I just went to the S.F. Symphony for a Sunday matinee. Although the pianist completely 'knocked it out of the park' on Prokofiev's 2nd piano concerto, I still don't know his name today. He was a young adult from Tashkent wearing casual dress. The conductor was from Bratislava (just due north of Vienna), and had a name that's still unpronounceable to me today. He did fine, as the concert ended with Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances". The ongoing changing of the vanguard is inevitable, with or without a pandemic. That said, I'm sure the pandemic did help to speed that process along. And now THAT said, both Barenboim and Zubin Mehta are suffering from old age maladies that have little or nothing to do with the pandemic. Classical is a funny business, because you still have people who refuse to listen to much beyond Furtwaengler, Toscanini, Rubinstein, Heifetz, etc.
