After watching this, I can't help but think of the lively Petrushka I heard a nearly 80-year old MTT do with the LA Phil last weekend. It made you want to get up and dance.
If anyone thinks Dave's reviews of Klaus Makela are a bit harsh, you should see what other critics are writing. I won't mention names, but there are two other critics, one based in the UK and one in the USA who are not as well known as Dave but may be known by many of you. They are absolutely brutal.
Makela has the same problem a lot of young conductors have: they didn't spend enough (any?) time playing in an orchestra themselves. You learn a lot sitting there - what works and maybe more important what doesn't. You learn the music from the inside out. Some will argue that pianists like Solti, Szell, Reiner, Walter and others didn't play in an orchestra. No, but they learned their trade coming up through the opera house system. Szell, as a teacher, required his acolytes to play percussion in the orchestra to at least get some experience there. Makala may have been a fine cello soloist, but sitting in a section for several years would have made a difference.
You should see the kind of trash that's being written about Mäkelä in Finland. When Mäkelä's appointment was announced, a leading Finnish daily began its cultural pages with the following ode of praise: "Not Esa-Pekka Salonen. Not Gustavo Dudamel. Not Beethoven or Wagner. No one in the history of classical music has had such a trajectory of wealth and influence across continents at the age of just 28, as Klaus Mäkelä has now." It's not even worth discussing how absurd that comparison is. During the time of Beethoven and Wagner, it wouldn't have been theoretically possible to achieve the kind of global visibility in the field of classical music as has been possible in recent decades.Tasteless and completely exaggerated comparison. Time will tell whether Klaus Mäkelä's life's work will be remembered in the same way as that of the greatest conductors of the last century (let alone Beethoven or Wagner), but at least for now, I'm not liking the direction this story is heading. We have an extraordinarily young, undoubtedly basically able guy who, however, is getting too much responsibility too early and too much flattery. Somehow the story of Icarus comes to mind.
In a week and a day, my wife and I will be going to Severance Hall to hear Mäkelä tackle Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit, Gershwin's Concerto in F, and Stravinsky's Rites. Based on this review, needless to say, I am *NOT* encouraged ... and maybe I'll stop by the Monday after and report back.
"The headline feature of this terrific Petrushka is characterisation. It’s a performance full of animation and incident and from the Orchestre de Paris and their impressive line-up of wind soloists a dancer’s sensibility." There's the always-reliable Gramophone.
For me, the basic tempo choices he adopted for Petrushka would have been ok if the playing wasn't just so uninflected and rhythmically flat. The orchestra just sound bored (I certainly was) and that is a cardinal sin. Just have a listen to octogenarian Pierre Monteux with the Boston Symphony to see what you're missing!
The album has been selected as a Gramophone Editor’s choice. I am not a musician or music critic, but a scientist and find it always amazing that critics can have so different opinions. Anyway I am planning to listen to the record through streaming this evening and make up my own opinion.
For what it is worth: I kind of liked the album. It is not horrible and I liked the smaller set-up and slower parts than I am used to. However for pure joy and excitement I stick with Monteux.
@@sdebacker I also liked his Petrushka, I didn't listen to the Debussy. I particularly liked the percussion, and Dave's review leaves me mystified as to whether or not we listened to the same disc. Monteux and Stravinsky's own recordings are reference, of course, but for quality of recorded sound I prefer this one. Guess I flunk the course!
Can't tell if Makela will be successful as music director in Chicago at this point. All I know is I'm trekking up to Chicago from St. Louis next weekend to hear the CSO do "Elijah" and the gallery seat cost me $40. If I wanted to hear Klaus "Ken doll" this weekend, the same seat would set me back 85 bucks. We've sampled the future, and OUCH, it looks expensive!
Jeux is an elusive piece probably by design! Have you heard Serge Baudo's LPO recording (was originally a budget release on EMI Eminence)? It really gives the work some substance and it was paired with an absolutely gorgeous La Mer.
If you think of the great conductors of the past, e.g. Toscanini, Walter, Klemperer, Karajan, Solti etc they all gained valuable experience through the oper house. In most cases this doesn’t seem to happen any more. Could it be just coincidence that Antonio Pappano, until recently music director of the ROH/London just happens to be one of the best conductors around today and light years ahead of dull Makela?
