Why didn't Karajan do a complete Mahler set...?

[Bonehelm]

I would like to hear his 2nd and 8th, the immense power in his conducting will work very well...

[M forever]

He considered doing the 8th, but according to Osborne's biography, gave up that plan after hearing Maazel conduct it in London. I don't recall why though, or if it even gives a reason.

Karajan only came late to Mahler. It is often forgotten today now that the music is so totally overplayed and seen more as virtuoso showpieces than the complex and deep musical expressions of Mahler's very personal world view, how radical and unique his musical thinking was at the time, and how controversial and hard to figure out.

Karajan was born 3 years before Mahler died and grew into a musical world which just started to digest these works. In a musical way, Mahler had expressed the many inner tensions of his world and times and predicted the catastrophical clash and collapse of many important elements of that world. For those people who understand that cultural background on a deeper emotional level and who feel these tensions and the looming, unsettling predictions behind it, his music is much more shattering and disturbing than just the great orchestral thrill ride it is reduced to mostly nowadays.

Mahler was played much more in the 20s in Germany and Austria though than many believe. But then the forced hiatus of 1933-45 (1938-45 in Austria) when the music was "banned" because it was considered "un-Aryan" by the NS regime further delayed the process of internalizing the music and what it stands for. And it's not just the performance ban which caused that. It is the very nature of the music and its particular position in the German-Austrian music tradition which made it very hard for many people to digest the music and come to terms with what it really means in that context. Many people, ban or not, were only beginning to get ready for that in the 50s.

Karajan, as technically brilliant as he was, basically never conducted anything he felt he hadn't completely internalized in his own way. That's why it took him so long to approach Mahler. Which he did by way of Das Lied von der Erde, which was the first of the symphonic scale compositions he conducted (he had done some of the orchestral Lieder in the 50s). It took him a long time to form his own image of the music, and when he started conducting it, he spent a lot of time rehearsing it with the BP, sometimes by looking at one of the symphonies in rehearsal, then putting it aside, picking it up again until he felt ready to portray the inner musical complexity of the work, then finally performed and recorded it. Why he didn't do all of them, I don't know, if he couldn't find his way into some of them, if he simply didn't have enough time, hard to say.

But he also approached other repertoire, like the Second Viennese School, in that same, very careful and slow way.

There are also pieces of the very standard repertoire that he, interestingly, never conducted in concert, like some of the Schubert or Schumann or Bruckner symphonies (although he did actually evntually record all of them). He also never did Sibelius 3 because, as he said, he felt he didn't understand the music. Even though he did all of the other Sibelius symphonies. What he didn't understand about the music we can't know.

I would have liked most to hear the 3rd and 7th symphonies from him.

[Sean]

Most interesting M. Karajan and his whole generation of conductors didn't casually breeze through the great works but I'm sure thought more seriously about a lot of music, only adding works to their own repertory when they felt some real confidence for what they stood for and had something to say. I've probably said this before but I certainly think some of the younger names conducting all sorts of major works across different centuries and countries is typical of the contemporary lack of understanding if not respect.

[Sean]

Interesting about K not understanding Sibelius 3- it's a formally odd piece, perhaps the oddest, but not much more so than Tapiola, 6 or 7- which he did record...


EDIT- composer mix up there.

[Michel]

Yes, good and interesting points M and Sean.

Yet further reason to consider Karajan a deeply devoted and passionate music lover, not a meglomaniac as some of the more upright, insecure and more gimpy losers on the board accuse him of.

[Bonehelm]

That was very informative, M.

[Sergeant Rock]

I would have liked most to hear the 3rd and 7th symphonies from him.

It's the 8th for me. Karajan is my favorite conductor of opera (whether Puccini, Wagner or Verdi), and I consider Part II to be the opera Mahler never composed. I would have loved to hear what Karajan would have done with it.

About the reasons he didn't complete a Mahler cycle: you bring up good points. I wonder if his fascination with the then new digital technology didn't have something to do with it too. He wanted to get his basic repertoire recorded digitally and so he spent years re-recording (sometimes for the third or fourth time) Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven etc. It left him little time for anything new. The pity is that very few of those digital recordings are better than his previous efforts...not even sonically improved. In a sense he wasted his last decade. At least that's how I see it.

