David He was indeed a great conductor and being based in London I heard him conduct many, many dozens of times in concert, at the Proms at Covent Garden and at ENO. Every thing from Wagner to G&S. His versatility is summed up by the last five things I heard him conduct which were Gounod's Romeo et Juliette: Britten's Turn of the Screw:Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen:Elgar's First Symphony and Patience by G&S. Every single one was superb.
Back in the day when I attended untold performances pre opening rehearsals and talks at ENO I always attended everything with Mackerras - he was unfailingly informative, intelligent and entertaining with an occasional splash of slight indiscretion. He is much missed.
I actually ordered his Dvorak symphonies 7-9 set with LPO last week, without knowing this same version is included in the ICON box which I could listen to it on youtube. I just finished listening to it. Wow what a performance. This might be my new favorite Dvorak 7th, and I'm so excited that I ordered the set! Now I'm seriously considering getting this box as well. Mackerras is one of the conductor I found out in your channel, and he's truly amazing. As always, thanks David!
Terrific! As I noted on one of your earlier discussions of Mackerras, I saved your review article in Opus many moons ago! He’s maybe my favorite conductor of all time if I had to choose only one. I was hoping that his incredible performance of Weinberger’s Schwanda Polka and Fugue would be included, but it seems not. Too bad, but I have it on my EMI Phoenixa CD along with that Sinfonietta, Janacek opera preludes and an equally wonderful Overture to the Bartered Bride. A fabulous disc if you can still get it. Thanks, as always, for your enthusiasm!
Watching your videos, I notice that the conductors who appear more frequently as references are the "historical" ones: Mackerras, Szell, Ormandy, Klemperer... Even those who are still alive are somehow "historical": Chailly, Haitink... I think all of them have a particular personality in music that lets you know their own style and their own way with conducting. But I don't see this personality in the young generation of conductors, who, for me, have a generalised way of conducting. It's as if they are afraid to interfere with the composer's thoughts. But that's what I as a listener want, that each conductor give me a distinct interpretation of the same work. Perhaps I am wrong, of course. So I'd like to ask you: who do you think are the most "personal" conductors in the new generation?
If I was a young up and coming conductor, I would have tortured 'Icons' such as Mackerras to mentor me, to let me observe them, to really grasp the passion they exuded. Maybe the hotshots of today think & feel otherwise...
One of my very great regrets was not being able to persuade him to perform Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony live with the Philharmonia Orchestra (whose Principal Guest Conductor he was for most of his final decade) and to make a recording of it. I tried several times, knowing how excellent he was in all Central European music from this period, but his reply was always the same: "It would be a box office disaster". I disagreed and still do: he would have been fantastic in this music. But how can you seriously disagree with a great conductor?
Wow. I had always wished that he would record the Rustic Wedding Symphony. That would have at long last been THE recording of it that all sensible people have been waiting for forever!
This set is on Spotify and I look forward to mixing these recordings bit by bit into my queue. I had no idea Mackerras recorded any Mahler, so I am very intrigued to hear how Sir Charles’s 5th stacks up the big bullies on the block for that one. I imagine the interpretation will be somewhat different from the deadly serious takes on Mahler 5.
I'd love to hear Andrew Lloyd Webber play Sullivan's Cello Concerto but I suspect it was his brother, Julian 😉 Another great box set, thanks for the review Dave. This one is right up there alongside Silvestri's Icon box, for me.
Your admiration and championship of Sir Charles is most deserved. His Warner Icon box is indeed full of musical, somewhat overlooked treasures, like his Rite of Spring and Mahler 5th. Perhaps, we will have. one day, your opinion too on the Frémaux and Martinon Icon boxes.
I am working my way through the Fremaux box and enjoying it. I didn't know of him until finding the Icon box while looking at Massenet recordings after David's video on his music. I think David might have done a video on the Martinon Icon box. He has definitely referenced Martinon many times.
