I love music, and especially symphonies. There are only a few things that thrill me as much as a great orchestra playing a great symphony (such as Beethoven 3, Schubert 9, Bruckner 7 or Mahler 6) really well.
I've been listening to a wonderful recording of Brahms 2 tonight. It features the London Symphony, with a conductor who is distinctly unglamorous, and who is not particularly famous in the US. But compared to him, Bernstein (who I really like, by the way) is too fussy; Karajan is too slick, Solti and Toscanini are too driven, Furtwangler is too sloppy, and Abbado is too slack.
Bernard Haintink has been making extraordinarily satisfying recordings for more than 40 years now, before with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and now with the London Symphony. His Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler and Bruckner are all great. He did a wonderful Zauberflaute, too. Now if only he'd get around to Haydn, Berlioz and Sibelius, but I guess we have Colin Davis to take care of that.
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