He sews his own skirts; manufactures his own perfumes; makes gnomic utterances in program notes e.g. “one’s steps towards the desert space of your own intuition outside the luxurious sarcophagus of tradition” and casually drops in phrases like “cosmogonic needs” for good measure. Last century he would have been dubbed metrosexual. Now the Greek/Russian Teodor Currentzis is just Classical music’s favourite maverick, enfant terrible (at 48) or just its premier showman (shaman?)

MusicAeterna

Without wanting to queer the pitch, I perused some of the reviews for his recording of Beethoven’s Fifth and was interested to see how he polarises people. I can’t quite decide whether I was relieved or slightly disappointed to hear how unradical his recording of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is. I recall Walter Legge, the founder of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, once...