of my Bruckner projects:
63 More Days With Bruckner And Me
I thought they were interesting conducting Bruckner, so I wanted to find out if they were equally as interesting conducting Beethoven.
The other conductors were chosen based on Internet searches to the tune of “Who is the best conductor for Beethoven’s symphonies?” I’d read the answers and then ponder it a bit. Karajan, for example, conducted four Beethoven cycles, with two of them (1963 and 1977) considered must-buys. So I did. (Who am I to argue with the Internet?) One conductor – Pierre Monteux – was someone I’d never heard of. So when I found his complete Beethoven cycle on Amazon, I bought it.
Ultimately, my criteria for the box sets I chose was simple: They had to be easy-to-obtain. I did not want to seek out the rarest of the rare, the most expensive of the most expensive. And I did that for two reasons:
1. I didn’t want to spend a fortune amassing them all, and
2. If someone reads something I’ve written and wants to get the box set, he/she could do so with a few simple keystrokes