Nikolaus Harnoncourt has died

[The new erato]

Same for me, premont. Harnoncourt and Leonhardt were primary guides in the world of Bach.

Me too. I still have some of those groundbreaking, luxurious LP sets of Bach cantatas. RIP Maestro.

[Bogey]

Me too. I still have some of those groundbreaking, luxurious LP sets of Bach cantatas. RIP Maestro.

Treasures, for sure.

[vandermolen]

Sad news:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/06/nikolaus-harnoncourt-obituary

[prémont]

The first HIP-concert, I ever attended, was given by Concentus Musicus Vienna / Harnoncourt in Holmens Kirke, Copenhagen 1965. The program was Bach of course,  the sixth and the fourth Brandenburg concerto and the first orchestral suite. They were all there, Nicolaus and Alice Harnoncourt, Jörg Schäftlein, Leopold Stastny, Herbert Tachesi, Kurt Theiner and so on. Their sound became decisive for my future musical interests. The interpretation was similar to their recording from 1963, somewhat traditional but with this special period sound.

[Brahmsian]

RIP Maestro Harnoncourt 

And thank you.  Thank you for being my gateway into classical music.  Your recording of Beethoven's symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe was my first major classical music recording purchase.  From that point, my transition into the world of classical music made permanent.

[bigshot]

The most terrifying "conducting faces" of any conductor!

[Que]

His last recording might be interesting...for me because it is with his old ensemble, the Consentus Musicus Wien.



The recording of the entire cycle was planned...

Q

[bhodges]

Such sad news this week. I am particularly fond of this recording, which seems the essence of joie de vivre:

Dvořák: Slavonic Dances (complete)

[asin]B00005YTKD[/asin]

--Bruce

[Parsifal]

Harnoncourt did not perform frequently in the U.S., and I never saw him live. However his recordings had a profound effect on me. My earliest classical music purchases were in the late 1970's, and one of these was his recording of the St. Matthew Passion with the Conceptus Musicus Wien. Other recordings I got around the same time included Karajan's Beethoven, Mozart Piano Concerti with Stephen Bishop and Colin Davis, Mozart symphonies by Marriner and Karl Bohm.

The great revelation came one day when I took the train down to lower Manhattan to shop at J&R music world on Park Row. I was surprised to find an LP containing recordings of Mozart symphonies No 34 and 35 by Harnoncourt and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. When I got home and listened to those recording I was stunned, it was as though I had never heard Mozart before. The dainty, polite Mozart I had learned to expect was not there. Timpani were struck with force, brass played aggressively, winds were prominent, rhythms were incisive, phrasing was distinctive and passionately musical. Harnoncourt's knowledge of the timbre of the instruments instruments used in Mozart's time gave him insight into the balances that Mozart might have expected, but the result was utterly convincing to me because Harnoncourt had put his personal musical imprint on it. The next day I was on the train again to buy any and all Mozart-Harnoncourt recordings I could find. To this day, riding home with that stack of LPs is one of my most distinct musical memories.

At the time Harnoncourt's Mozart recordings were generally condemned as vulgar and ugly, but now his style has been widely emulated. He was a true genius, in my opinion. I wish I could have communicated to Harnoncourt how much his recordings have meant to me.

[Spineur]

A vibrant homage to Nikolas Harnncourt was published by Thomas Hampson on his facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/w.thomashampson/photos/a.414015775539.208035.105891580539/10153893398370540/?type=1&theater

I discovered Nikolas Harnoncourt with his recording of Monteverdi Orfeo in 1969.  At the time, Monteverdi was largely forgotten.  He contributed to revive the interest in this Renaissance music with Michel Corboz.  The innovation he introduced in this work made him known to a large public (to which I belong !).

I am actually slightly annoyed that gramophone skips all his early music contribution in his list of 'greatest recordings'
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/nikolaus-harnoncourts-greatest-recordings?utm_content=buffer09a50

[Jo498]

Yes, the gramophone list is strange with 3x Bach but no Monteverdi, only one (newish and in Mozart's arrangement) Handel and very little Mozart, but lots of 19th century stuff. (I suspect the Brits don't like his way with Purcell and Handel.)
To be fair, there is not much 17th century besides the Monteverdi recordings and the Biber, Muffat etc. chamber music recordings are more than 50 years old and mostly not available, and in the last 15 years he was mostly doing 19th century (or re-recording very famous baroque, like the Xmas oratorio).