I share your admiration for Mackerras' artistry. Do you know if his 1959 recording of the Handel Royal Fireworks Music, first released in the U.S. on Vanguard, has ever made it to CD? Its Vanguard LP release also included one of the Concerti a Due Cori. The Fireworks Music is the original orchestration (slightly augmented), with 73 wind and percussion players drawn from the major London Orchestras. Splendid, vibrant performances - what a glorious noise!. If this was originally released in the U.K. on the Pye label (as were several of the Vanguard releases), I suspect Warner owns the rights.
One of the most memorable concerts I attended when living in the UK in the 90s was a Royal Festival Hall concert featuring the Royal Philharmonic conducted by Mackerras. The program was just as eclectic as this Warner Box. The first half of the concert was Sullivan's cello concerto with Raphael Wallfisch as soloist, followed by Janacek's Taras Bulba, and ending after the intermission with Brahms' Symphony No. 3. Each work was played brilliantly. I was sitting on the main floor very close to the podium. It was one of these "young persons" concerts, so Mackerras prefaced his performance of the Janacek with a little lecture about the "program" of Taras Bulba (which is quite gruesome). About half way through the audience began to chuckle, and he paused to say, "... you know, I'm not trying to make this sound funny," but, of course, he did and it was. Will never forget it.
I have an old LP of Mackerras conducting Dvorak 8 with the Hamburg Philharmonic. It has long been a favorite. At the time I got the record, I had no idea who Mackerras was!
I attended a performance of his of Mahler 6. He did it the way I like it, which is the anti David way: adagio 2nd and 3 hammer blows. The decision to have 3 blows was announced in advance in the newspaper. The performance is available, but if you want to buy it, sadly it's on the BBC label and is expensive. In the concert, before the interval was a Strauss tone poem. A great night.
I got that CD free with a music magazine, and it's very good - even if I flipped the order of the middle movements when I ripped it to my iPod. I'm a "Scherzo 2nd" kind of person, too :)
Mackerras was equally adept in Verdi, based on a 1971 San Francisco Opera broadcast of Un ballo in maschera with Arroyo and Pavarotti. (You can hear the big duet on TH-cam.) Exciting and magnificently played.
There is a fantastic Mahler 6 from Mackerras that appeared on BBC Music Magazine Cover CD with the BBC Philharmonic - IIRC no exposition repeat in the first movement (strangely) but 3 hammer-blows!
I had a few Mackerras recordings for a long time and enjoyed them all, but since finding your videos I've accumulated so many that I probably have more recordings by him than of any other conductor now. I have different performances conducted by him of some of the things in this box, but the video prompted another look through his recordings and I found a cheap Telarc coupling of 2 Haydn symphony discs with St. Luke's (100, 101, 103, 104) called "Everybody's Haydn". I love his recordings of Mozart and Beethoven but have never heard his Haydn, so I picked up those London symphonies plus the other Haydn disc he did with St. Luke's that has symphonies 31 (Hornsignal) and 45 (Farewell).
Thanks for another great video Mr. Hurwitz! I have Supraphon, Hyperion and some other Mackerras recordings.This set is now on my list. For a long time I was considering his live recordings with LPO on Signum label (Dvorak, Mahler, Schubert etc.). Do they deserve your recommendation? Or at least any of them that you would single out as a must?
When I was young, I read a rave review of the Messiah by MacKerras. I was just getting into classical music so I bought the LP. It was terrific. I don't remember the orchestra or label. Maybe Angel? I will look for this box set - it sounds great!
And Eloquence just released a disk of Gluck and Rameau ballet music recorded with the LSO by Philips in 1965. Also included were an overture each by Cherubini and Cimarosa that have apparently never been issued.
hi jfddoc, thanks for the information. Do you know where I can purchase Eloquence disks online or in-person? I am based in Taiwan most of the time but do travel, well, used to before covid, to London for work from time to time. Thanks!
This is such a fantastic collection. The only frustrating thing about it is it leaves you wanting what's left out: eg. the Mozart Jupiter symphony originally coupled to the 40th, Dvorak's 8th and 9th, the Mahler 1st, and the full Messiah. A complete Mackerras Warner recordings box would be wonderful.
