The Karajan Legacy (recordings)

[M forever]

I have, of course. It is a very good book. I didn't have to buy it though. I checked it out from the UCSD library.

[Drasko]

I have, of course. It is a very good book. I didn't have to buy it though. I checked it out from the UCSD library.

Great, thanks! Now I have to go start savings plan, UCSD library is bit long walk from here.

[M forever]

It even has pictures! Not too many though. But it is a very well researched book about Mravinsky and his times. Since he played such an eminent role in Soviet music life, a lot of important events and people are also covered in the book. And of course, his relationship with Shostakovich and the role Mravinsky played in premiering several of his major symphonies is discussed in detail, too.

[King Karajan]

Karajan was THE MASTER conductor! No one could match his sheer genius. We will never see a conductor (or a musical mind) like him ever again. What Mozart and Beethoven were to composing, Karajan was to conducting. LONG LIVE THE MASTER!

[jochanaan]

Karajan was THE MASTER conductor! No one could match his sheer genius. We will never see a conductor (or a musical mind) like him ever again. What Mozart and Beethoven were to composing, Karajan was to conducting. LONG LIVE THE MASTER!

Hmmm...Put "Fritz Reiner" or "Pierre Monteux" for "Karajan" and I might be convinced.

In an interview in a book whose author and title I've forgotten, Karajan said that he tried to steer a middle course between Toscanini's fierce clarity and Furtwängler's "indecision."  (HvK insisted that Furtwängler never said "Ja" or "Nein," but always "Jein." ) But my experience with his recordings is that the clarity and passion of the earlier recordings gave way to something cold yet less than clear--always with intense dynamics and scrupulous respect to the score, but not truly clear in the sound.

Also, most of his recordings of Baroque, Classical-period, and early Romantic music (even Brahms) simply sounds too heavy for me.  Again, some of his pronouncements do not match the reality, for he says he achieved a "transparent" string sound, yet what I hear is opaque and ponderous.  Jochum and Böhm before HvK, and Abbado after him, got more stylistic performances from that orchestra.

Sometime around the 1980s, someone proposed a "triumvirate" of conductors includings Bernstein, Karajan, and--Solti! (This was based on record sales and "celebrity factor," not merely musicianship.)  I've discussed Solti elsewhere, but of these three, the one I love the most is Bernstein.  His recordings may sometimes be infuriatingly wrong-headed, but at his best Lenny was just unmatchable.  Neither Solti nor Karajan ever achieved Bernstein's kind of transcendence.

[M forever]

Again, some of his pronouncements do not match the reality, for he says he achieved a "transparent" string sound, yet what I hear is opaque and ponderous.

The string sound of the BP under Karajan was indeed very transparent, at the same time it was very deep and rich, but also very well balanced and you could hear everything that was going on. The most amazing aspect of it was perhaps the kind of substance he got from the orchestra at the softest dynamics. The sound could be incredibly soft, but still clear and fill the room. You can't really tell that from most of their recordings, many of them just sound too "glassy" to give you an idea of the quality it had. But the sound could also be incredibly full and loud, it literally flattened your face. All that was basically the result of very precise workmanship, there was really not much of a "secret" behind it, Karajan just rehearsed and balanced the sections of the orchestra until he got that result. And they all played with full sound, good intonation and conviction. That kind of sound was pretty unique, I can guarantee you you have never anything even approaching it. Karajan was indeed a master of the orchestra - what one thinks of his interpretations is one thing, and there is a lot of stuff from him that I don't particularly like, but when it comes to craftsmanship, the mastery of how to work with an orchestra to get these particular results, Karajan was indeed a genius. Your comparison with Reiner is nonsensical - Reiner was just a tyrant who terroroized musicians into playing the right notes at the right time, but under his rule, music making died. His often celebrated recordings of Strauss' tone poems are lifeless and stiff, the orchestra just pokes its way through the music, and the musical context is often lost because of his selective highlighting. There is no real music making there. Reiner, Toscanini and Szell had a very negative impact on the musical culture in the US - their sterilized performances which just aimed for note "perfection" and the recordings which were produced and suggested to people to be "standards" created a musical monoculture which killed off a lot of the qualities of free, creative music making that, fortunately, the great orchestras in Europe never lost. American orchestras usually just execute the notes, they fiddle and blow and bang through the pieces but rarely go beyond that. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, it is very obvious that there is no real connection to a living musical culture anymore. There is a marked difference between engaging in cultural activities and actually having and living culture.