I would love a video about/reviewing RUclips concerts such as Mäkela’s Beethoven 9 with Oslo or his Shostakovich 7 in Frankfurt, the first and only performances of his that really impressed me at the time I found them.
I was in my car yesterday with Prague's commercial classical music station playing. And it was exactly this sorry excuse for a Petrushka that they chose to play. Mercifully, they just played the beginning up to but not including the Russian Dance. That was enough. I guessed that it was Mackerel because something was fishy. It was just as Dave says - utterly without tension, "pretty" without character. Someone is pushing this guy all over Europe. Why do people who should know better not see through this crap?
I was listening to his performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and was struck by the ineptness of his interpretation. After all, this is supposed to be music to dance to, but Makela seemed to be conducting bar-by-bar. It would have been a pretty jerky performance to see on stage with dancers having to follow that beat. I guess Makela missed the classes on legato at his music school. M.D. Moore
I suppose the pity of it is that he's a young conductor who is, essentially, learning his craft. These releases are tyro efforts where he gets to play with great orchestras, sure, but may well destroy his reputation before he's really earned any right to a reputation. I would almost feel sorry for him , but the guy must have some ego to take both the CSO and the Concertgebouw: what astonishing arrogance!
@@danieldicesare7365 Though arrogance is and has been a trait of many conductors, not all are guilty of it. Among living conductors (for now), elder statesmen Blomstedt, Slatkin and Tilson-Thomas are not reputed for arrogance. Young Klaus may indeed be arrogant, but if so, it doesn't show much in his public persona.
The greatest thing he ever did was get Yuja Wang as a gf. That said, I'll stick to Eugene Goossens, the forgotten Oskar Danon, Yuri Temirkanov and others who've done whiz-bang Petrushkas.
Makela seems to have a little methodology. To attempt to make Petrouchka seem exciting, why not make the orchestra just play a bit louder, a bit faster, inject a little overemphasis, shake one's hips and smile at the orchestra, you can almost hear it, and then you have succeeded? Right?
It's the strangest "Petrushka" I've ever heard. "Meanders" is definitely the right description. What detail Makela does pull out is not at all interesting. The "Dancing Bear" section alone is just awful. It's not the least bit imposing or scary. The limp phrasing at the start of the "Dance of the Coachman" section is just horrendous. How does anybody manage to screw up that section!?! It's sad that Decca would want to stink up their "Petrushka" catalog, considering they already have really superb recordings of it from Ansermet, Dorati and Chailly, among others (my favorite is the last Dorati/Detroit one). Even the Solti/C.S.O. one manages not to be too awful. I know the Orchestre de Paris can play this piece, because they made a half-way decent recording of it with Barenboim on Erato (or was it just the "Rite of Spring"?). This release is really sad. It's hard to believe Makela would be satisfied with it.
I'll HAVE to get my paws on this CD, just to see how bad it is compared to, say, Ansermet doing Petroushka or Martinon, Paray or Munch doing the Debussy. . .
The power of sycophancy seems to be pedalling the Mäkelä machine. It's absurd that someone who has not been through the usual apprenticeship of understudy and repetiteur work that most conductors of old had to undergo is being given so much to play with in his musical toy box. I've not been impressed by the Mäkelä experience at all and will certainly not be replacing my old trusted recordings with those of this, the latest, Decca wunderkind!
I tried his Sibelius. After a tedious listening session of No 5 which conjures up saharan temeratures rather than Nordic cold i gave up on the set completely. It is now in digital re cycle bin hell
i whitnessed the Sibelius cycle he did in Hamburg. And I was not impressed. He turned everything into short accented phrases, and thus killed all tension. The short encores were okay.
I just heard the Rosbaud Concertgebouw recording to clear my ears from the Makela. Rosbaud is faster, but I think the main difference is, that with Makela a lot of things just don't make sense. If Rosbaud pulls out details there is a reason. To underline a phrase or to connect parts and create developments. With Makela it often feels just random and this is why it is so boring for me. Problem for me is rather a lack of musical intelligence (or experience) than temperament.
I think it's going to be good. I've attended three concerts with the CSO and him on the podium over the last three years and also attended one rehearsal. I liked each a lot. Perhaps live is different than recordings. Maybe I'm not critical enough. I attend around 25 CSO concerts a year with many different people on the podium. Most are very good. Last night James Conlon was conducting Mendelssohn's Elijah with the fab CSO chorus. Quite an experience.
