Which is the most serious and reputable orchestra?

Cafe Society
1

I gathered in a current Pit thread that the Melbourne Symphony isn’t generally regarded as prestigious as far as orchestras go. As someone who is quite new (if introduced at all) to clasical music, I’d like to ask this: Which orchestra(s) is/are generally regarded as the most prestigious and reputable?

2

I would say the two biggest are the New York and the London Philharmonic. Of course, that could just be because of the wonderful cities they’re linked to.

3

The Berlin Philharmonic.

4

Among American orchestras:

Boston Symphony
Cleveland Orchestra
Chicago Symphony
New York Philharmonic
Philadelphia Orchestra

These are popularly known as the “Big Five,” with star-studded histories and excellent reputations.

5

The Vienna and the Berlin, worldwide.

Paris and London, for whatever reason, have never fielded a top-ranking orchestra. The Amsterdam is more highly rated. Especially under Bernie Haitink.

Conductors do a lot for the reputation of a band. Under Simon Rattle, the Birmingham guys achieved world-class status.

For North America, the five DF cited. My top two are the Cleveland (for the classics and early romantics) and the Chicago (for the late romantics and 20th century). They’ve had better luck with conductors than the other three, although Kurt Masur did a lot to improve the NY boys.

6

Say what? London has never fielded a top-ranking orchestra? Compared to what?

There’s the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields to name a few. Do you not count any of them as “top-ranking”?

7

St. Mart’s is top-ranking, all right. Didn’t think about them, sorry. Neville M. is A-OK.

I wouldn’t stack the other two against the Amsterdam, or even the Philadelphia, though.

Just my own take.

Unless they’re playing Vaughan-Williams under Boult. Or Elgar or Bax or Warlock under anyone. No one like a Brit band to play Brit music.

8

Berlin, Vienna and Cleveland, in no particular order.

9

Thanks for the replies thus far – I’ve listened to classical music occasionally (if it happened to be playing) over the years, and I hardly ever gave it a second thought as far as the orchestra as a whole; my ears would perk up if I heard a snare drum part or something of that nature, for instance.

I like classical music in general, and in starting to listen to it seriously, I thought that it would be a good thing to find out which bands were on top of things, so to speak, so that I may have a nice start. I plan on being less discriminating as I become a more experienced listener.