Sometime around the 1980s, someone proposed a "triumvirate" of conductors includings Bernstein, Karajan, and--Solti! (This was based on record sales and "celebrity factor," not merely musicianship.)  I've discussed Solti elsewhere, but of these three, the one I love the most is Bernstein.  His recordings may sometimes be infuriatingly wrong-headed, but at his best Lenny was just unmatchable.  Neither Solti nor Karajan ever achieved Bernstein's kind of transcendence.

These rankings are nonsense anyway, so you shouldn't waste your time with them. Karajan and Bernstein, who, BTW, were known to hold each other in very high esteem although they were completely different characters and were often positioned against each other by record companies and music managements. They have been seen many times hanging out and talking for hours when they bumped into each other, e.g. at the Salzburg Festival. They were so different in their approaches that a direct comparison is interesting, but a "ranking" is nonsense. And Karajan did actually reach a very high level of "transendence" in his best interpretations. Unlike Bernstein, who subjected everything to his personal subjectivity - and who often reached highly idiosyncratic, but nonetheless impressive results because he simply was a musical genius - Karajan's ideal was music just happening in the moment, he wanted to transcend the technical aspects of music making and find spontaneous freedom and unmanipulated beauty beyond the correct execution of notes. And he did, in his best moments.
In addition to that, he did actually manage to find a balance between the "extreme" poles Furtwängler and Toscanini, and he also enrichened the palette of orchestral playing by combining elements of German and French orchestral styles. He brought a finesse and fine sensuality he adopted from French music making to orchestral playing in Germany while still maintaining the robustness and richness of sound that characterized German orchestral styles. Stylistically, his interpretations are way more complex than most people even begin to guess.

[Bonehelm]

The string sound of the BP under Karajan was indeed very transparent, at the same time it was very deep and rich, but also very well balanced and you could hear everything that was going on. The most amazing aspect of it was perhaps the kind of substance he got from the orchestra at the softest dynamics. The sound could be incredibly soft, but still clear and fill the room. You can't really tell that from most of their recordings, many of them just sound too "glassy" to give you an idea of the quality it had. But the sound could also be incredibly full and loud, it literally flattened your face. All that was basically the result of very precise workmanship, there was really not much of a "secret" behind it, Karajan just rehearsed and balanced the sections of the orchestra until he got that result. And they all played with full sound, good intonation and conviction. That kind of sound was pretty unique, I can guarantee you you have never anything even approaching it. Karajan was indeed a master of the orchestra - what one thinks of his interpretations is one thing, and there is a lot of stuff from him that I don't particularly like, but when it comes to craftsmanship, the mastery of how to work with an orchestra to get these particular results, Karajan was indeed a genius. Your comparison with Reiner is nonsensical - Reiner was just a tyrant who terroroized musicians into playing the right notes at the right time, but under his rule, music making died. His often celebrated recordings of Strauss' tone poems are lifeless and stiff, the orchestra just pokes its way through the music, and the musical context is often lost because of his selective highlighting. There is no real music making there. Reiner, Toscanini and Szell had a very negative impact on the musical culture in the US - their sterilized performances which just aimed for note "perfection" and the recordings which were produced and suggested to people to be "standards" created a musical monoculture which killed off a lot of the qualities of free, creative music making that, fortunately, the great orchestras in Europe never lost. American orchestras usually just execute the notes, they fiddle and blow and bang through the pieces but rarely go beyond that. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, it is very obvious that there is no real connection to a living musical culture anymore. There is a marked difference between engaging in cultural activities and actually having and living culture.

These rankings are nonsense anyway, so you shouldn't waste your time with them. Karajan and Bernstein, who, BTW, were known to hold each other in very high esteem although they were completely different characters and were often positioned against each other by record companies and music managements. They have been seen many times hanging out and talking for hours when they bumped into each other, e.g. at the Salzburg Festival. They were so different in their approaches that a direct comparison is interesting, but a "ranking" is nonsense. And Karajan did actually reach a very high level of "transendence" in his best interpretations. Unlike Bernstein, who subjected everything to his personal subjectivity - and who often reached highly idiosyncratic, but nonetheless impressive results because he simply was a musical genius - Karajan's ideal was music just happening in the moment, he wanted to transcend the technical aspects of music making and find spontaneous freedom and unmanipulated beauty beyond the correct execution of notes. And he did, in his best moments.
In addition to that, he did actually manage to find a balance between the "extreme" poles Furtwängler and Toscanini, and he also enrichened the palette of orchestral playing by combining elements of German and French orchestral styles. He brought a finesse and fine sensuality he adopted from French music making to orchestral playing in Germany while still maintaining the robustness and richness of sound that characterized German orchestral styles. Stylistically, his interpretations are way more complex than most people even begin to guess.

