# Please help me to enjoy Karajan



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Over the last few weeks I've been listening on spotify to recordings made by Herbert von Karajan to try to get more familiar with his style, and unfortunately I keep finding myself wanting to listen to another interpretation of whatever piece instead of Karajan's. 

This is a conductor who is very very highly regarded by quite a number of members here and I'm really wanting to find repertoire I enjoy his interpretations of. I have listened to all four of his Beethoven symphony cycles as well as his Beethoven symphony recordings from even earlier, I've listened to as many recordings of mozart symphonies and concertos and operas that I can find, I've heard his Sibelius symphony recordings on DG and EMI, I've listened to a few from his Bruckner cycle, his Schumann symphony cycle, I have heard much of his Wagner recordings, Mahler symphonies, Strauss operas and orchestral music, I've listened to a couple of dozen overtures and preludes by Weber, Verdi, Rossini, Suppé etc. I've heard his recording of Haydn's Creation and a number of other works by him, I've tried to broaden my knowledge of his approach to as much as I can from Bach to things like Honegger, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and the 2nd Viennese School. 

With a piece of music I generally try to compare different recordings he made over time, for example I listened to Der Freischütz overture from much later in his career with one from the 1930s (I have to say, I found the earlier one to be much more my cup of tea) to hear the difference in his approach...

I've noticed that across the different genres and styles he covered, the general sound of the orchestra seems to be the same: glossy, silvery sounding melodic line above the rest of the orchestra, inner lines are lost in the muddy texture underneath in favour of bringing accentuating the melody further than it needs to be. 

Anyway, the reaosn why I am only creating this thread now was because I am currently trying Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and I don't seem to be enjoying it as much as I'd hoped....the second movement has a very unusual Viennese lilt to it that I've never heard in any other recording and I can't think as to why he decided to do it that way.....

I really really want to get some recommendations from Karajan fans on TC on gems that I'm completely missing. Are there any especially fabulous recordings that I have missed which would change my mind completely about his interpretations? I really do want to find some things Karajan has done that I prefer over other interpretations. I don't know why I do, but I just do! :lol:


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## MarkW

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I've noticed that across the different genres and styles he covered, the general sound of the orchestra seems to be the same: glossy, silvery sounding melodic line above the rest of the orchestra, inner lines are lost in the muddy texture underneath in favour of bringing accentuating the melody further than it needs to be.


You've nailed it.


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## MarkW

Addendum:

In a weird way, Karajan/BPO is kind of a higher class European version of the US. Ormandy/Philadelphia phenomenon: high quality, glossy, LCD performances that appeal to a lot of people and sell a ton of records. But there are times when that's what you want. His 1960s-cycle Brahms Third has an incisiveness I've never heard anywhere else. His Boris Godunov is more about Rimsky-Korsakov than Mussorgsky, but I love it.

Karajanizing is sort of like Simonizing.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Wow, thanks for that info and opinion 
I'll check out the Brahms, I don't think I've yet heard them in full. I usually go for Szell or Gardiner for those symphonies.


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## realdealblues

A few standout Karajan recordings in my opinion:

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (70's)
Bruckner: Symphony 8 (80's)
Bruckner: Te Deum (70's)
Haydn: Paris Symphonies
Holst: The Planets (Decca Recording with Vienna Philharmonic)
Honegger: Symphonies 2 & 3
Mahler: Symphony 5
Prokofiev: Symphony 5
Schoenberg, Webern, Berg: Transfigured Night, Pelleas And Melisande, etc.
Schubert: Symphonies 8 & 9
Sibelius: Tone Poems (EMI recordings)
Strauss, R: Most all of the 70's recordings.

Karajan wanted things to sound beautiful that's why everything drips with legato. It's his vision of the music. He was very unique and created his own unique style and sound. Some people like it and some people don't. Sometimes I don't need to hear every little underlying line and I just want something beautifully played. Other times I might want to hear something more raw and organic. It just depends on my mood, but I will always love Karajan because he dared to be different and would not compromise his personal vision for anyone.

Edit: If you haven't seen them, you might check out the Documentaries "Karajan, or beauty as I see it" and "Second Life". Wonderful glimpses into Karajan.


