I thought you may like to see an article in today's Telegraph about the prominence of young conductors today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/26/bmmusic126.xml

Comments?

Ian.

Wow, only 'not gone down so well', Martin? You should have seen the same orchestra's reaction thirty years or so ago to Mark Elder (let alone that of the chorus): outright hostility on some fronts....

I think part of the difficulty arises from the difference between a "conductor" and an "artistic director".  Conducting concerts and interpreting music is one area of work.  Forming and training an orchestra, grooming them to play magnificently, establishing a positive ethos among the players, asserting rehearsal discipline, and - most contentiously - weeding-out weak players and replacing them with better ones is a very different area, and this is where younger conductors often lack the moral authority, experience, tact and discretion to achieve these ends in the most effective way. 

Theodor Currentzis, for example - a Greek pupil of Musin's who has moved to Russia full-time - is a fiery and passionate conductor of the romantic repertoire, specialising in Verdi and Puccini, but also performing a wide range of other music and getting magnificent reviews.  He has been fired from every place he has ever worked - because he is viciously rude to players, managers, accounts staff, and even building staff like the cleaners and security staff.  He's been fired from the Mussorgsky Opera in St Petersburg, Novaya Opera in Moscow, Hellikon Opera in Moscow (after calling the Artistic Director "a talentless piece of sh*t" in a live tv interview)... he then went to Novosibirsk Opera (the last of the really great soviet-era big opera orchestras) and got fired within one season, despite a string of awards for performances. 

Of course, it doesn't have to be the conductor who is the Artistic Director - one of the strengths of London Sinfonietta when it first started was that the Artistic Director was Michael Vyner.

This looks to be an interesting appointment for Bournemouth. I will be interested to see the impact Kirill Karabits has. Under Marin Alsop, they have become much more 'high profile' with a series of Naxos recordings, after they had disappeared somewhat on the recorded scene under Yakov Kreizberg. They have also been on good form under José Serebrier - their Wagner/Stokowski disc is gorgeous.
Karabits seems to have a very good pedigree - assistant to Iván Fischer in Budapest will have done him no harm at all and he is active in the opera house too, with appearances at Glyndebourne scheduled for next season.