Any bad, horrible Karajan performances?

[scarpia]

I wouldn't say that I'm prejudiced against Karajan's recording of this piece, I remember when I first got it I was expecting a lot from it and was disappointed when I actually heard it.  At the time the only recording of the piece I had was a Zubin Mehta, L.A. Philharmonic recording on Decca/London and I remember thinking Karajan's recording was a big let down.  The CD has literally not been out of the case since I first listened to it, perhaps 20 years ago (that's scary). 

Anyway, I only made it through part one, but my impression now is exactly the same.  It is not that it is insufficiently "brutal" or "savage."   It is certainly performed quite aggressively in parts, it is articulated sharply.   It is just that what I normally like about Karajan's style ruins this piece.

For me, Karajan's thing is making the orchestra merge into one voice, one some times delicate, sometimes colossal, vibrant, varied, powerful voice.  He doesn't arrange for each instrument to play properly, he arranges for each instrument to play in such a way that when it comes together it sounds exactly right.  But the Rite or Spring is not supposed to be like that.  It is supposed to be a hundred instruments all clamoring for your attention.  Karajan manages to fit all of those discordant lines into a surprisingly coherent whole.   But I find the result deathly dull, and I don't think it illustrates that the Rite is closer to the romantic tradition than Stravinsky would have us believe.  I think it proves the opposite, that forcing this music to conform to that tradition drains it of life.

After Karajan I dropped in another odd recording in, the Anermet OSR.  No power or brutality there, but the difference was obvious in the first 10 seconds of the introduction.  In Karajan it was the basoon in high register and all of the other reeds in a flowing undercurrent of sound.  In Ansermet a gentle cacophony of voices, apparently not paying any attention to each other (or to their intonation, for that matter). To me it is more convincing.  However, this one is also not my favorite recording of this piece, which is far from my favorite among Stravinsky's scores. 

Anyway, too bad DG has reissued this recording, I might have been able to get a ton of cash on ebay for this one.

[Monsieur Croche]

This brash, loud, angry "New World" was my first exposure to both work and composer, and put me off Dvořák for years - not until long after I had gotten over this awful account did he eventually my favorite composer. I still don't really like the Ninth Symphony that much at all, largely because of the miserable first impressions that it made. Karajan's Eighth is better, but not exactly something you'd want to hear with so many superior alternatives available.

I concur with your choice. Though, strangely, I find Karajan's version of the Ninth to be superior to the Eighth, which is pretty bad IMO. Speaking of Dvořák, I think Karajan's interpretation of the String Serenade is rather off in this recording; he totally misses out the simplicity and charm in this work, and tried to underline the dramatic qualities that were never there in the first place.



Karajan's recording of Mozart's late symphonies is indeed controversial, as Lilas Pastia has said, and I must say that I count myself among its detractors. In terms of sound, the worst Karajan recording in my collection has to be this one:

[knight66]

Ouch.....I like that B Minor Mass. Do you mean the rehearsal segments after the full performance? The sound quality in those really is vile, they had not been set up with a view to the public ever hearing them, but they do preserve some of the best Bach singing I know of.

Mike