Let's consider a tower with z conductors labelled 1, 2, …, x, …, y, …, z.
"If you were a budget-label conductor, you were a budget-label conductor and Charles was one because the important thing for him was to record the performances.
In America we use the word "maestro" only in reference to conductors — a labelling intended to apply a quick lick of European "sophistication" in a country where classical music, for all its prestige, has to struggle for economic legitimacy.
Major conductors are labeled.
He was perceived by orchestral players and audiences as a budget-label conductor.
Mackerras came to be seen as what Brian McMaster, who worked with him at EMI, the ENO, Welsh National Opera and the Edinburgh Festival, calls a "budget-label conductor".
Zubin Mehta (label: "Foremost Conductor") was a customer, along with "Mr. and Mrs. Governor of Oklahoma of US".
"There was a syndrome in the recording industry that there were budget-label conductors and there were top-price conductors," explains McMaster.
Though Jordi Savall, renowned master of the viola da gamba and conductor, has a highly successful label of his own in Alia Vox, he asked to reissue his recording of Vivaldi's opera "Farnace" on Naïve and is on board for a second opera.
He has made fine recordings of them both as a singer (for the short-lived Largo label) and as a conductor (one notable outing being a "Dreigroschenoper" with the Ensemble Modern for RCA).