[(poco) Sforzando]

Such sad news this week. I am particularly fond of this recording, which seems the essence of joie de vivre:

Dvořák: Slavonic Dances (complete)

I'm pleased to see this recording mentioned, as it is one of Harnoncourt's that I most enjoy. I mean, I can't get all weepy at his death; I'm not a sentimentalist by nature and it's not as if he died early or failed to fill his potential. But the fact of his death does not change the many reservations I have towards this conductor's music-making, and I don't see why this thread should turn into a hagiography.

I am not alone in my attitude towards Harnoncourt's work. Though any of our members can speak for themselves, I see no reason why I can't quote our friend Brian, who wrote not long ago that "Harnoncourt has lost sight of the long line and why each musical event follows the previous one. He is all about a flashy idea in the moment, damn the consequences when you reach the next bar. There are times when Harnoncourt seems unaware that a momentary note or two is, in fact, part of a larger phrase. Some of these things sound good, and some are quite interesting, but they also prevent the performance from cohering. Harnoncourt, at the end of his career, is finicky, experimental, and inconsistent" [quoted abridged].

A brilliant comment that, in my opinion, and similar to what I wrote here about Old Saint Nik in 2011: "Just this morning I turned to Harnoncourt's LvB 1 with the COE, and with all his finicky treatment of detail I felt that the symphony just didn't flow, that it felt abnormally and ponderously long as it never does with Szell or Toscanini."

A good friend of mine, who strongly dislikes the HIP movement (much more than I do, if you can believe such a thing) and sees Old Nik as virtually the devil himself, wrote perceptively that in early music, he seemed most at home in the French Baroque, and that therefore one of his most successful recordings was of Rameau's Castor et Pollux. This friend deplores Harnoncourt's entire approach to Bach and Mozart as stemming from his research into this period in France.

Yet even this friend concedes that Harnoncourt did a pretty good job with Johann Strauss's Zigeunerbaron and with a Vienna New Year's Eve concert of Strauss's music. And that's the thing: one never knows where one is with Harnoncourt. I hated his Don Giovanni and had to get rid of it, but I very much liked his treatment of the big Serenade for Winds. His version of Monteverdi's Poppea outclasses every other I've heard. And even of his Beethoven I wrote here some years ago:

"My top honors for a single movement from the 9th belong however to Harnoncourt COE, and that's a set I often dislike for a number of reasons - among them, the fussy, slow, underpowered Pastorale; the prissy treatment of the ending of 8:2; the tendency throughout to avoid articulating staccatos as truly detached notes and to turn them into tenutos instead. But Harnoncourt's treatment of the slow movement of the 9th makes up for nearly everything else in that set. Taking the movement close to B's metronome mark (not quite, as the movement would last only 10 minutes if he did), he somehow manages to make it a single seamless, inevitable paragraph. And I don't know any other recording that succeeds at this so well."

Interesting that "Nik" is both the name of a saint and a common term for the devil.

[Jo498]

I never heard the recording of the slavonic dances (and thought I had read somewhere that they were unidiomatic with Harnoncourt claiming knowing better who to time, phrase, play them than the Czechs).

Whatever, I was usually not as fond of his interpretations of music post-Schubert. Some were quite good but not all that special (e.g. Schumann symphonies), some were really strange and not to my liking (Brahms symphonies). I think it was somewhat unfortunate that he basically turned to 19th century standard rep in the 1990s.

And the recordings from the last 10 years or so tended often to the extremely mannered. There were some mannerisms before that, sure, but I found (and still find) a lot of it interesting. A common complaint is that he is different for the sake of being different. I find this rather silly because it is completely impossible to prove and a fairly cheap shot. It also does not matter if I am convinced of what he does differently as a viable alternative perspective (sort of like Gould). I can easily concede that e.g. his Mozart recordings with the Concertgebouw are exaggerated, overly dramatic, sometimes oddly slow, sometime very fast. But there are enough sprightly and elegant Mozart recordings, I do not need another one of those.

E.g. I love the recording of Haydn's Paris symphonies although some movements are mannered as hell with rubato, Luftpausen and whatnot. But the very sound is stunning, much more colorful than any other I have heard (and I have heard about 10 sets or partial sets of these works), they are impressively detailed and dramatic as well. #83 is probably my favorite recording of this piece.