It’s mad that people keep putting out these third-rate records of common repertoire when the catalog contains so many incredible performances and there’s so much under-recorded repertoire… frustrating as a listener and music lover
I thought you might be exaggerating the flute vibrato in the Faun for comic effect until I heard it on you tube. No, you did not! Its horrific. I just got a "new" Petrushka in, included in the new Steinberg Command Classics box. I'm sure it's infinitely superior. I hope you will review the box for us soon.
@@UlfilasNZAgreed. George's Laurent of Boston or Marcel Moyse certainly don't play that way. The awful thought occurred to me that Makela might have told the player to do it that way.
I am lot older than you Dave and so far I don't think I will be investing in this character.Long gone are the days where I have been buying standard works,so therefore tough for Makela. A lot of the time I blame agents and publicity for flogging a dead horse,the days of charismatic conductors is long gone
Well, i think Makela shows how rotten it is the classical music business nowadays. Anything matters. You can do whatever shit you want without even know how a century of great masters have been done before, and you get to conduct Paris SO, Chicago SO etc etc. The message is... Anything really matters anymore. I think he could be selling ferraris in a concecionary, leading a famous international hotel or conducting great orchestras.
in the newspaper Le Devoir de Montréal....Christophe Huss wrote about this record....''To these opulent and softened perfected Stravinskys and Debussys, we prefer sharp edges and raw colors''... ..or even from Christophe Huss still in duty...this passage from an article on the appointment of Klaus Makela in Chicago....:-« ''-After 2027, I will definitely be at the head at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Currently, I am with the Paris Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic, two relationships that I greatly appreciate and which we are improving,” tells us the man who is also, in the meantime, “artistic partner” of the Oslo orchestra. Amsterdam. “What will happen after 2027, we will see. Two orchestras are the right mix. We need to see how we define a partnership; how one finds the right partnership. Being musical director of two orchestras is possible; three is too many. » Paris and Oslo therefore know what remains to be done.
I heard Mäkäle with the RCO in Pictures at an Exhibition. It was the most boring performance I ever heard of this work. It is a shame he got an Edison award for his mediocre Sibelius cycle. All politics, a price given by people who have no knolledge about music! In general a very peculiar appointment with the Concertgebouw already. Probably in ten years of time , one will hear nothing about him anymore!
Видеоклипы
After watching this, I can't help but think of the lively Petrushka I heard a nearly 80-year old MTT do with the LA Phil last weekend. It made you want to get up and dance.
I was there too, amazing!
If anyone thinks Dave's reviews of Klaus Makela are a bit harsh, you should see what other critics are writing. I won't mention names, but there are two other critics, one based in the UK and one in the USA who are not as well known as Dave but may be known by many of you. They are absolutely brutal.
Meanwhile in France, critics are raving about it just because it's the Orchestre de Paris, y'know?
Well, it doesn't mean anything... In France they clap all sorts of crap.
@@classicalemotionYes, this is precisely the point I was making.
@@classicalemotion Well, they do here, too.
@@MisterPathetiqueThey raved about Jerry Lewis too.
Makela has the same problem a lot of young conductors have: they didn't spend enough (any?) time playing in an orchestra themselves. You learn a lot sitting there - what works and maybe more important what doesn't. You learn the music from the inside out. Some will argue that pianists like Solti, Szell, Reiner, Walter and others didn't play in an orchestra. No, but they learned their trade coming up through the opera house system. Szell, as a teacher, required his acolytes to play percussion in the orchestra to at least get some experience there. Makala may have been a fine cello soloist, but sitting in a section for several years would have made a difference.
You should see the kind of trash that's being written about Mäkelä in Finland. When Mäkelä's appointment was announced, a leading Finnish daily began its cultural pages with the following ode of praise:
"Not Esa-Pekka Salonen. Not Gustavo Dudamel. Not Beethoven or Wagner.
No one in the history of classical music has had such a trajectory of wealth and influence across continents at the age of just 28, as Klaus Mäkelä has now."
It's not even worth discussing how absurd that comparison is. During the time of Beethoven and Wagner, it wouldn't have been theoretically possible to achieve the kind of global visibility in the field of classical music as has been possible in recent decades.Tasteless and completely exaggerated comparison.