For the first time I actually learned something other than ways of insulting people from M.

[jochanaan]

The string sound of the BP under Karajan was indeed very transparent, at the same time it was very deep and rich, but also very well balanced and you could hear everything that was going on. The most amazing aspect of it was perhaps the kind of substance he got from the orchestra at the softest dynamics. The sound could be incredibly soft, but still clear and fill the room. You can't really tell that from most of their recordings, many of them just sound too "glassy" to give you an idea of the quality it had. But the sound could also be incredibly full and loud, it literally flattened your face. All that was basically the result of very precise workmanship, there was really not much of a "secret" behind it, Karajan just rehearsed and balanced the sections of the orchestra until he got that result. And they all played with full sound, good intonation and conviction. That kind of sound was pretty unique, I can guarantee you you have never anything even approaching it. Karajan was indeed a master of the orchestra - what one thinks of his interpretations is one thing, and there is a lot of stuff from him that I don't particularly like, but when it comes to craftsmanship, the mastery of how to work with an orchestra to get these particular results, Karajan was indeed a genius.

That's good to hear, and I should have allowed for the notorious inability of recording technology to capture ALL the nuances and sonorities of a live performance.

Your comparison with Reiner is nonsensical - Reiner was just a tyrant who terroroized musicians into playing the right notes at the right time, but under his rule, music making died. His often celebrated recordings of Strauss' tone poems are lifeless and stiff, the orchestra just pokes its way through the music, and the musical context is often lost because of his selective highlighting. There is no real music making there. Reiner, Toscanini and Szell had a very negative impact on the musical culture in the US - their sterilized performances which just aimed for note "perfection" and the recordings which were produced and suggested to people to be "standards" created a musical monoculture which killed off a lot of the qualities of free, creative music making that, fortunately, the great orchestras in Europe never lost. American orchestras usually just execute the notes, they fiddle and blow and bang through the pieces but rarely go beyond that. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, it is very obvious that there is no real connection to a living musical culture anymore. There is a marked difference between engaging in cultural activities and actually having and living culture.

Well, I disagree; but since we can't really define what constitutes "great music-making," I can't back up my disagreement with any objective statements.

These rankings are nonsense anyway, so you shouldn't waste your time with them. Karajan and Bernstein, who, BTW, were known to hold each other in very high esteem although they were completely different characters and were often positioned against each other by record companies and music managements. They have been seen many times hanging out and talking for hours when they bumped into each other, e.g. at the Salzburg Festival. They were so different in their approaches that a direct comparison is interesting, but a "ranking" is nonsense...

That's true, of course, but if you read carefully, I was only "ranking" for myself.  I suppose, to be technical, I should have prefaced all of my sentences with "In my opinion" or "To me" or some such; but I was trained in an old-fashioned way to avoid this, since the entire post is merely an expression of opinion anyway.  I tend to forget the modern tendency to extract excerpts devoid of context... But I really do try to avoid making universal pronouncements.

[M forever]

Check out these painful Karajan Gold promo videos!

Click on the play buttons in the little windows under "Videos ansehen" and be horrified   

I am sure the Maestro would have liked them though 

[Holden]

I am neither for nor against HvK. I don't care if he was vain, self opiniated and self aggrandising (and he was all three), I just want to hear him and any other conductor make music that appeals to my 'ears' - he has achieved this with the following recordings IMO

Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade
LvB Symphony #5
Tchaikovsky - Ballet Suites
Bruckner - Symphony #8

I rate these as top of the tree recordings - almost definitive!

Many of his other recordings are also excellent and this is especially true of his Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. Just check out his CD of the LvB overtures. But for me his DVD of the Verdi Requiem with La Scala Milan is non  pareil.

All this speaks volumes about his ability to conduct big orchestral works. However, when you get to works that require good balance between soloists and the 'band' Karajan is found to be wanting. I can't think of a single concerto work that I would even come halfway to liking - He justs dominates at the expense of the soloist! His baroque is execrable and as for other chamber works, I just shudder.

Give the man his due, he was one of the great conductors of the 20th century but that doesn't make him any greater than Furtwangler, Mengelberg, Reiner, Toscanini, Szell, Monteux and many others.

I only have 7 CDs in my collection where HvK is the conductor and these I think are very special. For me, great performances (regardless of who's conducting) are the most important thing and that's why I only have those.

