Celibidache: My Favorite Quack

I want to write Sergiu Celibidache off as a crank, but every time I try to I hear live recordings like these....can anybody else get Verdi to sound this exciting at this tempo? There are two types of performing greats in classical music. There are the greats who can realize music exactly as you hear your ideal performance in your head: musicians like Toscanini, Artur Schnabel, Nathan Milstein, Domingo. Then there are the greats who can realize music in ways you never thought were possible and open doors of possibility to things of which you never conceived: musicians like Furtwangler, Sviatoslav Richter, Yo-Yo Ma, Maria Callas. Celibidache is unquestionably in the second group, and the second group is never as consistent. But when they hit on something, they give the kind of experiences that the first group can never give.

...and I can't wait for VoW to do some Verdi.