Dear Mr Hurwitz! Please try to consider a talk about Haydn's piano trios. I hope we don't have to wait until your symphony crusade is finished before you are ready to talk about other music by Haydn. Best wishes Fred.
Dear David, Thanks, as usual, for your your boundless enthusiasm and sharp discerning ear. A question: you respond to Randy Wolfgang, saying that you've done a video on Mackerras's groundbreaking (and exciting) Royal Fireworks Musicke, but, try as I might, I can't find said video. Help!. --Harvey
Hard to say who is 'greatest' or not. But poor underrated in the past Sir Arthur's best CAN stand up for the majority of music lovers today with the best of Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Holst and others, and above much of the best of the formerly touted greats such as Parry and Stanford. And, Sir Charles wonderfully was a catalyst for that to happen...
Hi Mr Hurwitz I found this bad boy with another icon box of Janos starker in a used record store in Gloucester mass 15 bucks for both combined I think I got a good deal dude
How well is Mackerras represented in opera? I love his recording of Così on Telarc, and was wondering if you and others share my esteem of this vibrant performance.
Daniel, I agree that Cosi recording is great. It is included in a very cheap Telarc box (without librettos) titled "The Great Operas" which also has Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; he also did 3 other Mozart operas with them that are available individually. Other Mackerras opera recordings I have and would recommend are the Janacek operas on Decca with the Vienna Philharmonic (The Cunning Little Vixen or Jenufa are great ones to start with if you don't know any of them), Dvorak's Russalka, and a single disc with 3 fragments from Juliette by Martinu.
@@DavesClassicalGuide David, any thoughts on the Fidelio recording Mackerras did with the SCO? I read that he uses a piano playing some continuo, which sounds kind of odd, but I know he was a musicologist and had some reasoning behind it. I have the vintage Klemperer with Vickers and Ludwig and was thinking about going for the Mackerras since I've enjoyed all his recordings with the SCO that I've heard and figure it would be quite different.
@@Don-md6wn I wish Telarc/Warner would re-release Mackerras' 4-disc set of G&S operettas (Mikado, Pirates, Yeoman and Pinafore), which - even if there's no dialogue - are my favourite recordings of those works. Orchestrally and vocally, they're wonderful.
If one lists up the composers you mention in your final rhetorical question at the end of your enthusiastic, panegyric peroration on the Mackerras box, the question almost answers itself (with a slight amendment or two). Who did equally well conduct Handel, Mozart, Dvorak, Delius, Elgar (to some extent) - Mahler, not yet en vogue, thus substituted with his contemporary Richard Strauss, and Janacek put in a parentheses, for which you substitute generous sprinklings of Sibelius and Wagner? The answer is self evident: Sir Thomas Beecham! He is of course from another generation than Mackerras and thus we have to allow for the parentheses around Janacek, while still keeping in mind, that he, actually very early after its premiere, led the first, british performance of Salome - to the indignated outrage of many of his contemporaries! Ps. I think, I forgot to say, that your praise of the ICON box immediately sent me scurrying to the pages of Amazon! 😉
Much as I love Beecham, he was nowhere near as versatile as Mackerras. In particular, he was not a great fan of Mozart's orchestral works, or Beethoven, and you yourself essentially made exceptions for Mahler, Janacek, and Elgar. It's enough that Beecham did a lot, and did it fabulously well.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I was just - tongue in cheek - trying to make the point, that versatility might be an entity not easily measured. Of course you are right about Beecham and Beethoven (except for that beautifull 2nd symphony... and if my memory doesn't elude me, I think he left a quite fine live 7th, too?). For a person "not a fan" of Mozart's orchestral music, Beecham left a remarkable recorded legacy of it - and what Mackerras concerns, I can't recall to have seen him leave piles of recorded Gretry and Mehul behind him? Versatility in another perspective is represented by Hans Rosbaud. To my knowledge no early or baroque music, neither can I recall to have seen much in the lighter vein under his baton - but excellent, dry-witted Haydn, good Mozart and Beethoven, over Bruckner and Mahler, to the 2nd Vienna School and beyond (as in f.ex. Varese and Boulez, to mention but a few of the unmentionables). Mackerras and Rosbaud, two very different, musical personalities, indeed, but I wonder whether not Rosbaud's championship of much contemporary (i.e. 20th century) music would make up for the inches on the yardstick of versatility, he probably looses, when compared to Mackerras back in time/repertoire?
