I'm a big fan of the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and I just stumbled across a documentary about him, that, while it is the usual somewhat hagiographic treatment, does actually reveal quite a lot about him and what it is about his conducting.
THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
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It's really astonishing how central the Russians have been to classical music in the past 120 year: Russian composers, soloists, singers, conductors. The last 30 years or so they have been filling positions at an increasing rate. The French have perhaps been the second most important country in this period. Programming of 20th C works is mostly divided between these two with a bit of Italian and German opera and a few others from eastern Europe.
Along with France, Eastern and Northern Europe have been powerhouses in music in the last 50 years. Russia is also to be reckoned with in mathematics and chess.
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