Who is your Favorite Historical Conductor?

The Russian….in their day Soviet…conductors had a reduced presence in the West.  It was hard to judge some of them until they defected.  They had decreased concertizing, decreased recordings (for the longest time, the only Mravinsky recordings generally available was the Tchaikovsky Symphony set).  They never got to play Mahler or Bruckner.  So at best I give them an incomplete.

  I personally never cared for Mravinsky.  He had all the warmth of a 10 year stint in the Gulag.  Kondrashin and Rhazdo were more interesting to me and their legacy has grown as more material becomes available.  Svetlanov could be hit or miss.  I always viewed him as the Soviet Solti with lower Orchestral standards, but there are some recordings, such as the Tchaikovsky Manfred, where he hits all the buttons 

Adrian Boult

Nigel Mariner

And coming from a metalhead, thats ......

For Wagner: Joseph Keilberth

For Mahler: Bruno Walther

And for just about everything he touched: Thomas Beecham

There's a story told by a well-known conductor who was rehearsing the BPO in Bruckner and just could not get them to sound the way he wanted. Suddenly, a few minutes into the problem passage, he noticed that the orchestra's performance seemed to shift into a higher, more intense gear. Surprised and confused by this sudden change, the conductor looked around to see Furtwangler standing quietly in the doorway of the auditorium.