Mackerras' Rachmaninoff 3rd Symphony, coupled with the Symphonic Dances with the RLPO are real sleeper versions IMO and again shows how versatile a musician he was. I suppose it didn't get much exposure because of some lukewarm critical comment here in the UK. Shameful really.
I was going to mention these recordings. They are superb. They way he treats the second subject in the first movement of Rach3 is astonishing, it really is beautiful and almost Mozart-esque! A real sleeper indeed!
David He was indeed a great conductor and being based in London I heard him conduct many, many dozens of times in concert, at the Proms at Covent Garden and at ENO. Every thing from Wagner to G&S. His versatility is summed up by the last five things I heard him conduct which were Gounod's Romeo et Juliette: Britten's Turn of the Screw:Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen:Elgar's First Symphony and Patience by G&S. Every single one was superb.
Back in the day when I attended untold performances pre opening rehearsals and talks at ENO I always attended everything with Mackerras - he was unfailingly informative, intelligent and entertaining with an occasional splash of slight indiscretion. He is much missed.
I love everything I have of Charles Mackerras music making, he was so consistent in everything he did.
I actually ordered his Dvorak symphonies 7-9 set with LPO last week, without knowing this same version is included in the ICON box which I could listen to it on youtube. I just finished listening to it. Wow what a performance. This might be my new favorite Dvorak 7th, and I'm so excited that I ordered the set! Now I'm seriously considering getting this box as well. Mackerras is one of the conductor I found out in your channel, and he's truly amazing. As always, thanks David!
In addition to Mahler 1 and 5, he also recorded Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Ann Murray, Thomas Allen, LPO.
Terrific! As I noted on one of your earlier discussions of Mackerras, I saved your review article in Opus many moons ago! He’s maybe my favorite conductor of all time if I had to choose only one. I was hoping that his incredible performance of Weinberger’s Schwanda Polka and Fugue would be included, but it seems not. Too bad, but I have it on my EMI Phoenixa CD along with that Sinfonietta, Janacek opera preludes and an equally wonderful Overture to the Bartered Bride. A fabulous disc if you can still get it. Thanks, as always, for your enthusiasm!
Speaking of boxes, we are finally getting an Abbado London Symphony Orchestra box! Your wish has been granted!
I absolutly agree with you. Mackerras is a must for all music lovers.
Watching your videos, I notice that the conductors who appear more frequently as references are the "historical" ones: Mackerras, Szell, Ormandy, Klemperer... Even those who are still alive are somehow "historical": Chailly, Haitink... I think all of them have a particular personality in music that lets you know their own style and their own way with conducting.
But I don't see this personality in the young generation of conductors, who, for me, have a generalised way of conducting. It's as if they are afraid to interfere with the composer's thoughts. But that's what I as a listener want, that each conductor give me a distinct interpretation of the same work.
Perhaps I am wrong, of course. So I'd like to ask you: who do you think are the most "personal" conductors in the new generation?
If I was a young up and coming conductor, I would have tortured 'Icons' such as Mackerras to mentor me, to let me observe them, to really grasp the passion they exuded.
Maybe the hotshots of today think & feel otherwise...
One of my very great regrets was not being able to persuade him to perform Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony live with the Philharmonia Orchestra (whose Principal Guest Conductor he was for most of his final decade) and to make a recording of it. I tried several times, knowing how excellent he was in all Central European music from this period, but his reply was always the same: "It would be a box office disaster". I disagreed and still do: he would have been fantastic in this music. But how can you seriously disagree with a great conductor?
