Respected London magazine rates Chicago Symphony No. 5 in the world and tops in the U.S.

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 11/23/08 | ANDREW PATNER

[Borges]

I'm a Chicagoan so I gloat.

Here are the Top 20...

1) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam
2) Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
3) Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
4) London Symphony Orchestra
5) Chicago Symphony Orchestra
6) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
7) Cleveland Orchestra
8) Los Angeles Philharmonic
9) Budapest Festival Orchestra
10) Dresden Staatskapelle
11) Boston Symphony Orchestra
12) New York Philharmonic
13) San Francisco Symphony
14) Mariinsky Theater Orchestra (tours the West as the Kirov Orchestra)
15) Russian National Orchestra
16) Leningrad Philharmonic
17) Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
18) Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
19) Saito Kinen Orchestra (Japan)
20) Czech Philharmonic

[Borges]

Classical Music Ping

[ken21]

thank you.

[B-Chan]

No Academy of St. Martin In-The-Fields? No LA Symphony?

Weird list.

[Pharmboy]

Mariss Jansons...the Latvian-Jewish

That struck me as weird. Were all the Catholics, Lutherans and Seventh Day Adventists in the article also identified as such?

As they say in Brooklyn: "What's up wit' dat?"

[sarasota]

Trying to win more action in the Windy City now that Obama has won?

[Ozone34]

Georg Solti was the Vince Lombardi of the CSO.

[proxy_user]

What you really need is a great conductor, the orchestra only has to be reasonably good.

But the great ones have all passed on.

[Borges]

People underestimate how much the conductor contributes. Great orchestras can sound very flat under an uninspiring conductor.

[Borges]

I’ve always thought Neville Marriner was sort of a hack.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

It is a crime that the NY Philharmonic is now only the 5th best in the US.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

No LA Symphony?

The LA Philharmonic is on the list.

[Borges]

They’ve been under less than inspiring leadership over the last 20 years or so. It will be interesting to see what Alan Gilbert does there.

[proxy_user]

There was a fine article in the New Yorker last year, where they compared the stick technique of Furtwangler and Mengelberg with the way today’s jet-set conductor leads an orchestra. The modern style is rather homogenized compared to the old days.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Last time I went to the NY Philharmonic, Bernstein was conducting.

[Emperor Palpatine]

I disagree with putting the Met Orchestra so low.

What they’ve become under Levine, (especially in the Wagnerian reperatoire), is arguably in the top five. Certainly better than the Kirov under Georgiev, who with the ham-handed Bang-Bang...er Lang-Lang just murdered the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto in a recent DG recording.

[Emperor Palpatine]

Back in the early 60's Vladimir Horowitz once joked with Emil Gilels what cultural exchange really was.

"You send us Jews from Odessa, and we send you Jews from Odessa."

[ottbmare]

The CSO was number 1 under Sir Georg. But they were also peerless when Giulini conducted.

[Emperor Palpatine]

The Chicago has always been damn good. First under Reiner, then under Solti they were arguably one of the top if not the top American ensemble.

From personal experience I can tell you that when Solti and Barenboim had them any concerto soloist never had to worry about anything. You were as safe as a baby in its mother's arms when you played with them and could concentrate solely on developing your musical line. If you decided to slightly change something on spur of the moment regarding rubato or having a little fun with the score direction allargando they were there with no fear of a train wreck.

[gusopol3]

Philly has fallen that far, huh?