What Dave said about Scherchen is absolutely spot on. There's a Beethoven 6th that he recorded, whose first movement is a blast. Such a fun and wild ride!

Member of the Scherchen cult here - guilty on all counts. His work with Farnadi on the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto is one of the most brilliantly unhinged performances I've ever heard.

I continue to hold Furtwängler in great esteem and was a member of the Celibidache cult, having attended 9 of the 99 concerts he conducted in Spain. Sadly, the man never brought me to tears (it sometimes happens to me in the concert hall). I saw him do Bruckner 7, 3 (twice), 4 and 8, and it was really something, but not enough to transfix me. Zubin Mehta, on the other hand, got me crying two times out of seven live (never with the Three Mamarrachos). A very electric conductor in his gesture. Dudamel kind of reminds me of Mehta (watching him live, that is).

As a Baxian, we don't mess around with something as insignificant as a cult... we have a planet.

God damn, I LOVE Scherchen. Give me interesting eccentricities rather than boring and predictable any day! Is he the last word on interpretation? Maybe not, but he sure makes you think!

I guess I'm a Scherchen cultist. His Westminster recordings are hugely entertaining. He did marvelous Liszt tone poems and made Reger quite listenable. His Berlioz Requiem is the best ever. It's the one that really sounds to my ears like vernacular Berlioz.

Scherchen gave us two recordings of Handel's Messiah ( '53 and '59.) Both give a fresh perspective on the oratorio with great teams of soloists. There is beauty and drama, but don't come expecting the historically researched baroque type of performance of a later generation of conductors. Lay aside that and enjoy on its own terms!
Mitropoulos...I am still very fond of his Berlioz Les Nuits D'Ete with Eleanor Steber. There is a flexibility of tempo , rubato which allows Steber just the right amount of space for phrasing Berlioz' gorgeous and inspirational music. The whole performance takes wing .. Steber , Mitropoulos , New York Philharmonic, a great team. Steber's vocal performance alone is outstanding .

Thanks for another insightful and entertaining talk, Dave. Interestingly your wannabes are the only two on the list I've ever heard in concert. Both times in the opera house. I agree that Thielemann is good at opera. I heard his Flying Dutchman at the Dresden Semperoper many years ago, but I think a lot of credit was down to the quality of the Dresden Staatskapelle orchestra. Heard Currentzis conduct Verdi at the Paris Opera before he became so well-known and he seemed perfectly competent back then.

i didnt even know a celibidache cult existed. its impressive what people can accomplish when they really try

With the current shape of today's musical world we could use a few Scherchens just for the fun & enjoyment 😅

Maybe Golovanov would be another ripe for a cult - with many of the hallmarks.
If any, I'll admit associate membership of the Mitropoulos cult.

Cults are better than societies because you don't have to pay dues.

Is there a "Dave Hurwitz" cult, and if so how would we characterize it?

I enjoyed this Dave - however you’ve got me agitated and thinking that I might be a secret cultist   due to having various complete box sets (eg. Toscanini)! I wonder if Leopold Stokowski deserves cult worship - he was amazingly inventive and somewhat eccentric with some great and not so great recordings! Best wishes, Daniel

My grandfather was in the Toscanini cult, sort of. But he wasn't a crazy, because he was a trained musician (double bass) and he was born in 1898, so he wasn't worshipping a ghost. But he was definitely in the bag for Artie and I'm sure wanted to audition for the guy. I still have his crumbly old bass method in Italian from 1920, as well as the bass parts for Tchaikovsky's 4th and Beethoven's 6th, which he didn't give back to whatever orchestra he played for in Reggio. He also loved Cilea, but that's also a home team thing.

Victor de Sabata has also a cult club of 2 members (I am not a member).
I just wanted to have his name appearing somehow in the discussion.

I had never heard anything by Scherchen, so I put on Beethoven 9. The fourth movement is one of the strangest things I have ever heard. He goes from 100% gas to 100% brakes, and at the strangest places. He really is the crazy uncle. I really want to believe that out there someone grew up with this and inprinted on it...and then heard a normal performance and thought it was really weird 😂

Speaking of Mitropoulos' "neuroses" as opposed to his very pious everyday self, it seems that he often unleashed all his pent up energy on the podium. I listened to a recording of Beethoven's violin from the late 50s (I think), featuring the NYP and Heifetz. To my ears it sounds more like a "concerto for violin vs orchestra" -- which makes it all the more attractive, albeit, in small doses!

OK, I might be part of the Mravinsky cult just a little. :)

Wow! You survived Hans-Ulrich Wehler and lived! I endured him during his later years, when he'd got slower and the concepts had started to rattle, but he was still able to make his listeners suffer.

The interesting thing for me about Furtwängler is that in a very un-German way he wasn't really someone with a defined concept. In a sense he seemed to be frequently just winging it with the full confidence in his own ability. And in hindsight he might have been right, even if the results don't always panned out.