The best kind of review:

I probably conduct between 10 and 15 performances (of one kind or another) every year.  While not at the level of a Valery Gergiev (he numbers in the 100s) one still goes through a fair amount of repertoire at varying levels of difficulty based on the ability of the ensemble.  Of course nearly every performance receives wondrous accolades from audience members, colleagues, and even the musicians themselves (who are most often their own harshest critics). 

But just today, I received probably the most meaningful critique of a performance.  It come from a former teaching colleague who was born and raised in Bosnia:

"Speaking of...the summer performances "unter den linden" in that park - the name of which already escapes me - on the bluffs above Mississippi, it was one late afternoon in July of 2004 when I stopped by to listen, to meet and greet you. It  was a pleasant evening and I was feeling chipper in spite of the 210 or miles I just drove from Des Moines.  In Des Moines, in the state capital, earlier that afternoon, and surrounded by about 550 people from some 50 or 100 countries around the world, I was conferred citizenship of the United State of America; after 23 years of acrimony and fear, fear ranging from uncertainty  about where and what next year to fear of a knock on my shabby apartment door.  After 23 years of bitter fights, lost or unapplied and unapplyable jobs, a career derailed and pretty much lost, after a dissolution of 23 years of marriage, after a mid-size graveyard of lost dreams, I was a proud USA citizen. As I entered the park your orchestra intoned the first cords of the Star Spangled Banner - in an almost eerily perfect timing.  The tears that the music brought to my eyes were, I still think I remember, caused by so many diverse evocations and memories that for a moment I forgot whether I should feel happy or sad. In a moment's shrug I fogot about everything and determinedly walked toward the source of the music. It was a good moment in my little life, a moment filled with a wonderful lightness of just being."

The Star Spangled Banner.  The work with which I've opened many a concert.  The work that many a singer has butchered and many an audience have ignored.  A presentation of a national anthem should never be a performance.  Instead, it is a communal anthem to be sung by all with honor and reverence.  This is a lesson I learned today from a Bosnian.