[knight66]

Regarding balance; I have only heard Karajan once live, in Mahler. Other than that, it has been in many recordings. There are some, such as his Aida with Freni, where I very much dislike the balance and the singers seem to have to fight to be heard. As he was very involved with the sound picture of his recordings, I assume this was the sound he wanted.

But then, I watched a film of him rehearsing the Liebstod with Jessye Norman and I have never before or since heard the orchestra provide such a sensitive accompaniment, she did not dominate the soundpicture, but was integrated, nevertheless always audible even at pp. He worked to ensure she would be heard and that the detail of the orchestra could be clear. It was also obvious he worked in a real partnership with her.

Mike

[M forever]

I heard the Liebestod with Norman live. Not the one on the DG disc, that was recorded in Salzburg with the WP, I heard it in Berlin with the BP in the New Year's Eve concert. Where was the rehearsal filmed? Anyway, I can only confirm what knight said, and that can also be heard on the DG disc. Generally, he had a reputation in being especially good when it came to accompanying singers, not only by making sure the orchestra wouldn't drown them out, but also because he knew exactly where they needed support and where they needed to breathe and all that.

I think it is a misconception to think that because he conducted "big" orchestral works and also made them sound "big", that that meant it was always loud. On the contrary. I have rarely heard an orchestra play as softly but with as much substance as the BP under him. He could make the entire string section play a ppp that was incredibly soft but at the same time, you could hear that they actually all played because the sound still had a lot of substance.

I think Holden was more talking about accompanying instrumentalists though. I only heard him with a soloist other than a singer twice since during his last years in Berlin, he concentrated mostly on re-recording all the major orchestral "blockbusters". One of the two times was actually Berg's violin concerto (!) in which he did provide very sensitive and nuanced accompaniment. Unfortunately, there is no (commercial) recording of that although I am sure there is a radio recording and/or an archive recording (the Philharmonie has its own permanent sound studio and sound engineer and they record and archive practically everything). The other time was the Tchaikovsky concerto with Kissin which is also on a DG disc. Here, he let the orchestra "rip" appropriately in the tutti passages, but he also held them back and provided very well balanced accompaniment during solo passages. I have heard of cases in which he and a soloist couldn't agree on how they wanted to do a concerto, but I don't remember who these soloists were. I can't think of any recordings off the top of my head though in which he overpowers the soloist. He did a lot of nice concerto recordings, from standard pieces like all the "big" violin, piano and cello concertos incl. Don Quixote which is kind of a cello concerto - that actually makes three concertos that I have heard with him because I did hear DQ live with Antonio Meneses (that's also on a DG disc) - to "smaller" ones like the Mozart wind concertos in which he provides very good accompaniment to the wind soloists.

I am not interested in his Baroque performances either, in that repertoire I really prefer other performance styles but I don't find him "execrable" in that area either. I actually have a set of Händel concerti grossi which is the result of recording sessions made in the 60s during the summers when he would invite members of the orchestra to spend some time at his house in St.Moritz and play chamber orchestra together (he played and directed from the harpsichord). These aren't what I envision these pieces to sound either, but they are all very well played and have some nice musical touches. Not any worse than the typical approach to baroque music most people had back then, when the whole HIP thing was still young.

[eyeresist]

^
Let's hope that Berg concerto gets released someday.


I have a 2-DVD set of Karajan conducting Bruckner 8 and 9 in the 1970s. Apparently he insisted on directing all his filmed performances himself, which would explain why these were so awful.

Don't misunderstand - the music is magnificent. The directing, however, seems conceived by someone whose only artistic reference point is the Moderne "experimentalism" of the 1920s and 30s. When the brass play, it's time for a close-up of their shining brass bells. When the winds play, you get close-ups of the instruments, with the musicians pretty well omitted from the frame. The 8th begins with a wide shot from the back of the hall, which over several minutes closes in until you can finally make out the orchestra. My favourite shot is what I call "conducting the big violin". There was a camera positioned on the floor by the first violins, so you get a shot consisting of Karajan - and a big violin, which he appears to be conducting. For both these symphonies, the style calms down after a while, so I suspect Karajan lost interest during the editing process (possibly due to his back pain) and toddled off, leaving the hindmost of the project in saner hands.

This set also includes previews of his opera films, which are also bizarre. There's also a movement from the Brahms Requiem, for which the choir are standing in a sparse grid-like formation, only God (or Karajan) knows why.

Anyway, it's a great set to watch with the TV off. 

[Bonehelm]

^
Let's hope that Berg concerto gets released someday.


I have a 2-DVD set of Karajan conducting Bruckner 8 and 9 in the 1970s. Apparently he insisted on directing all his filmed performances himself, which would explain why these were so awful.