The eight Haydn symphonies he recorded earlier with the Concentus (30, 31, 45, 53, 60, 59, 69, 73) are more straightforward and similarly good. All of them are among my favorites of these pieces.

As for the Beethoven set, I found most of it very interesting and refreshing >20 years ago when it came out but at that time I had not heard all that many different Beethoven interpretations. It's been a while that I listened to them but generally I find the presence and eloquence of the woodwinds fantastic throughout. I did not like his 5th (not powerful enough) and 6th (despite nice pastoral drone sounds too slow in the first movement). I should re-listen to the 9th, to my recollection this was also too "chamber-like" in the outer movements but the slow movement might make up for that. I quite liked the first 4 and 7+8, with maybe 3 and 7 as favorites.

Anyway, his "Klangrede" approach might yield some overly mannered results, but in other case eloquently moving interpretations against which most of the other HIP guys seem pale (except for younger ones who apparently take pains to outdo Harnoncourt in that department) and one has to turn to oldies like Scherchen or Furtwängler to find comparably individual readings.

[Mandryka]

I'll tell you a good one by him that I listened to today: Four Seasons.  It is maybe the clearest example I've heard of the quintessential Harnoncourt art.

[Jo498]

I agree. Of course I have heard only a fragment (about five) of the hundreds of quattro stagioni recordings but Harnoncourt is the most convincing I know.
There are quite a few of his recordings I find unique and very special (this does not necessarily mean "the best). Handel's concerti op.6 are another one. Again, he is mannered in some movements. But when I did a little comparison with two concerti or so in about 5 recordings (highly regarded ones as Manze, Hogwood etc.) his were (often by far) the most interesting. He found drama, eloquent gestures, contrasts where most of the others played "only the notes" and appeared fairly shallow.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I never heard the recording of the slavonic dances (and thought I had read somewhere that they were unidiomatic with Harnoncourt claiming knowing better who to time, phrase, play them than the Czechs).

Whatever, I was usually not as fond of his interpretations of music post-Schubert. Some were quite good but not all that special (e.g. Schumann symphonies), some were really strange and not to my liking (Brahms symphonies). I think it was somewhat unfortunate that he basically turned to 19th century standard rep in the 1990s.

And the recordings from the last 10 years or so tended often to the extremely mannered. There were some mannerisms before that, sure, but I found (and still find) a lot of it interesting. A common complaint is that he is different for the sake of being different. I find this rather silly because it is completely impossible to prove and a fairly cheap shot. It also does not matter if I am convinced of what he does differently as a viable alternative perspective (sort of like Gould). I can easily concede that e.g. his Mozart recordings with the Concertgebouw are exaggerated, overly dramatic, sometimes oddly slow, sometime very fast. But there are enough sprightly and elegant Mozart recordings, I do not need another one of those.

E.g. I love the recording of Haydn's Paris symphonies although some movements are mannered as hell with rubato, Luftpausen and whatnot. But the very sound is stunning, much more colorful than any other I have heard (and I have heard about 10 sets or partial sets of these works), they are impressively detailed and dramatic as well. #83 is probably my favorite recording of this piece.

The eight Haydn symphonies he recorded earlier with the Concentus (30, 31, 45, 53, 60, 59, 69, 73) are more straightforward and similarly good. All of them are among my favorites of these pieces.

As for the Beethoven set, I found most of it very interesting and refreshing >20 years ago when it came out but at that time I had not heard all that many different Beethoven interpretations. It's been a while that I listened to them but generally I find the presence and eloquence of the woodwinds fantastic throughout. I did not like his 5th (not powerful enough) and 6th (despite nice pastoral drone sounds too slow in the first movement). I should re-listen to the 9th, to my recollection this was also too "chamber-like" in the outer movements but the slow movement might make up for that. I quite liked the first 4 and 7+8, with maybe 3 and 7 as favorites.

Anyway, his "Klangrede" approach might yield some overly mannered results, but in other case eloquently moving interpretations against which most of the other HIP guys seem pale (except for younger ones who apparently take pains to outdo Harnoncourt in that department) and one has to turn to oldies like Scherchen or Furtwängler to find comparably individual readings.

