This weekend’s New York Times magazine had an interesting and extensive portrait of the Russian/Ossetian conductor and artistic director of the Mariinskii Teatr Valerii Gergiev. He is – in my opinion – one of the top conductors of Western Art music today and definitively one of the most important musicians promoting Russian art music (that said, I did not opt for his interpretation of “Ruslan i Liudmilla” but for Alexander Vedernikov’s from the Moscow Bol’shoi Teatr which I bought earlier this month…)