Don't misunderstand - the music is magnificent. The directing, however, seems conceived by someone whose only artistic reference point is the Moderne "experimentalism" of the 1920s and 30s. When the brass play, it's time for a close-up of their shining brass bells. When the winds play, you get close-ups of the instruments, with the musicians pretty well omitted from the frame. The 8th begins with a wide shot from the back of the hall, which over several minutes closes in until you can finally make out the orchestra. My favourite shot is what I call "conducting the big violin". There was a camera positioned on the floor by the first violins, so you get a shot consisting of Karajan - and a big violin, which he appears to be conducting. For both these symphonies, the style calms down after a while, so I suspect Karajan lost interest during the editing process (possibly due to his back pain) and toddled off, leaving the hindmost of the project in saner hands.

This set also includes previews of his opera films, which are also bizarre. There's also a movement from the Brahms Requiem, for which the choir are standing in a sparse grid-like formation, only God (or Karajan) knows why.

Anyway, it's a great set to watch with the TV off. 

Is it the DVD set where he conducts Te Deum with eyes open and without a baton? I have that too, but I haven't watched it yet. Heard the video quality and photography were both horrible.

[eyeresist]

Is it the DVD set where he conducts Te Deum with eyes open and without a baton? I have that too, but I haven't watched it yet. Heard the video quality and photography were both horrible.

That's the one. I thought video quality was okay for its time (and I think it is video, not film), not very resolved, but that's often a problem with NTSC. It obviously can't compare with recent stuff. Sound is fine, though.

[Renfield]

I will dare say that I liked the direction in those two specific filmed concerts. I'm not sure what you'd have wanted instead.

The video quality in the 8th is a bit questionable, I'll agree, but otherwise I find many things to like in the Karajan's direction. Though not always, mind you - see: Brahms' 1st and 2nd Symphonies, from the late 80's.

[Bonehelm]

I will dare say that I liked the direction in those two specific filmed concerts. I'm not sure what you'd have wanted instead.

The video quality in the 8th is a bit questionable, I'll agree, but otherwise I find many things to like in the Karajan's direction. Though not always, mind you - see: Brahms' 1st and 2nd Symphonies, from the late 80's.

Besides his over-egotistical insistense of having the cameras focused on himself 90% of the time, I don't have much problems with hvk's direction either.

[M forever]

^
Let's hope that Berg concerto gets released someday.

That would be nice, but I think that's ultra-unlikely. Now, with the centenary, would have been the right time for someone to dig into the archives and release a collection of interesting live recordings, but that didn't happen for whatever reasons. Obviously, DG and EMI are more interested in repackaging their own recordings once again. Although DG at one point did release interesting live recordings from the Salzburg Festival, among them the concert with Géza Anda and the Staatskapelle Dresden and Karajan from 1972. The BP released a number of interesting live recordings last year for their 125th anniversary, I wish they had had someone put together something like a little "Karajan live" edition, although that is of course a lot of work and not cheap...It would have been worth it though because Karajan was live somewhat different and, IMO, most of the time better than in his studio recordings.

Good videos to watch are the concert for the 100th anniversary of the BP (1982) with Beethoven's Eroica and another one from 1984 or so with Strauss' Alpensinfonie and another from 1987 with Also sprach Zarathustra. Those were actual live concerts filmed by German TV and they look much more natural and give you a much better impression of what his music making was like live than a lot of the films he directed (many of which have audience as extras so you can't always tell what is studio and what is a real live concert). Both are available on Sony DVDs. I see the Strauss items have been repackaged in one double album:



Beethoven (it is easy to confuse this live video with one of the concert films of the 9 symphonies made around the same time):

[Bonehelm]

M, what the hell is this staging?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8eigkwmMEo

Was this Karajan's idea for some kind of special sound or something?

[Renfield]

M, what the hell is this staging?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8eigkwmMEo

Was this Karajan's idea for some kind of special sound or something?

I am not M, but it was conceptual/aesthetic, more than aural-related - particularly since I think the Berlin Philharmonic recorded the audio track beforehand... IIRC, he wanted to place the orchestra in a sort of amphitheatric "ancient Greek theatre" configuration, to create the impression of addressing/interacting with them, and they with him. Though I can't be sure of the specifics.

In any case, I am 80% sure he was just doing one of his visual experiments, and I'd be 90% sure if I also remembered exactly what Richard Osborne commented on it. If you react like this to the 7th, wait 'till you see the 6th from that series!

But that wasn't Karajan's direction (in the 6th).