The man who named St Louis Symphony as best in America

Michael Walsh. Photo courtesy The Collegian

By Norman Lebrecht

In April 1983, the classical music establishment was shaken to its suspender socks when Time magazine – still a power in the land – conducted a survey of US orchestras and came up with the staggering result that Leonard Slatkin’s St Louis Symphony was second only to Solti’s Chicago for the title of America’s best. Read it here.

Nobody’s ever dared to repeat the survey for fear of offending vested interests.

The author of that original article, Michael Walsh, went on to do much else. He wrote glossy books on Placido Domingo and Andrew Lloyd Webber, scripted a couple of films, and turned out a sequel to Casablanca. He set up a website with Andrew Breitbart and wrote further books of a polemical, political nature.

Good to know he’s still around. Michael Walsh’s new book, A Rage to Conquer, is out next week from St. Martin’s Press. It’s an ode, the blurb says, to toxic masculinity.

First published at Slipped Disc, January 31, 2025