In search of the best

BBC Music Magazine’s previous polls Over the past 12 years we’ve conducted, if you’ll excuse the pun, a number of ‘greatest’ polls. We’re well aware that naming the greatest in any discipline is something of a spurious exercise, but our results have never been anything other than enlightening, often puzzling, sometimes infuriating. Starting in April 2007, a selection of critics crowned Maria Callas Queen Soprano, pipping Joan Sutherland and Victoria de los Angeles to the throne. With a taste for polling, we skipped onto tenors, naming Plácido Domingo as the ne plus ultra. And in December 2008, we asked the choirmasters from around the world to vote for their favourite carol. Harold Darke’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s In the Bleak Midwinter triumphed, and media coverage included the carol being sung in the Blue Peter garden live on BBC Breakfast. Pianists followed in 2010, but instead of asking the critics, we turned to 100 concert pianists who chose Rachmaninov as their hero. In 2011, 100 maestros named Carlos Kleiber as the conductors’ conductor. And 100 violinists showed their respect for the enduring legacy of Russian player David Oistrakh in 2013. In

2016, we asked 151 conductors to name the finest symphony: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ came out on top. Finally, upping the ante 12 months later, 172 opera singers responded to our calls for votes on the greatest opera, which we revealed as Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in the October 2017 issue.