Time will tell whether Klaus Mäkelä's life's work will be remembered in the same way as that of the greatest conductors of the last century (let alone Beethoven or Wagner), but at least for now, I'm not liking the direction this story is heading. We have an extraordinarily young, undoubtedly basically able guy who, however, is getting too much responsibility too early and too much flattery. Somehow the story of Icarus comes to mind.
Glad you pointed out the Flautist’s vibrato in L’Apres-midi. Slow as molasses!
Another nail, hammered spectacularly into the classical coffin.
« he has no genitalia » this is the hardest I laughed to any classical review ever.
Hmmm...was that the reason Yuja Wang broke up with him? 😘
In a week and a day, my wife and I will be going to Severance Hall to hear Mäkelä tackle Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit, Gershwin's Concerto in F, and Stravinsky's Rites. Based on this review, needless to say, I am *NOT* encouraged ... and maybe I'll stop by the Monday after and report back.
How was it?
So far Maestro Mäkelä’s interpretations on recordings are soft and mellow.
I would to petition that “He Has No Genitalia… musically speaking” be the new video title.
Oooh, I’ve been waiting for this review! Dave, you make me grateful for bad major label recordings because I can anticipate savoring your reviews.
"The headline feature of this terrific Petrushka is characterisation. It’s a performance full of animation and incident and from the Orchestre de Paris and their impressive line-up of wind soloists a dancer’s sensibility."
There's the always-reliable Gramophone.
Good grief! That is malpractice.
@@DavesClassicalGuide A dancer’s sensibility, Dave. A dancer’s sensibility. 😂
@@DavesClassicalGuide They are record company shills.
Well, yes, Gramophone is always reliable; reliable for un-paid advertising, that is.
@@waynesmith3767 I have no confidence that it's unpaid.
Love your vibrato, Dave!
For me, the basic tempo choices he adopted for Petrushka would have been ok if the playing wasn't just so uninflected and rhythmically flat. The orchestra just sound bored (I certainly was) and that is a cardinal sin. Just have a listen to octogenarian Pierre Monteux with the Boston Symphony to see what you're missing!
That's exactly right. His timing overall isn't all that different from, say, Bernstein's, but that version sounds infinitely more lively.
The album has been selected as a Gramophone Editor’s choice. I am not a musician or music critic, but a scientist and find it always amazing that critics can have so different opinions. Anyway I am planning to listen to the record through streaming this evening and make up my own opinion.
That's a function of Decca's ad purchase in the magazine. It's an "editorial" choice, not a musical one.
For what it is worth: I kind of liked the album. It is not horrible and I liked the smaller set-up and slower parts than I am used to. However for pure joy and excitement I stick with Monteux.
@@sdebacker I also liked his Petrushka, I didn't listen to the Debussy. I particularly liked the percussion, and Dave's review leaves me mystified as to whether or not we listened to the same disc. Monteux and Stravinsky's own recordings are reference, of course, but for quality of recorded sound I prefer this one. Guess I flunk the course!
Can't tell if Makela will be successful as music director in Chicago at this point. All I know is I'm trekking up to Chicago from St. Louis next weekend to hear the CSO do "Elijah" and the gallery seat cost me $40. If I wanted to hear Klaus "Ken doll" this weekend, the same seat would set me back 85 bucks. We've sampled the future, and OUCH, it looks expensive!
'Jeux' is completely beyond me. I felt I had to own up to that, though Haitink's makes a bit more sense of it than most....
Jeux is an elusive piece probably by design! Have you heard Serge Baudo's LPO recording (was originally a budget release on EMI Eminence)? It really gives the work some substance and it was paired with an absolutely gorgeous La Mer.
Puketroucka - oy! This does not bode well indeed. Let's see how long the infatuation with Klaus lasts...
If you think of the great conductors of the past, e.g. Toscanini, Walter, Klemperer, Karajan, Solti etc they all gained valuable experience through the oper house. In most cases this doesn’t seem to happen any more. Could it be just coincidence that Antonio Pappano, until recently music director of the ROH/London just happens to be one of the best conductors around today and light years ahead of dull Makela?
Dave, what is your opinion on the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra choosing Cristian Macelaru to succeed Louis Langree as music director?
