Well, to get one inside the top five isn't bad: the London Symphony Orchestra has been acclaimed the fourth best orchestra in the world. Not my words, but those of Gramophone magazine, whose December edition is out today and contains a chart of the 20 finest symphony orchestras in the world - have a look at the complete list here.
There's a self-consciously international feel to the list, as well as the panel, with critics from the US, China, Korea and Europe. Alas, there is no other British representative in this pointless-but-fun pantheon. Should we be worried? Not really. Inevitably the list is as subjective as the panel's proclivities. The Saito Kinen Orchestra is at 19th, but no place for the resurgent London Philharmonic? The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is 18th, but the Royal Opera House Orchestra - at least as good on its day - is nowhere.
On the international stage, the questions go on: is the Dresden Staatskapelle really almost twice as good as the Leipzig Gewandhaus (10th v 17th)? Should the New York Philharmonic be more highly-ranked than the San Francisco Symphony when Michael Tilson Thomas's reign in San Francisco has been infinitely more interesting than Lorin Maazel's at Lincoln Centre? And there's a definite American bias in the mid-range, as three US orchestras beat three Russian orchestras. Maybe that's just because there wasn't a Russian critic on the panel.
Of course, all this is idle interval chatter: most orchestras, on an inspired night with an inspired conductor, are capable of hitting revelatory heights of music-making. The reverse is true, too, as Wilhelm Sinkovicz, who writes for Die Presse in Austria, says of third-placed Vienna Philharmonic: they sound "brutal" and "boring" when they're conducted by Valery Gergiev or Daniel Harding. Ouch. And they're really the third best?
Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra is the "winner" of this orchestral beauty contest, but perhaps the real victor is conductor Mariss Jansons, who is in charge of two orchestras inside the top 10: the Concertgebouw and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, sixth on the list. The Bavarians are coming to the Southbank with Jansons next Saturday with Mozart and Bruckner - if it wasn't a hot-enough ticket already, it just got hotter.
A more interesting orchestral hall of fame would be a list of British orchestras, based not just on the relative glamour of various principal conductors, but how much the ensemble involves itself in the community. My current favourite? The Hallé in Manchester: an orchestra so enmeshed in the local educational, political and cultural scene in its home city as to be essential to Manchester's identity, on top of making an international splash with their music director, Mark Elder.