Thank you for the characteristically thoughtful comment. It appears we are largely in agreement about our generally mixed feelings towards Harnoncourt. This comment - "A common complaint is that he is different for the sake of being different. I find this rather silly because it is completely impossible to prove and a fairly cheap shot" - stands out because you quite rightly imply it's nothing more than an ad hominem argument, accusing Harnoncourt of nefarious motives rather than acknowledging he may be a sincere advocate of this approach. I agree he can do marvelous things with voicing the woodwinds.

As for his Slavonic Dances, they work for me, and I see no reason why only the Czechs should have a right to these properties. On the other hand, I'm a little wary of trying his Porgy and Bess. I suppose there's no reason why a conductor schooled in Bach and the French Baroque shouldn't try his hand at Gershwin, but it just sounds - well, odd.

[Jo498]

Thanks, I'll try the Slavonic Dances. My recollection might even be wrong and it could have been "Ma vlast" that had very controversial reviews.
Harnoncourt recorded so much and rather diverse music (his discography must be in the order of magnitude of Karajan, Solti, Marriner) and his approach is bound to yield rather controversial results.

[Spineur]

What's missing in this thread is the historical perspective.  Up to 1990, the dominance of Karajan as a conductor was tremendous.  He in fact would bar the emergence of new conductors in festival as well as in recordings.  Whether you talked about Beethoven, Brahms (which he botched up in a number of occasion) and even Verdi (Requiem) he was the absolute reference and no other vision of the repertoire could be expressed.  Occasionally, one would tolerate a reference to Otto Klemperer or Wilhelm Furtwangler,  but only to say how much better Karajan was.

In the press release of the Salzburg Festival to honor the memory of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Festival direction acknowledge that Karajan prevented Harnoncourt  from directing at Salzburg Festival.

Cellist of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 1952 to 1969, Karajan in person recruits. Yet he will do everything to block the road to the head Harnoncourt who begins to direct his baroque ensemble on period instruments, the Concentus Musicus of Vienna. Karajan certainly sensed in Harnoncourt, a serious rival - out of the question to risk it.

Ultimately it will be in 1992, three years after the death of Karajan, that Harnoncourt would lead for the first time as part of the Salzburg Festival.

No wonder that Harnoncourt felt as a spell of fresh air in orchestral direction.  He also opened the road to the Italian maestros Abbado, Mutti, as well as Boulez in his Bayreuth tenure.

[Jo498]

Karajan was a dominant figure but not everywhere. E.g. not in Bayreuth where Boulez was invited by Wieland Wagner already in the mid-1960s. And there was hardly any overlap between what Karajan did in the 1960s and the pioneering Concentus musicus. If there was any rivalry this was much later in Karajans fading years in the mid/late 1980s.
Harnoncourt was not blocked from major orchestras. He conducted the Concertgebouw from 1975 on (annual Bach Passions) and recorded Mozart symphonies with them from about 1980 onwards. He was invited to the Scala already in 1972 for a Monteverdi opera and did a famous Monteverdi Cycle in Zurich in the 1970s. This was not Salzburg or the MET, but it was not an obscure provincial theater either. He first conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the mid-1980s.
So while even I can remember how controversial he (and other HIP proponents) were still received in some quarters in the late 1980s by that time he was well-established in a large and stable niche and had already conducted major symphony orchestras.
And while I am not convinced by all of what he conducted in the romantic repertoire, he really took his time. He did not conduct/record Schubert and Beethoven before the late 1980s and when his Beethoven cycle came out it was not even on historical instruments and preceded by Hogwood, Norrington, the Hanover Band and some of Brüggen's Beethoven.

[Herman]

What's missing in this thread is the historical perspective.  Up to 1990, the dominance of Karajan as a conductor was tremendous. 

This is not what I would call a historical perspective. At the time that Karajan was powerful in Berlin, Salzburg and DG, Harnoncourt was by and large into pre-1750 music. So there was little overlap. Apart from that there were many places in classical music where Karajan had no influence whatsoever.

But  this whole invidious narrative of Karajan wrecking rivals' careers just doesn't survive fact scrutiny. Just look at Kubelik's recording career. He and Karajan did overlap substantially in time and in repertoire, and Kubelik recorded at DG, too, with the Berlin Phil.

No problem.