I've enjoyed what I've heard from him so far.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I have his Saint-Säens symphony cycle, and look forward to hearing more of his output.
I would love a video about/reviewing RUclips concerts such as Mäkela’s Beethoven 9 with Oslo or his Shostakovich 7 in Frankfurt, the first and only performances of his that really impressed me at the time I found them.
I was in my car yesterday with Prague's commercial classical music station playing. And it was exactly this sorry excuse for a Petrushka that they chose to play. Mercifully, they just played the beginning up to but not including the Russian Dance. That was enough. I guessed that it was Mackerel because something was fishy. It was just as Dave says - utterly without tension, "pretty" without character. Someone is pushing this guy all over Europe. Why do people who should know better not see through this crap?
I was listening to his performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and was struck by the ineptness of his interpretation. After all, this is supposed to be music to dance to, but Makela seemed to be conducting bar-by-bar. It would have been a pretty jerky performance to see on stage with dancers having to follow that beat. I guess Makela missed the classes on legato at his music school. M.D. Moore
I insist: CSO risks of having thrown its reputation and musical excellence down the drain with the appointment of this guy as music director
I listened to the first two tracks of the new album on Decca and had to switch over to Boulez and then Zinman to cleanse my ears and brain.
ALDA Recipient for 2024? Lol. Rite of Spring was enough for me 😉
I suppose the pity of it is that he's a young conductor who is, essentially, learning his craft. These releases are tyro efforts where he gets to play with great orchestras, sure, but may well destroy his reputation before he's really earned any right to a reputation.
I would almost feel sorry for him , but the guy must have some ego to take both the CSO and the Concertgebouw: what astonishing arrogance!
I've never encountered a conductor who didn't posses astonishing arrogance.
@@danieldicesare7365 Though arrogance is and has been a trait of many conductors, not all are guilty of it. Among living conductors (for now), elder statesmen Blomstedt, Slatkin and Tilson-Thomas are not reputed for arrogance. Young Klaus may indeed be arrogant, but if so, it doesn't show much in his public persona.
The greatest thing he ever did was get Yuja Wang as a gf. That said, I'll stick to Eugene Goossens, the forgotten Oskar Danon, Yuri Temirkanov and others who've done whiz-bang Petrushkas.
well they already broke up…
That trumpet solo in Petrushka has the same micro managed dynamics that Simon Rattle did in his recent LSO version. It just doesn’t work!
Saw a photo of this boring conductor on the Sibelius box. Look at his blue eyes. He is a Fremen from the movie Dune.
Makela seems to have a little methodology. To attempt to make Petrouchka seem exciting, why not make the orchestra just play a bit louder, a bit faster, inject a little overemphasis, shake one's hips and smile at the orchestra, you can almost hear it, and then you have succeeded? Right?
But it's not a bit faster. Just the opposite.
It's the strangest "Petrushka" I've ever heard. "Meanders" is definitely the right description. What detail Makela does pull out is not at all interesting. The "Dancing Bear" section alone is just awful. It's not the least bit imposing or scary. The limp phrasing at the start of the "Dance of the Coachman" section is just horrendous. How does anybody manage to screw up that section!?! It's sad that Decca would want to stink up their "Petrushka" catalog, considering they already have really superb recordings of it from Ansermet, Dorati and Chailly, among others (my favorite is the last Dorati/Detroit one). Even the Solti/C.S.O. one manages not to be too awful. I know the Orchestre de Paris can play this piece, because they made a half-way decent recording of it with Barenboim on Erato (or was it just the "Rite of Spring"?). This release is really sad. It's hard to believe Makela would be satisfied with it.
I'll HAVE to get my paws on this CD, just to see how bad it is compared to, say, Ansermet doing Petroushka or Martinon, Paray or Munch doing the Debussy. . .
I truly wish that Chicago had hired Theodore Kucher.
Kuchar.
The power of sycophancy seems to be pedalling the Mäkelä machine. It's absurd that someone who has not been through the usual apprenticeship of understudy and repetiteur work that most conductors of old had to undergo is being given so much to play with in his musical toy box. I've not been impressed by the Mäkelä experience at all and will certainly not be replacing my old trusted recordings with those of this, the latest, Decca wunderkind!