Sarge

[Lilas Pastia]

I think it's so much better that way. You could turn the question around and ask "Why did Solti record a complete Mahler set? " (or Maazel, Chailly, etc).

Obviously, music making should be a question of quality, not quantity. Personally I think the Mahler symphony Karajan was most suited to conduct (other than those he actually did) would have been the second.

But one thing about Karajan that has always intrigued me is that choral paeans were not his strong suit. Apart from some carefully chosen religious works by Verdi, Beethoven, Haydn, Bach, Mozart, Brahms or Bruckner. No Berlioz or Dvorak requiem, no Bach JohannesPassion, no Messiah, no Haydn or Bruckner masses, no other Beethoven (Christus am Ölberge, C major Mass), no Gürrelieder, no Kullervo, the list could go on. And yet, all these particular composers were prominently featured in his repertoire.

[Harry Collier]

I think the older generation of conductors would have blanched if one suggested they "should" conduct music they didn't like or empathise with. Klemperer was a big Mahler fan (and acolyte) but only ever conducted certain works of Mahler -- never everything. And Furtwängler obviously (like me) preferred to use his talents elsewhere. Beecham, to my knowledge, never went near Mahler in his life.

A certain type of performer, however, asks "what is fashionable at the moment?" when choosing repertoire.

[M forever]

But one thing about Karajan that has always intrigued me is that choral paeans were not his strong suit. Apart from some carefully chosen religious works by Verdi, Beethoven, Haydn, Bach, Mozart, Brahms or Bruckner. No Berlioz or Dvorak requiem, no Bach JohannesPassion, no Messiah, no Haydn or Bruckner masses, no other Beethoven (Christus am Ölberge, C major Mass), no Gürrelieder, no Kullervo, the list could go on. And yet, all these particular composers were prominently featured in his repertoire.

Karajan did actually conduct Gurrelieder (without the ü though  ), but there is no recording of that.
Again, I find the notion that he should have conducted all these works in addition to the enormous repertoire he had, and the idea that the fact that he didn't makes choral conducting somehow "not his strong suit" a little strange. I think people don't take into account how much time it actually takes to study all these works really thoroughly, it's not a matter of just reading through the score once or twice and then conducting it. Although that is the way a lot of posers do it. Would you have preferred Karajan to work in this way to instead of taking his time to study selected repertoire?

[uffeviking]

Beecham, to my knowledge, never went near Mahler in his life.

Neither did Carlos Kleiber.

[M forever]

Wrong - Carlos Kleiber conducted Das Lied von der Erde. There is even a recording of that.

[uffeviking]

OK, ok, you are right, - as usual  - my mind was on Mahler's symphony output. Now of course you'll come back and inform me 'Das Lied von der Erde' is a symphony! 

Care to tell me how or where to find the recording you mentioned? Thank you! 

Lis

[M forever]

Das Lied von der Erde is indeed a symphony, not any more or less than any of Mahler's other symphonies, and that's what he referred to it as himself.
I have the recording from 1967 with the WS but I am currently away from home, so I can't rip and upload it (which I think I could because I don't think any label has the copyright for that). But the Memories CD of the recording is currently available from BRO.

[Sean]

M, do you know the recording by Erich Kleiber, highly rated by some...

[Lilas Pastia]

Karajan did actually conduct Gurrelieder (without the ü though  ), but there is no recording of that.
Again, I find the notion that he should have conducted all these works in addition to the enormous repertoire he had, and the idea that the fact that he didn't makes choral conducting somehow "not his strong suit" a little strange. I think people don't take into account how much time it actually takes to study all these works really thoroughly, it's not a matter of just reading through the score once or twice and then conducting it. Although that is the way a lot of posers do it. Would you have preferred Karajan to work in this way to instead of taking his time to study selected repertoire?

