Stravinsky gets one nod. What we observe here is merely the reflection of a persistent development which affects all realms of society. The foregoing comparison presupposes reasonable agreement on matters of quality, greatness, importance. Every one of these categories involves values and judgment. Values, by definition, are absolute.
Judgment is a faculty evolved, refined, cultivated over time.
The fact is that, for the most part, our schools and our philanthropic institutions have forsaken every one of these categories. Such is the environment in which the planners of programs operate. For that was the approach of one Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the brilliant young man who laid the foundations of the modern season. He did so in a warehouse of the linen merchants of Leipzig called the Gewandhaus the original of the organization that sent us Kurt Masur, present music director of the New York Philharmonic. Mendelssohn built his Historic Series around the finest works of past and present.