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Conductor and composer Lorin Maazel has died at age 84. In opera he ran the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Vienna State Opera and composed "1984," presented in London and La Scala. He started as a violinist, and he conducted many of the world's great orchestras. At 79 he launched the Castleton Festival with his wife in Virginia, where he died today.

Rest in peace, Maestro.

http://www.castletonfestival.org/news/item/maestro-lorin-maazel-19302014

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He had pulled out of, if I'm not mistaken, all his conducting duties at the festival this year. I remember reading that he bought a home in Castleton because he loved the countryside, having first seen it when he got lost driving home from a concert. His home there, which was opened for tours the second year of the festival, is absolutely gorgeous.

R.I.P.

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He was a brilliant musician, but he was often too idiosyncratic in his approach. I think the Times obit was a fair reading of his tenure at the NY Phil - sometimes conducting brilliantly, but just as often completely frustrating.

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He was a brilliant musician, but he was often too idiosyncratic in his approach. I think the Times obit was a fair reading of his tenure at the NY Phil - sometimes conducting brilliantly, but just as often completely frustrating.

I'm still a great admirer of his "integral" set of all the Tchiakovsky symphonies, including the "Manfred" symphonic poem, recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic in the mid-60s. To me they're excellent in every way, and this Balanchine addict especially appreciated having the Third Symphony - the music for Balanchine's "Diamonds" - in such congenial tempos, among other virtues, that I could play the recording, stare at the wall, and see the ballet (however intermittently), long before we had videos.

I heard other Maazel performances which put me in mind of whoever said, The reason for doing it again is to do it differently; but I'm one of those who thinks an artist is as great as his best work. I don't subscribe to the custom of summing up or averaging out a career, because when I experience the best work I'm not experiencing the others - they might as well not exist.

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I heard other Maazel performances which put me in mind of whoever said, The reason for doing it again is to do it differently; but I'm one of those who thinks an artist is as great as his best work. I don't subscribe to the custom of summing up or averaging out a career, because when I experience the best work I'm not experiencing the others - they might as well not exist.

Living in New York and going to subscription concerts, it became hard to avoid the idiosyncratic Maazel. Therefore, in the minds of a lot of New York Philharmonic subscribers, the idiosyncratic Maazel remains at the forefront of our memory of his body of work.

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For New Yorkers, the NY Philharmonic had many guest conductors and New Yorkers have always have many alternatives, even if they never leave Manhattan, with visiting orchestras and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (at Carnegie Hall, with much better acoustics), Juilliard, chamber orchestras, etc. It's not like living in most places where there is one big orchestra and several semi-professional orchestras, and if you don't like the maestro, you're stuck until (mostly) he is gone.

Having a wide range of interpretations means that the idiosyncratic is one voice among many, and that a major orchestra can veer from the strictly orthodox.

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Right, many choices in NY. That's why my husband and I eventually decided to only see guest conductors at the NY Phil during Maazel's tenusre, unless there was a truly spectacular soloist appearing on a Maazel concert.

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