The Five Greatest Conductor-Accompanists

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Hello, friends. This is Dave Hurwitz, executive editor at ClassicsToday.com.

[00:00:05]Here with the five greatest conductor accompanists.

[00:00:10]Now, I we've been talking about this for a long time. And what catalyzed this particular video is that somebody wrote to me about about Leonard now about Erich Leinsdorf. Leonard Leinsdorf no Erich Leinsdorf. And said, "Oh, he made very exciting opera recordings, but you say he was sort of a mediocre conductor.

[00:00:30]How was that possible?" Well, it's very possible as I explained in my reply to this person, which is that not everybody is good at everything. I mean, [laughter] you know, everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. But conductors, interestingly enough, are supposed to be sort of like equally strong at everything, but they're not.

[00:00:51]They really aren't. And I mean, some are. Some are. Some of the greatest ones Well, see one who is actually in this list as you'll see. But you know, some conductors are splendid when they are accompanying others, whether in the opera house or on the concert stage. And they were known for that. And and it was a almost a a badge of shame for some conductors to be labeled an accompanist because, you know, conductors are supposed to be hot shot egomaniacs who take all of the attention and credit for everything.

[00:01:27]Um and you know, just to be able to seed some of the glory to someone else was somehow considered a you know, second-rate, which is absolutely absurd.

[00:01:41]Beyond ridiculous. It really is. But you know, that's the way it was. That's the way it was, you know, because you got these egomaniacal romantic people type people. And of course, fights between conductors and soloists were legion. You know, Rubinstein and Reiner and Karrion and Weissenberg or whoever he didn't get along with. You know, some conductors just did not get along well with others because, >> [music] >> you know, they were used to having all the attention themselves.

[00:02:13]And it's very, very interesting for that reason.

[00:02:17]Um to list a few and to talk about the phenomenon. So, let's get to our list of five. And if you have a list of five, just five, uh feel free to contribute.

[00:02:28]So, the five greatest conductor accompanists were First, Charles Mackerras. Charles Mackerras was the I example of a conductor who was great at everything.

[00:02:37]I mean, it was just If it had to do with music, he did it and he did it fabulously. He was an amazing accompanist because he was an incredible opera conductor. Um singers loved working with him. He was so both considerate of what they wanted but had very firm ideas of the way things should go and he managed to be collegial and have his way while letting the singers shine, which was which was great. I mean, as a choral conductor, as an operatic conductor, and as a concerto conductor. And a concerto composer.

[00:03:09]Remember, he rediscovered the Sullivan Cello Concerto and reconstituted it from like just a cello part or something like that. I you know, he was he was he was so deeply in the music that he could do whatever he was called upon to do and do it supremely well. Um there are many, many examples of this in his discography, um which we don't need to go into, but yeah, and he was a guy who had it all. Um including accompanists and he didn't regard accompanying as a a uh as slumming, as something second-rate.

[00:03:45]Next, Erich Leinsdorf. There's the guy because Erich Leinsdorf was a very fine concerto conductor.

[00:03:52]Uh he made excellent concerto recordings with all kinds of soloists. Um and he was also a terrific opera conductor. He had a real sense of the theater. He knew how to let his singers shine. He was direct.

[00:04:08]He was direct and exciting as an opera conductor. And of course, you know, the most famous example of that is his Decca Die Walküre, which sort of preempted Georg Solti's. He got Birgit Nilsson, he got Jon Vickers, he got, you know, fabulous singers. And and made amazing opera recordings. His Lohengrin when in Boston was the recording that supposedly bankrupted RCA and got them out of the opera business, but it was a very good performance of Lohengrin. He was a fine and exciting conductor. His His Ballo in Maschera was tremendous.

[00:04:47]Um on RCA, he had a real gift as an opera conductor, an ability to to forge an ensemble and and deliver really really first-class results. So, there's that. Next, Claudio Abbado, the micromanager. Abbado had in his heart um a certain level of humility, um a willingness to take a step back and let his soloists operate. And he did it just beautifully.

[00:05:22]I mean, his collaborations with Martha Argerich are legendary. He was also a splendid opera conductor. His Verdi, I mean, Simon Boccanegra, his Rossini, Cenerentola, his Boris Godunov on Sony, which was the recording that bankrupted [laughter] Sony and got them out of the opera business. They sold like three copies, but it was a fabulous Boris Godunov. He was uh an excellent colleague and and uh collegiate artist. And I think that deserves good bit of credit and people don't talk about it and people are ashamed to talk about it.

[00:06:01]But there's nothing shameful about it.

[00:06:03]Another one, a really splendid collegiate conductor and grumpy and but wonderful nonetheless was Karl Böhm.

[00:06:11]You know, Karl Böhm was a theater man to his core.

[00:06:16]I mean, even when he was near death and he did you know, that Elektra video with Leonie Rysanek, you know, I mean, he was you know, they thought he was absolutely going to drop dead.

[00:06:25]>> [laughter] >> I mean, but he got through it. And it sounded marvelous. You know, you just had to look at him and say, "Opera." And he would wake up. His Mozart was splendid. His Wagner was great. You know, his Tristan with Birgit Nilsson is amazing. His Ring is thrillingly exciting. Um he did Wozzeck live and it was incredible. He was a a a fantastic accompanist and he made wonderful concerto accompaniments, too.

[00:06:55]I mean, he had that ability as well. He was he was a a lifelong colleague.

[00:07:02]And he had a reputation of being a little a little grumpy sometimes, but still um he was considerate of his soloists um and and they loved working with him for the most part. And last but not least, the ultimate accompanist, the conductor who got you know, for whom it was bandied about as an insult, which is really insulting. I mean, it's obnoxious.

[00:07:26]Eugene Ormandy. Everybody liked to work with Eugene Ormandy. He was the most considerate conductor in the universe.

[00:07:33]And that wasn't to say he didn't have his standards. He had that gorgeous Philadelphia sound. He had strong ideas about how music should go, but when he was working with soloists who he respected and who he cared about, he was unbelievably considerate. He deployed that orchestra, that sound to the advantage of his soloist, creating beautiful sonic frameworks within which they could operate.

[00:08:06]Ormandy was was amazing at that. He was also a great conductor in other things.

[00:08:11]Um but but because he was such a fine accompanist and because all the great soloists like to work with him, soloists who were sometimes more famous than he was, and he didn't seem to have a problem with it, uh his reputation suffered.

[00:08:25]Which is really, really ironic because I'm not trying to denigrate the role of the accompanist when I say a conductor is a mere accompanist.

[00:08:37]I'm saying that they had skills that were best deployed in one place than in other places.

[00:08:44]And there are lots of accompanist conductors out there today. Period instrument people primarily, um and lots of ex-choral conductors, like, you know, Robert Shaw and people like that. Roger Norrington was one. You know, people who got their start just conducting choruses and voices and then went on to orchestral um work with with differing degrees of success, let's just say. Because the requirements are very different. And the training is somewhat different. And so and so we find, you know, there there are conductors who really made a mark in that specific task.

[00:09:24]They were in a sense specialists, and maybe they didn't want to be known that way, but they were.

[00:09:30]And the recorded evidence speaks for itself. So [snorts] we need to call it as we hear it.

[00:09:37]That's my list, and I'm interested to see yours. If you would like to chime in on this topic, keep on listening, friends. Thanks for joining me.