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## Blancrocher

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Over the last few weeks I've been listening on spotify to recordings made by Herbert von Karajan to try to get more familiar with his style, and unfortunately I keep finding myself wanting to listen to another interpretation of whatever piece instead of Karajan's.
> ...
> I've heard his Sibelius symphony recordings on DG and EMI




...

...

...

Great, another keyboard in danger. Serves me right for trying to drink a beverage while reading posts on this forum.


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## shadowdancer

realdealblues said:


> Edit: If you haven't seen them, you might check out the Documentaries "Karajan, or beauty as I see it" and "Second Life". Wonderful glimpses into Karajan.


I endorse it. Both documentaries gives you a nice overview of how Karajan was and what he thinks about music.
I would like also to put a few more recommendations to realdealblues list:

1. Beethoven - The Philharmonia Cycle: recently reissued with a outstanding sound quality. The best 7th around, in my opinion
2. Mendelssohn`s cycle from the 70`s - DG
3. Mozart Requiem - DG


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Blancrocher said:


>


I'm very faithful to Berglund, Colin Davis, Vänskä and Inkinen.


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## isorhythm

shadowdancer said:


> 3. Mozart Requiem - DG


This was the first Mozart Requiem I ever heard, so I still have a soft spot for it...but I don't think I've put it on in years and years. He makes Mozart sound almost late Romantic, it's kinda cool.


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## Becca

Whatever you think of either HvK or Simon Rattle, it is fascinating to hear Rattle's comments about Karajan...


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## DavidA

Becca said:


> Whatever you think of either HvK or Simon Rattle, it is fascinating to hear Rattle's comments about Karajan...


Yes, very interesting.

I'd recommend the BBC film 'Karajan Myth and Magic' which has some of his ex-players talking about him. Interestingly James Galway says that he believed in all the notes being played together and in tune to make a beautiful sound. If you like that you like Karajan!


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## DavidA

It's fascinating that people went on about his smoothness and obsession with beauty, but you hear some of his live opera recordings and they are positively rumbustious. People who say that Karajan always conducted everything the same simply just don't know what they are talking about. he could be very, very different as the mood took him. As his biographer Osbourn says, "The maestro's mood was all!"


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## Itullian

When I started listening to classical music I was buying and listening to a lot of Karajan. Then the store manager started suggesting other conductors(Bohm, Bernstein, Klemperer, Krips, Marriner, Giulini, Celibidache, Fricsay, etc.).
The more I listened to them, the less I listened to Karajan. I preferred their real sound to the polished, slick sound. And, to me, deeper more soulful interpretations.
I still have all his cds, but don't listen to them much anymore.
Celibidache once called him, "the Coca Cola conductor". Kleiber liked him.

A great conductor, but I find now I prefer others in whatever I'm listening to.

His Bruckner is very fine and his 60's Brahms. :tiphat:


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## Blancrocher

Itullian said:


> Celibidache once called him, "the Coca Cola conductor".


Mind you, Celibidache was bitterly disappointed that HvK was given the leadership of the BPO, a position he had coveted. Not that I think it was just sour grapes, mind you: the two conductors could hardly have been more different in a lot of ways--not least in respect of their attitudes about recording technology (which I wish that Celibidache had embraced, wonderful and adventurous conductor that he was).


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## brotagonist

These are some of my favourites (from my own collection):

Beethoven Symphonies (1963)
Bruckner Symphonies 7 & 8
Mozart Symphonies 35-41
Prokofiev Symphonies 1 & 5
Schubert Symphonies 8 & 9
Sibelius Symphonies 4-7
Richard Strauss Orchestral Works, Salome
Tchaikovsky Symphonies

I have a number of others, but the aforementioned are the favourites. I really should have more Karajan!

And last but never least, another personal favourite deserving special mention:








Schoenberg, Berg, Webern Orchestral Works
[This was one of the first classical boxed sets I ever owned and one of the last I ever replaced on CD  only last winter.]


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## Mahlerian

I find his Mahler next to unlistenable. It doesn't sound like Mahler at all. The balances which Mahler so carefully perfected are gone, the phrasing is muddled and destroys Mahler's lines, and the counterpoint isn't as prominent as it should be. Karajan's Bruckner and Sibelius I like a lot better.

His Symphonie Fantastique is an awful recording, though, without any of the fire and drive of Davis or Gardiner. His Symphony of Psalms is also execrable.