Wow. I had always wished that he would record the Rustic Wedding Symphony. That would have at long last been THE recording of it that all sensible people have been waiting for forever!
Not exactly forever, but since Sir Thomas made his - that could, indeed, need a replacement in better sound!
Another vote here for Sir Charles' Enigma Variations! Big beefy pedal organ in the finale tilts the scale for me! Curious to hear his Argo version.
This set is on Spotify and I look forward to mixing these recordings bit by bit into my queue. I had no idea Mackerras recorded any Mahler, so I am very intrigued to hear how Sir Charles’s 5th stacks up the big bullies on the block for that one. I imagine the interpretation will be somewhat different from the deadly serious takes on Mahler 5.
I'd love to hear Andrew Lloyd Webber play Sullivan's Cello Concerto but I suspect it was his brother, Julian 😉
Another great box set, thanks for the review Dave. This one is right up there alongside Silvestri's Icon box, for me.
Whoops. Of course it was! Silly me.
Pineapple Poll is on there...
As it should be; HALLELUJAH! 😊🍍🎶
Your admiration and championship of Sir Charles is most deserved. His Warner Icon box is indeed full of musical, somewhat overlooked treasures, like his Rite of Spring and Mahler 5th. Perhaps, we will have. one day, your opinion too on the Frémaux and Martinon Icon boxes.
I am working my way through the Fremaux box and enjoying it. I didn't know of him until finding the Icon box while looking at Massenet recordings after David's video on his music. I think David might have done a video on the Martinon Icon box. He has definitely referenced Martinon many times.
I share your admiration for Mackerras' artistry. Do you know if his 1959 recording of the Handel Royal Fireworks Music, first released in the U.S. on Vanguard, has ever made it to CD? Its Vanguard LP release also included one of the Concerti a Due Cori. The Fireworks Music is the original orchestration (slightly augmented), with 73 wind and percussion players drawn from the major London Orchestras. Splendid, vibrant performances - what a glorious noise!. If this was originally released in the U.K. on the Pye label (as were several of the Vanguard releases), I suspect Warner owns the rights.
One of the most memorable concerts I attended when living in the UK in the 90s was a Royal Festival Hall concert featuring the Royal Philharmonic conducted by Mackerras. The program was just as eclectic as this Warner Box. The first half of the concert was Sullivan's cello concerto with Raphael Wallfisch as soloist, followed by Janacek's Taras Bulba, and ending after the intermission with Brahms' Symphony No. 3. Each work was played brilliantly. I was sitting on the main floor very close to the podium. It was one of these "young persons" concerts, so Mackerras prefaced his performance of the Janacek with a little lecture about the "program" of Taras Bulba (which is quite gruesome). About half way through the audience began to chuckle, and he paused to say, "... you know, I'm not trying to make this sound funny," but, of course, he did and it was. Will never forget it.
I have an old LP of Mackerras conducting Dvorak 8 with the Hamburg Philharmonic. It has long been a favorite. At the time I got the record, I had no idea who Mackerras was!
I attended a performance of his of Mahler 6. He did it the way I like it, which is the anti David way: adagio 2nd and 3 hammer blows. The decision to have 3 blows was announced in advance in the newspaper. The performance is available, but if you want to buy it, sadly it's on the BBC label and is expensive. In the concert, before the interval was a Strauss tone poem. A great night.
I got that CD free with a music magazine, and it's very good - even if I flipped the order of the middle movements when I ripped it to my iPod. I'm a "Scherzo 2nd" kind of person, too :)
Mackerras was equally adept in Verdi, based on a 1971 San Francisco Opera broadcast of Un ballo in maschera with Arroyo and Pavarotti. (You can hear the big duet on TH-cam.) Exciting and magnificently played.
There is a fantastic Mahler 6 from Mackerras that appeared on BBC Music Magazine Cover CD with the BBC Philharmonic - IIRC no exposition repeat in the first movement (strangely) but 3 hammer-blows!
Yes, it's on You Tube and is a live recording. Orchestra play wonderfully well for him too !
