Gramophone’s Hall of Fame has arguably already mopped up the crème de la crème of conductors – Bernstein, Karajan, Furtwängler, Kleiber, Klemperer, Toscanini, Harnoncourt, Rattle et al – but here are five reasons why Serge Koussevitzky, the Russian-born conductor who led the Boston Symphony Orchestra between 1924 and 1949, should definitely sit amongst them.

1. Without Koussevitzky, at least one other Hall of Fame maestro might not be there. Koussevitzky was Leonard Bernstein’s mentor. Bernstein, of course, had many mentors – Copland, Mitropoulos, Reiner – but it was Koussevitzky who implanted himself at the deepest level of the young Bernstein’s soul. If Fritz Reiner taught Bernstein the rudimentary stuff of technique, Koussevitzky opened his ears to music’s mysterious magic. Bernstein became Koussevitzky’s conducting assistant. Perceived wisdom tells us that the intensity of Bernstein’s presence on the podium owed much to Koussevitzky’s ghost.

2. Copland’s Symphony No 3, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, Prokofiev’s Symphony No 4, Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and his Piano Concerto in G, Hindemith’s Concert Music for Strings and Brass, Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, Bernstein’s Serenade, Dallapiccola’s Tartiniana. Without Koussevitzky none of these projects might have come to fruition. He commissioned them all, many others too, and after his death the Koussevitzky Foundation continued to commission work from an astonishingly miscellaneous mix of composers, Tippett to Babbitt, Cage to Poulenc.

3. In 1940 Koussevitzky decided to open a summer school for young musicians in Massachusetts. The Tanglewood Music Center has since become the finishing school for musicians about to embark on their professional careers. Koussevitzky conducted and taught there every summer until increasingly frailty forbade it; he died a year later in 1951. Figures like Charles Münch, Gunther Schuller, Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa would take over, but Koussevitzky created the Tanglewood culture. And what a list of alumni! Abbado, MTT, Mehta, Berio, Adams, Rorem, Wynton Marsalis etc, etc, etc…

4. Koussevitzky is every double bassist’s pinup. The bass was his instrument and, long before he graduated to the podium, he played solo recitals in Berlin and Moscow. He created a repertoire of transcriptions and, in 1905, composed his inventive and lyrical Double Bass Concerto, rich in reference points to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.

5. And let’s not forget Koussevitzky’s own recorded legacy. His discography is as broad as it’s long: pioneering records of Stravinsky, Copland, Roy Harris (whose Third Symphony he premiered), Prokofiev and Shostakovich, thoughtful and deeply felt performances of Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Mendelssohn. His best record? Check out his version of Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Jascha Heifetz (Naxos 8.110936). Even through the less than shimmering fidelity, Koussevitzky’s mashed-potato malleable textures and nimble, supportive accompaniment tell it like it is.

Vote Koussevitzky! You know it makes sense.

Click here to vote for Koussevitsky to enter the Hall of Fame.