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## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> I find his Mahler next to unlistenable. It doesn't sound like Mahler at all. The balances which Mahler so carefully perfected are gone, the phrasing is muddled and destroys Mahler's lines, and the counterpoint isn't as prominent as it should be. Karajan's Bruckner and Sibelius I like a lot better.
> 
> His Symphonie Fantastique is an awful recording, though, without any of the fire and drive of Davis or Gardiner. His Symphony of Psalms is also execrable.


Funny but I find his Mahler eminently listenable. The Symphonie is also pretty good. Don't know his Symphony of Psalms but that's a pretty execrable work anyway!


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> Funny but I find his Mahler eminently listenable. The Symphonie is also pretty good.* Don't know his Symphony of Psalms but that's a pretty execrable work anyway!*


Do you have any reasoning behind this? Any whatsoever? The Symphony of Psalms is an assured masterpiece admired even by those who generally had little time for Stravinsky's Neoclassical works, such as Messiaen and Boulez. Shostakovich prepared a piano reduction.

Its first chord is so powerful and characteristic that it even has its own page on Wikipedia. Quite an accomplishment for a mere minor triad!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalms_chord


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## SixFootScowl

I never gravitated towards Karajan and so have few recordings of his. Think I picked up one with Janowitz on it, as she worked with him a lot.


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## Mandryka

Mahlerian said:


> . His Symphony of Psalms is also execrable.


I agree.

Xhbkjbhkbkjbkjbkjbkjkn


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## Mandryka

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Over the last few weeks I've been listening on spotify to recordings made by Herbert von Karajan to try to get more familiar with his style, and unfortunately I keep finding myself wanting to listen to another interpretation of whatever piece instead of Karajan's.
> 
> This is a conductor who is very very highly regarded by quite a number of members here and I'm really wanting to find repertoire I enjoy his interpretations of. I have listened to all four of his Beethoven symphony cycles as well as his Beethoven symphony recordings from even earlier, I've listened to as many recordings of mozart symphonies and concertos and operas that I can find, I've heard his Sibelius symphony recordings on DG and EMI, I've listened to a few from his Bruckner cycle, his Schumann symphony cycle, I have heard much of his Wagner recordings, Mahler symphonies, Strauss operas and orchestral music, I've listened to a couple of dozen overtures and preludes by Weber, Verdi, Rossini, Suppé etc. I've heard his recording of Haydn's Creation and a number of other works by him, I've tried to broaden my knowledge of his approach to as much as I can from Bach to things like Honegger, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and the 2nd Viennese School.
> 
> With a piece of music I generally try to compare different recordings he made over time, for example I listened to Der Freischütz overture from much later in his career with one from the 1930s (I have to say, I found the earlier one to be much more my cup of tea) to hear the difference in his approach...
> 
> I've noticed that across the different genres and styles he covered, the general sound of the orchestra seems to be the same: glossy, silvery sounding melodic line above the rest of the orchestra, inner lines are lost in the muddy texture underneath in favour of bringing accentuating the melody further than it needs to be.
> 
> Anyway, the reaosn why I am only creating this thread now was because I am currently trying Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and I don't seem to be enjoying it as much as I'd hoped....the second movement has a very unusual Viennese lilt to it that I've never heard in any other recording and I can't think as to why he decided to do it that way.....
> 
> I really really want to get some recommendations from Karajan fans on TC on gems that I'm completely missing. Are there any especially fabulous recordings that I have missed which would change my mind completely about his interpretations? I really do want to find some things Karajan has done that I prefer over other interpretations. I don't know why I do, but I just do! :lol:


Have a listen to the very early recording he made of Schubert 9 with the VPO. And the 1975 Missa Solemnis. There was an outstanding Zarathustra I remember, I think generally he was good in Strauss. There's a lot of excellent opera by Karajan - if you're interested I'll try to pull together a list of what impressed me.


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## Mandryka

Blancrocher said:


> ...
> 
> ...
> 
> ...
> 
> Great, another keyboard in danger. Serves me right for trying to drink a beverage while reading posts on this forum.


I seem to remember that Sibelius approved of Karajan's London recordings of the symphonies, prefering them to Beecham's.