I had a few Mackerras recordings for a long time and enjoyed them all, but since finding your videos I've accumulated so many that I probably have more recordings by him than of any other conductor now. I have different performances conducted by him of some of the things in this box, but the video prompted another look through his recordings and I found a cheap Telarc coupling of 2 Haydn symphony discs with St. Luke's (100, 101, 103, 104) called "Everybody's Haydn". I love his recordings of Mozart and Beethoven but have never heard his Haydn, so I picked up those London symphonies plus the other Haydn disc he did with St. Luke's that has symphonies 31 (Hornsignal) and 45 (Farewell).
Those Haydn performances are great too.
I have those Teldec Haydn recordings separately, and they're excellent.
Thanks for another great video Mr. Hurwitz! I have Supraphon, Hyperion and some other Mackerras recordings.This set is now on my list. For a long time I was considering his live recordings with LPO on Signum label (Dvorak, Mahler, Schubert etc.). Do they deserve your recommendation? Or at least any of them that you would single out as a must?
When I was young, I read a rave review of the Messiah by MacKerras. I was just getting into classical music so I bought the LP. It was terrific. I don't remember the orchestra or label. Maybe Angel? I will look for this box set - it sounds great!
Yes, it was on EMI.
Thanks for this. I’ve just ordered it and also spotted the Janet Baker Icon box which is even cheaper!
Smashing review! Thank you
I like you trying to make a case for Delius.. he actually wrote something louder than mezzo forte? I'll have to give it a listen!
And Eloquence just released a disk of Gluck and Rameau ballet music recorded with the LSO by Philips in 1965. Also included were an overture each by Cherubini and Cimarosa that have apparently never been issued.
hi jfddoc, thanks for the information. Do you know where I can purchase Eloquence disks online or in-person? I am based in Taiwan most of the time but do travel, well, used to before covid, to London for work from time to time. Thanks!
This is such a fantastic collection. The only frustrating thing about it is it leaves you wanting what's left out: eg. the Mozart Jupiter symphony originally coupled to the 40th, Dvorak's 8th and 9th, the Mahler 1st, and the full Messiah. A complete Mackerras Warner recordings box would be wonderful.
His recording of "Messiah" is one of my favorites!
Dear Mr Hurwitz!
Please try to consider a talk about Haydn's piano trios. I hope we don't have to wait until your symphony crusade is finished before you are ready to talk about other music by Haydn.
Best wishes Fred.
I always talk about other music by Haydn.
Dear David,
Thanks, as usual, for your your boundless enthusiasm and sharp discerning ear.
A question: you respond to Randy Wolfgang, saying that you've done a video on Mackerras's groundbreaking (and exciting) Royal Fireworks Musicke, but, try as I might, I can't find said video. Help!.
--Harvey
Not that version alone, but the work on disc. Mackerras is one of my choice versions: th-cam.com/video/PIOEeOhoKp4/w-d-xo.html.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thank you. I agree.
12 hours later, out of print!
Hard to say who is 'greatest' or not. But poor underrated in the past Sir Arthur's best CAN stand up for the majority of music lovers today with the best of Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Holst and others, and above much of the best of the formerly touted greats such as Parry and Stanford. And, Sir Charles wonderfully was a catalyst for that to happen...
Hi Mr Hurwitz I found this bad boy with another icon box of Janos starker in a used record store in Gloucester mass 15 bucks for both combined I think I got a good deal dude
How well is Mackerras represented in opera? I love his recording of Così on Telarc, and was wondering if you and others share my esteem of this vibrant performance.
Mackerras did a great deal of opera, especially Janacek and opera in English. He was terrific there too.
Daniel, I agree that Cosi recording is great. It is included in a very cheap Telarc box (without librettos) titled "The Great Operas" which also has Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; he also did 3 other Mozart operas with them that are available individually. Other Mackerras opera recordings I have and would recommend are the Janacek operas on Decca with the Vienna Philharmonic (The Cunning Little Vixen or Jenufa are great ones to start with if you don't know any of them), Dvorak's Russalka, and a single disc with 3 fragments from Juliette by Martinu.