I tried his Sibelius. After a tedious listening session of No 5 which conjures up saharan temeratures rather than Nordic cold i gave up on the set completely. It is now in digital re cycle bin hell
i whitnessed the Sibelius cycle he did in Hamburg. And I was not impressed. He turned everything into short accented phrases, and thus killed all tension. The short encores were okay.
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5sh Yeah. That M3 lacks tension as well. I think his YT Shostakovich 7 from Frankfurt is amazing, though.
I just heard the Rosbaud Concertgebouw recording to clear my ears from the Makela. Rosbaud is faster, but I think the main difference is, that with Makela a lot of things just don't make sense. If Rosbaud pulls out details there is a reason. To underline a phrase or to connect parts and create developments. With Makela it often feels just random and this is why it is so boring for me. Problem for me is rather a lack of musical intelligence (or experience) than temperament.
Because he is good-looking like Leonard Bernstein that makes him the greatest and most promising conductor now living. CSO, knock yourself out!
So sad that with so many good conductors around he’s been chosen to replace Muti in Chicago.
Box office is king
The members of the orchestra voted for him by a wide margin according to reports.
@@eddihaskell Musicians? What do THEY know?
I think it's going to be good. I've attended three concerts with the CSO and him on the podium over the last three years and also attended one rehearsal. I liked each a lot. Perhaps live is different than recordings. Maybe I'm not critical enough. I attend around 25 CSO concerts a year with many different people on the podium. Most are very good. Last night James Conlon was conducting Mendelssohn's Elijah with the fab CSO chorus. Quite an experience.
@@Chuck-qz3wh I'm buying tickets to hear him with the Concertgebouw in Palm Beach in November. I'm looking forward to it.
It’s mad that people keep putting out these third-rate records of common repertoire when the catalog contains so many incredible performances and there’s so much under-recorded repertoire… frustrating as a listener and music lover
I thought you might be exaggerating the flute vibrato in the Faun for comic effect until I heard it on you tube. No, you did not! Its horrific.
I just got a "new" Petrushka in, included in the new Steinberg Command Classics box. I'm sure it's infinitely superior.
I hope you will review the box for us soon.
And quite odd considering that's not the traditional French playing style
@@UlfilasNZAgreed. George's Laurent of Boston or Marcel Moyse certainly don't play that way. The awful thought occurred to me that Makela might have told the player to do it that way.
I am lot older than you Dave and so far I don't think I will be investing in this character.Long gone are the days where I have been buying standard works,so therefore tough for Makela. A lot of the time I blame agents and publicity for flogging a dead horse,the days of charismatic conductors is long gone
Well, i think Makela shows how rotten it is the classical music business nowadays. Anything matters. You can do whatever shit you want without even know how a century of great masters have been done before, and you get to conduct Paris SO, Chicago SO etc etc. The message is... Anything really matters anymore. I think he could be selling ferraris in a concecionary, leading a famous international hotel or conducting great orchestras.
Oh boy, can't wait to see your reaction to Mr Santa Ravioli's new Petrushka which I think sounds even worse.
in the newspaper Le Devoir de Montréal....Christophe Huss wrote about this record....''To these opulent and softened perfected Stravinskys and Debussys, we prefer sharp edges and raw colors''... ..or even from Christophe Huss still in duty...this passage from an article on the appointment of Klaus Makela in Chicago....:-« ''-After 2027, I will definitely be at the head at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Currently, I am with the Paris Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic, two relationships that I greatly appreciate and which we are improving,” tells us the man who is also, in the meantime, “artistic partner” of the Oslo orchestra. Amsterdam. “What will happen after 2027, we will see. Two orchestras are the right mix. We need to see how we define a partnership; how one finds the right partnership. Being musical director of two orchestras is possible; three is too many. »
Paris and Oslo therefore know what remains to be done.
Mäkelä himself said on French radio that he prefers when the audience hates his work to when they're indifferent, so there he goes!
The new Celibidache wanna be.
I heard Mäkäle with the RCO in Pictures at an Exhibition. It was the most boring performance I ever heard of this work. It is a shame he got an Edison award for his mediocre Sibelius cycle. All politics, a price given by people who have no knolledge about music! In general a very peculiar appointment with the Concertgebouw already. Probably in ten years of time , one will hear nothing about him anymore!