The other day I was able to add a name to the list of my musical heroes: Ferenc Fricsay (1914 – 1963), a Hungarian conductor whose recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies are considered unsurpassable by people whose knowledge of and love for the music entitle them to hold opinions like that. All I can say for myself is that his conducting of Beethoven gives me the pleasure that I look for from music, in abundance.
The pleasure that I look for from music I can get from other sources as well — it’s any pleasure that frees me from competitive and selfish impulses. It’s the kind of pleasure that I get eating vanilla ice cream. I can enjoy the ice cream without needing to believe that I am enjoying it better than anyone else, and I feel no need to have all the vanilla ice cream in the world to myself. When Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, I hope He finds me enjoying a vanilla ice cream cone or listening to a recording of a performance by Ferenc Fricsay.
Fricsay was in poor health most of his life and died young. He kept conducting as long as he was physically able, without any apparent diminution of the joy that music gave him.
In YouTube, search for “Ferenc Fricsay Rehearses and Conducts Smetana’s Moldau”; there you will find a movie, made in 1960 for German television, of Fricsay rehearsing the Symphony Orchestra of the South-German Radio Stuttgart, in spite of pain and weakness.
Yes Books Matter 
all of your suggestions are rich. I pay attention to what you write. I’m so glad Peter K guided me towards your posts.
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I am flattered by this praise from a gifted writer. Thank you for reading my stuff.
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Thanks for pointing me to Fricsay and his work. He seems to have been joyfully eager not just to conduct a piece of music but to teach the performers how to play so that their instruments could not only make the music, but also help better narrate the composer’s story to the audience. I’m grateful to him, and I wish he’d had the opportunity for a fuller life.
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