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## Blancrocher

Mahlerian said:


> Do you have any reasoning behind this? Any whatsoever? The Symphony of Psalms is an assured masterpiece admired even by those who generally had little time for Stravinsky's Neoclassical works, such as Messiaen and Boulez. Shostakovich prepared a piano reduction.
> 
> Its first chord is so powerful and characteristic that it even has its own page on Wikipedia. Quite an accomplishment for a mere minor triad!
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalms_chord


Different strokes, as they say--the Symphony of Psalms is one of the most extraordinary masterworks I've ever heard. I think the Karajan recording is a disaster, but only because of the type of singing he chose to include. Stravinsky himself admired the purity of the voices of the boy's choir he used (on one of the great recordings of the piece), and his comments would seem to rule out the operatic warblers on the HvK version. My favorite--by a hair over the composer's version--is Boulez.

I like Karajan's Rite of Spring, btw, though the composer himself wasn't so impressed:

"The recording is generally good, the performance generally odd, though polished in its own way; in fact, too polished, a pet savage rather than a real one. The sostenuto style is a principal fault; the lengths of notes are virtually the same here as they would be in Wagner or Brahms, which dampens the energy of the music and leaves what rhythmic enunciation there is sounding laboured. But I should have begun by saying that the music is alien to the culture of its performers. ... I doubt whether The Rite can be satisfactorily performed in terms of Herr von Karajan's traditions. I do not mean to imply that he is out of his depths, however, but rather that he is in my shallows -- or call them simple concretions and reifications. There are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring."

My oh my--what a genius Stravinsky was.


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## Le Peel

What others call "glossy" or "silky", I call "sluggish" or "drunk".

Also, his idea of Beethoven's 5th Symphony is a travesty. As is Furtwangler's, and any other Beethoven 5's with pieces of the work chopped out.


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## GreenMamba

Blancrocher said:


> Different strokes, as they say--the Symphony of Psalms is one of the most extraordinary masterworks I've ever heard. *I think the Karajan recording is a disaster, but only because of the type of singing he chose to include. *Stravinsky himself admired the purity of the voices of the boy's choir he used (on one of the great recordings of the piece), and his comments would seem to rule out the operatic warblers on the HvK version. My favorite--by a hair over the composer's version--is Boulez.


IMO, it goes way beyond that. It's sluggish from the get go (though you should hear Celibidache's), and seems to drag the beat the whole way.


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## MAS

COAG, from what I read above, you just don't like Karajan! I don't think you're alone in that.


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## joen_cph

On top of my head, the Karajan I kept includes:

- Bach Mass in b DG
- late Mozart symphonies, but EMI
- Mozart Wind Concertos, but EMI
- Mozart Don Giovanni DG
- Beethoven Missa Solemnis, early DG
- Beethoven symphonies, DG 1st & 2nd set
- Liszt Orchestral DG
- Brahms Requiem EMI
- Brahms symphonies DG 1st set 
- Tchaikovky 4,5,6 EMI
- Tchaikovsky Cto 1 - Richter DG
- Bruckner 5 DG, 4+7 EMI
- Mussorgsky Boris / Decca
- Mahler, all DGs
- Wagner Ring DG
- Wagner Parsifal DG
- Wagner Meistersinger EMI
- R. Strauss generally, DG
- Mascagni, Leoncavallo operas DG
- Neue Wiener Schule generally, DG
- Debussy/Ravel, but EMI
- Sibelius, all DG
- Bartok Concerto for Orchestra / DG
- Stravinsky Rite / DG 1st & 2nd
- Puccini Madame Butterfly, La Boheme / Decca

+ some more.

Some I skipped or don´t like include:

- Brandenburgs
- Händel op.3
- Mozart Symphonies DG
- Beethoven Ouvertures DG
- Beethoven Symphonies EMI set
- Beethoven Symphonies 3rd set DG
- Beethoven Missa Solemnis late DG
- Mendelssohn 3 DG
- other Bruckner
- Honegger 2+3 DG
- Nielsen 4 DG
- Stravinsky Psalm Symphony + Bach Magnificat DG

+ some more.