No, no, of course not. But please don't read things into my post I never intended to write. What I did say is that he carefully chose some works, not others. Isn't that the same thing as 'selected repertoire' ? That's his choice of St-Matthew instead of St-John, b minor Mass over Chritstmas Oratorio, Verdi Requiem over Berlioz. His choice. Period.

[M forever]

I see. Apparently I misunderstood you. I thought you meant that the fact that he didn't conduct these choral works indicated to you a lack of ability in that area. I think he was actually very good in the way he worked with choirs.

[Renfield]

I see. Apparently I misunderstood you. I thought you meant that the fact that he didn't conduct these choral works indicated to you a lack of ability in that area. I think he was actually very good in the way he worked with choirs.

I'd even add that "pretty good" might be an understatement; wasn't it Furtwängler, out of all people, who acknowledged that Karajan had the ability to produce "legato" in choral sound, and that it was something you couldn't learn?

[greg]

He considered doing the 8th, but according to Osborne's biography, gave up that plan after hearing Maazel conduct it in London. I don't recall why though, or if it even gives a reason.

Karajan only came late to Mahler. It is often forgotten today now that the music is so totally overplayed and seen more as virtuoso showpieces than the complex and deep musical expressions of Mahler's very personal world view, how radical and unique his musical thinking was at the time, and how controversial and hard to figure out.

Karajan was born 3 years before Mahler died and grew into a musical world which just started to digest these works. In a musical way, Mahler had expressed the many inner tensions of his world and times and predicted the catastrophical clash and collapse of many important elements of that world. For those people who understand that cultural background on a deeper emotional level and who feel these tensions and the looming, unsettling predictions behind it, his music is much more shattering and disturbing than just the great orchestral thrill ride it is reduced to mostly nowadays.

Mahler was played much more in the 20s in Germany and Austria though than many believe. But then the forced hiatus of 1933-45 (1938-45 in Austria) when the music was "banned" because it was considered "un-Aryan" by the NS regime further delayed the process of internalizing the music and what it stands for. And it's not just the performance ban which caused that. It is the very nature of the music and its particular position in the German-Austrian music tradition which made it very hard for many people to digest the music and come to terms with what it really means in that context. Many people, ban or not, were only beginning to get ready for that in the 50s.

Karajan, as technically brilliant as he was, basically never conducted anything he felt he hadn't completely internalized in his own way. That's why it took him so long to approach Mahler. Which he did by way of Das Lied von der Erde, which was the first of the symphonic scale compositions he conducted (he had done some of the orchestral Lieder in the 50s). It took him a long time to form his own image of the music, and when he started conducting it, he spent a lot of time rehearsing it with the BP, sometimes by looking at one of the symphonies in rehearsal, then putting it aside, picking it up again until he felt ready to portray the inner musical complexity of the work, then finally performed and recorded it. Why he didn't do all of them, I don't know, if he couldn't find his way into some of them, if he simply didn't have enough time, hard to say.

But he also approached other repertoire, like the Second Viennese School, in that same, very careful and slow way.

There are also pieces of the very standard repertoire that he, interestingly, never conducted in concert, like some of the Schubert or Schumann or Bruckner symphonies (although he did actually evntually record all of them). He also never did Sibelius 3 because, as he said, he felt he didn't understand the music. Even though he did all of the other Sibelius symphonies. What he didn't understand about the music we can't know.

I would have liked most to hear the 3rd and 7th symphonies from him.

nice....
btw, how do you learn all that stuff? Is this all from information you get from CD booklets, or are there actually books about Karajan out there you read?

[Renfield]

btw, how do you learn all that stuff? Is this all from information you get from CD booklets, or are there actually books about Karajan out there you read?

He's a professional musician, and he's obviously a highly intelligent person with a very good education (musical and otherwise), as well. He puts two and two together, and he analyses the information he does have in a coherent way.

(Of course, I trust M forever will correct any oversight I might have made, in the above guess.)

There are books about Karajan, by the way! In fact, I'm currently reading Richard Osborne's biography of the aforementioned, myself. And it's quite a good book, being read in tandem with three or four others as it currently is, by personal "quirk".