@@DavesClassicalGuide David, any thoughts on the Fidelio recording Mackerras did with the SCO? I read that he uses a piano playing some continuo, which sounds kind of odd, but I know he was a musicologist and had some reasoning behind it. I have the vintage Klemperer with Vickers and Ludwig and was thinking about going for the Mackerras since I've enjoyed all his recordings with the SCO that I've heard and figure it would be quite different.
@@Don-md6wn That's your call. Go with your gut, and your feeling about the singers. Conductors matter in opera, but not as much as the voices...
@@Don-md6wn I wish Telarc/Warner would re-release Mackerras' 4-disc set of G&S operettas (Mikado, Pirates, Yeoman and Pinafore), which - even if there's no dialogue - are my favourite recordings of those works. Orchestrally and vocally, they're wonderful.
He also did a wonderful Royal Fireworks with all winds recordred in an all-nighter
Yes, I made a video about that one.
Did he make those song recordings with Soderstrom? Or was it Schwarzkopf?
Soderkopf.
Sodastream... I listened to it online :)
If one lists up the composers you mention in your final rhetorical question at the end of your enthusiastic, panegyric peroration on the Mackerras box, the question almost answers itself (with a slight amendment or two). Who did equally well conduct Handel, Mozart, Dvorak, Delius, Elgar (to some extent) - Mahler, not yet en vogue, thus substituted with his contemporary Richard Strauss, and Janacek put in a parentheses, for which you substitute generous sprinklings of Sibelius and Wagner?
The answer is self evident: Sir Thomas Beecham!
He is of course from another generation than Mackerras and thus we have to allow for the parentheses around Janacek, while still keeping in mind, that he, actually very early after its premiere, led the first, british performance of Salome - to the indignated outrage of many of his contemporaries!
Ps. I think, I forgot to say, that your praise of the ICON box immediately sent me scurrying to the pages of Amazon! 😉
Much as I love Beecham, he was nowhere near as versatile as Mackerras. In particular, he was not a great fan of Mozart's orchestral works, or Beethoven, and you yourself essentially made exceptions for Mahler, Janacek, and Elgar. It's enough that Beecham did a lot, and did it fabulously well.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I was just - tongue in cheek - trying to make the point, that versatility might be an entity not easily measured. Of course you are right about Beecham and Beethoven (except for that beautifull 2nd symphony... and if my memory doesn't elude me, I think he left a quite fine live 7th, too?). For a person "not a fan" of Mozart's orchestral music, Beecham left a remarkable recorded legacy of it - and what Mackerras concerns, I can't recall to have seen him leave piles of recorded Gretry and Mehul behind him?
Versatility in another perspective is represented by Hans Rosbaud. To my knowledge no early or baroque music, neither can I recall to have seen much in the lighter vein under his baton - but excellent, dry-witted Haydn, good Mozart and Beethoven, over Bruckner and Mahler, to the 2nd Vienna School and beyond (as in f.ex. Varese and Boulez, to mention but a few of the unmentionables). Mackerras and Rosbaud, two very different, musical personalities, indeed, but I wonder whether not Rosbaud's championship of much contemporary (i.e. 20th century) music would make up for the inches on the yardstick of versatility, he probably looses, when compared to Mackerras back in time/repertoire?
@@jensguldalrasmussen6446 I agree that versatility is not easily measured, but like pornography, we know it when we see it, don't we?
Mackerras' Rachmaninoff 3rd Symphony, coupled with the Symphonic Dances with the RLPO are real sleeper versions IMO and again shows how versatile a musician he was. I suppose it didn't get much exposure because of some lukewarm critical comment here in the UK. Shameful really.
I was going to mention these recordings. They are superb. They way he treats the second subject in the first movement of Rach3 is astonishing, it really is beautiful and almost Mozart-esque! A real sleeper indeed!
Two weeks later and it is out-of-print. Sigh.