# Harnoncourt is SCARY



## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Last night I watched a video of the opening concert for the 2008 Salzburg Festival with Harnoncourt. Holy cow! He makes the scariest wide eyed face when he conducts. He looks like a demon or something. I couldn't make it all the way through the concert unfortunately. It was really dull and the orchestra was surprisingly under rehearsed. He did Josef Strauss waltzes and he chopped it up into comletely disjointed bits. Horrible.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

I can't stand Harnoncourt.
Don't like one single thing by him.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I'd never really considered it before but I saw this cover the other day:









Harnoncourt looking neither miserable or angry and only very slightly toad-chewingly crazy. He seems to be just happy enjoying the music so I had to double-take to check it really was Harnoncourt.

I really like his readings of Haydn's symphonies, he really brings them to life. And I have been enjoying his versions of the Beethoven piano concertos with Pierre-Laurent Aimard lately.


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

You think Harnoncourt's scary?

You've never seen Hans Knappertsbusch:


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Noone remembers Fritz Reiner as Dracula?

View attachment 24715


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Vaneyes said:


> Noone remembers Fritz Reiner as Dracula?
> 
> View attachment 24715


They used to say that Reiner looked like Bela Lugosi's brother and acted like it!


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Victor de Sabata seemed like a friendly guy:









In fact he looked a bit of a foolish bumpkin sometimes:









But you sometimes had the feeling he was plotting something...









TO CRUSH YOUR PUNY SOUL!!!


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Notung said:


> View attachment 24714


fantastic picture! haha. I like Harnoncourt's faces. But then I like when people mug at the camera. Blame it on a childhood of circus glee. Great thread


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## JCarmel (Feb 3, 2013)

I cannot STAND Harnoncourt!


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

There are some things I like from him.

His Schubert Symphonies, Mozart's Early Symphonies, a couple of Dvorak & Bruckner Symphonies are good.

His Brahms Piano Concertos with Buchbinder are good although I don't care much for his Brahms Symphonies Cycle that gets a bunch of praise.

But yes, he can look pretty scary when he goes all wild eyes. Most conductors look pretty scary.

I always thought Furtwangler looked like a Zombie or Boris Karloff doing the Frankenstein walk here:
View attachment 24754


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

realdealblues said:


> There are some things I like from him.
> 
> His Schubert Symphonies, Mozart's Early Symphonies, a couple of Dvorak & Bruckner Symphonies are good.
> 
> ...


He always looked like a muppet to me:


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