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## Lord Lance

*Don't...*



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Over the last few weeks I've been listening on spotify to recordings made by Herbert von Karajan to try to get more familiar with his style, and unfortunately I keep finding myself wanting to listen to another interpretation of whatever piece instead of Karajan's.
> 
> This is a conductor who is very very highly regarded by quite a number of members here and I'm really wanting to find repertoire I enjoy his interpretations of. I have listened to all four of his Beethoven symphony cycles as well as his Beethoven symphony recordings from even earlier, I've listened to as many recordings of mozart symphonies and concertos and operas that I can find, I've heard his Sibelius symphony recordings on DG and EMI, I've listened to a few from his Bruckner cycle, his Schumann symphony cycle, I have heard much of his Wagner recordings, Mahler symphonies, Strauss operas and orchestral music, I've listened to a couple of dozen overtures and preludes by Weber, Verdi, Rossini, Suppé etc. I've heard his recording of Haydn's Creation and a number of other works by him, I've tried to broaden my knowledge of his approach to as much as I can from Bach to things like Honegger, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and the 2nd Viennese School.
> 
> With a piece of music I generally try to compare different recordings he made over time, for example I listened to Der Freischütz overture from much later in his career with one from the 1930s (I have to say, I found the earlier one to be much more my cup of tea) to hear the difference in his approach...
> 
> I've noticed that across the different genres and styles he covered, the general sound of the orchestra seems to be the same: glossy, silvery sounding melodic line above the rest of the orchestra, inner lines are lost in the muddy texture underneath in favour of bringing accentuating the melody further than it needs to be.
> 
> Anyway, the reaosn why I am only creating this thread now was because I am currently trying Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and I don't seem to be enjoying it as much as I'd hoped....the second movement has a very unusual Viennese lilt to it that I've never heard in any other recording and I can't think as to why he decided to do it that way.....
> 
> I really really want to get some recommendations from Karajan fans on TC on gems that I'm completely missing. Are there any especially fabulous recordings that I have missed which would change my mind completely about his interpretations? I really do want to find some things Karajan has done that I prefer over other interpretations. I don't know why I do, but I just do! :lol:


Mr. COAG, have you ever considered, perhaps, PERHAPS, that Karajan is not for you... at all? Or at this current stage of your life you don't find him appealing? Revisit in another decade? Tastes change, views change. You have explored as much as one should before moving on - quite past that line, actually.

I like Karajan a _wee _bit [*coughs* signature *coughs*]. That does not mean I am a Karajan fanatic to the point of suppressing and repressing all counter-views, counter-opinions and criticisms. Kappelmeister Karajan strove towards an aesthetical perfection in his records that leaves its listeners either in absolute repulsion or awe-struck. Rare is a person who says, "Hmf, you know not too good, not too bad." And in adhering to his goals, he manipulated the work, the orchestral sound and the record's sound. He took artistic liberties. And as Mahlerian pointed out, quite a bit in his Mahler. But, in the end, all he did was *INTERPRET*. And that is what all art and classical music is about - interpretation. You can dismiss his lean sound, his slick touch and his trademarked Karajan sound but you cannot dismiss the individuality of his records and what a genius he had to have had a particular vision for every work he conducted - even if that vision was a mess, as it was to some.

Yes, he was egotistical. Yes, he wanted his own cult and marketed himself accordingly. Yes, his tendency to re-record is a bit baffling, but in the end, he had legions of fans and orchestras at his fingertips. It is perfectly understandable to dislike or hate his efforts - particularly considering their uniqueness and idiosyncrasies. You don't _have _to like anyone.

*So, COAG, if you don't like Karajan, just give it a rest. *


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## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> Do you have any reasoning behind this? Any whatsoever? The Symphony of Psalms is an assured masterpiece admired even by those who generally had little time for Stravinsky's Neoclassical works, such as Messiaen and Boulez. Shostakovich prepared a piano reduction.
> 
> Its first chord is so powerful and characteristic that it even has its own page on Wikipedia. Quite an accomplishment for a mere minor triad!
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalms_chord


The reasoning? I don't like it! I think it is awful - even with dear old Igor himself conducting and he should know how he wanted it to go. Isn't that excuse enough? I've just played a bit of it to remind me. That horrible out of tune first chord and then the violin that sounds like kids practising not very well. Frankly, how on earth will people writing whole pages on Wiki make me like it? Let's face it we've had endless posts on Cage's 4'33" so a page in Wiki is nothing!


