I've heard Michael Sanderling conduct a highly enjoyable Shostakovich 5 with the BBC SSO, and Thomas Søndergård has done good things with the RSNO, conducting Mahler. These two guys are going places!
Sondergaard is older than he looks.... He's been going places for a while but has not got there yet.... I agree he's doing great things for the RSNO, and I also have seen a live stream of him conducting Sibelius with the Berlin Phil and that was superb! So how so few recordings available from him? I'd buy them.
I suspect the only ones I ‘trust’ are the historically correct, period instruments lot, but they are hardly ever the ones I’d choose to listen to!
I enjoy listening to Neville Marriner's set of Beethoven symphonies with The Academy of St. Martin in The Fields, using period instruments.
It's a nice stripped back alternative to the usual interpretations.
I'd add Marin Allsop and possibly John Eliot Gardiner
ASMF - Smaller forces than major orchestras but not period instrument
Gardiner is a great example of someone I’d trust implicitly, but don’t tend to play. I’ve got his Bach St Matthew Passion, but if I ever want to play it I reach for Klemperer’s outdated, grandiose and unbelievably slow-motion version on Columbia. Many examples of this, e.g. I prefer my Bach on a piano to a harpsichord as it’s just a much better instrument! (ducks, covers)
Bach is one composer I really struggle to like....