Baton passes to New York Philharmonic’s Alan Gilbert
Nagano, Nézet-séguin not among Top 10 in Bachtrack’s list of busiest conductors
Who is the No. 1 conductor in the world? Never mind Kent Nagano and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. They did not even place in the Top 10 in 2012, says Bachtrack. com.
Bear in mind, however, that the criterion on this chart is not quality but quantity. By that standard, the 2012 title belongs to Alan Gilbert, who is — not coincidentally —the music director of the busiest orchestra in the world, the New York Philharmonic. Gilbert gave 80 concerts, while the NYP logged 144.
Other maestri in the 60-plus-concerts category are: Michael Tilson Thomas (65), Herbert Blomstedt (62), Sir Simon Rattle (62) and Charles Dutoit (60). Blomstedt’s presence on the list is remarkable, given his age, 85. Dutoit, ever the hard-worker, turned 76 in October.
Gustavo Dudamel was the busy champ the previous year, Valery Gergiev the year before. These conductors ranked eighth and seventh in 2012, moving down the ladder a few rungs, probably because they had more dates in the studio.
As for YNS, he seems to be determined to balance spurts of activity with time off, these easily discovered by looking at his calendar at yannicknezetseguin.com. His first appearance of 2013 was Wednesday in Philadelphia. This means he was absent from the podium for more than two weeks. Someone has to talk to that boy.
Nagano’s website (kentnagano.com) is more cryptic. Indeed, it appears to be an untended garden. At the time of writing, there were no engagements showing on his concert calendar and the last “news” posting, concerning the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s opera Babylon at the Bavarian State Opera, dates from Oct. 27.
Take a look at the website of the Gothenburg Symphony (gso.se/sv), this being the ensemble Nagano oversees as principal guest conductor and artistic adviser as of 2013-14. Not a word about him, although in an interview last summer the Gothenburg CEO said Nagano would conduct the Swedish orchestra (which both Dudamel and Dutoit have led as principal conductor) for six or seven weeks a season.
But back to Bachtrack, which is built on a powerful performance-finding engine. This website has also ranked composers according to performances of their works. The sample comprises 12,597 concerts and 4,451 opera performances, which is certainly substantial, although the compilers admit that largebudget operations are given preference, as are orchestral concerts over chamber events.
Beethoven was No. 1 in 2012, as he was in the prior two years, with 1,501 performances. Following Beethoven are Mozart (1,416), Bach (1,106), Brahms (1,030), Schubert (774), Tchaikovsky (660), Handel (652), Haydn (632), Debussy (615) and Schumann (545).
The presence on the Top 10 of Schumann, 1810-1856, is interesting, his anniversary year having been 2010 (when he ranked third with 953). Anniversary years are influential. Liszt, 1811-1886, was No. 6 in 2011 with 700 performances. Mahler, 1860-1911, was No. 9 in 2011 and No. 10 in 2010. His absence from the 2012 charts might be taken as evidence of a general urge to take a breather, those symphonies being formidable undertakings.
Handel made the Top 10 in 2011 and 2012, but mostly on the strength of Messiah, which is perennially the most-performed work in the repertoire. Bachtrack compiled 124 Messiahs, undoubtedly an underestimate, given the many performances of this oratorio given by amateur societies that would fly under the website’s radar.
There are a few anomalies in the “works” chart, as the compilers note. The incredible presence of four Bruckner symphonies among the Top 10, they say, is due to “the fantastic work of the Bruck- ner Journal.” The footnotes also make some distinctions between hemispheres, which are hard to explain. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique does not crack the Top 20 in the overall chart, but apparently ranks second in North America, after Messiah.
The absence of Beethoven’s Fifth (No. 5 in 2011) from the 2012 Top 20 also demands explanation. The Seventh was the top-ranked Beethoven symphony in both 2012 and 2011 — supposedly third overall behind Bruckner’s Fourth. Then we have opera, with Mozart occupying the top three spots and Bizet’s Carmen dipping to No. 11 from No. 1 in 2011. Consult Bachtrack for more results. But exercise caution. Nézet-Séguin is no longer in pause mode. He has six Philadelphia Orchestra concerts in January, five in Verizon Hall and one, this past Thursday, in Carnegie Hall. On the last day of the month he starts a tour of Japan with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. His fellow Canadian and fellow Deutsche Grammophon artist, Jan Lisiecki, is one of the soloists.
Then we have a February run with the London Philharmonic (YNS is principal guest conductor of that orchestra) before a return to Philadelphia (plus one date in Carnegie) with a program including Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
This is significant. The proverbial well-placed source tells me that Nézet-Séguin’s inaugural Deutsche Grammophon recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra will couple this work (introduced to North America in 1922 by the Philadelphians under Leopold Stokowski) with Stokowski Bach transcriptions. Cinephiles know both The Rite and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor from their use on the soundtrack of Fantasia.
Other DG plans: The cycle of Schumann symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe presented in Paris in early November by Radio France. A possible sequel will be a cycle of Mendelssohn symphonies. We are awaiting a DG disc of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, reportedly the first of three recordings with that ensemble.
The Yellow Label is also committed to a cycle of Mozart’s mature operas in collaboration with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Baden-Baden Summer Festival (an event to siphon some of the high-end audience from Salzburg). Don Giovanni is already on the shelves.
These operas will be the only video releases. Despite Nézet-Séguin’s watchability, the simple truth is that the customer base for concerts on DVD and Blu-ray has not materialized. Nor has the classical audience for downloading, whatever you read in geek columns. There is some movement toward iTunes in the U.S. classical market, but sales in Europe, the U.K. and Canada remain mostly “physical” — the industry jargon for the good old CD.