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> The reasoning? I don't like it! I think it is awful - even with dear old Igor himself conducting and he should know how he wanted it to go. That horrible out of tune first chord. Isn't that excuse enough? Frankly how on earth will people writing whole pages on Wiki make me like it!


How could it be out of tune? It's a triad.


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## Aramis

Mahlerian said:


> How could it be out of tune? It's a triad.


............................................


Blancrocher said:


> My oh my--what a genius Stravinsky was.


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## DavidA

Interesting a group of distinguished musicologists were listening 'blind' to recordings of Bach Suites into which an extract of Karajan's recording was slipped. The praise that was lavished on the performance gave way to shock when the reviewers found out the identity of the performers!


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## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> How could it be out of tune? It's a triad.


Whatever it sounds awful as does the whole piece. At least Igor takes it at a cracking lick to get it out the way asap. Maybe Karajan's performance is a failure as he was misguided enough to try and make it sound beautiful.


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## millionrainbows

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I've noticed that across the different genres and styles he covered, the general sound of the orchestra seems to be the same: glossy, silvery sounding melodic line above the rest of the orchestra, inner lines are lost in the muddy texture underneath in favour of bringing accentuating the melody further than it needs to be.


I thought I was the only one! What a relief! But I always ascribed it to DG's recording or mastering process. Does a conductor have that much control over the sound? I guess so. The "gloss on top of mudiness" is there, and is nonetheless real.

Ormandy's sound was better than that, since the producer was frequently John McClure. But as far as 'orchestral sound,' there may be parallels. I'm not sure why. All I know is that the Karajan sounds muddy, and needs more detail, more definition.


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## isorhythm

DavidA said:


> Interesting a group of distinguished musicologists were listening 'blind' to recordings of Bach Suites into which an extract of Karajan's recording was slipped. The praise that was lavished on the performance gave way to shock when the reviewers found out the identity of the performers!


Can you tell us more about this? I've never heard of it.

Every Karajan performance of Bach I've heard has been comically bad, so this is hard for me to imagine. But maybe he made some secret good Bach recordings I don't know about.


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## Richannes Wrahms

I don't find that chord remarkable at all... Debussy did it better in Iberia.


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## DavidA

Mandryka said:


> Have a listen to the very early recording he made of Schubert 9 with the VPO. And the 1975 Missa Solemnis. There was an outstanding Zarathustra I remember, I think generally he was good in Strauss. There's a lot of excellent opera by Karajan - if you're interested I'll try to pull together a list of what impressed me.


The 1966 recording of the Missa Solemnis is even better imo. I know some of the tempi are slow but the mood of devotion together with the incomparable soloists make for a terrific aural experience. I know Gardiner and his galloping horses wouldn't approve though!


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> Whatever it sounds awful as does the whole piece. At least Igor takes it at a cracking lick to get it out the way asap. Maybe Karajan's performance is a failure as he was misguided enough to try and make it sound beautiful.


The piece is beautiful on its own. I've heard it multiple times live in concert, as well as on record. It doesn't need Karajan to do anything to it. Another corrective to your earlier statement: the piece doesn't have any violins.


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## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> The piece is beautiful on its own. I've heard it multiple times live in concert, as well as on record. It doesn't need Karajan to do anything to it. Another corrective to your earlier statement: the piece doesn't have any violins.


Sorry! Out of tune string somewhere. Actually doesn't make much difference anyway! Frankly beautiful is not a word I'd use to describe it.


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## DavidA

isorhythm said:


> Can you tell us more about this? I've never heard of it.
> 
> Every Karajan performance of Bach I've heard has been comically bad, so this is hard for me to imagine. But maybe he made some secret good Bach recordings I don't know about.


BBC Third Programme Interpretations on Record with a panel including Prof Jack Westrup and Stanley Sadie, 27 June 1967. I don't go a deal on HvK's Bach but I was amused that the distinguished panel picked the wrong recording to like! What did Beecham say about musicologists?


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## GreenMamba

DavidA said:


> BBC Third Programme Interpretations on Record with a panel including Prof Jack Westrup and Stanley Sadie, 27 June 1967. I don't go a deal on HvK's Bach but I was amused that the distinguished panel picked the *wrong recording* to like! What did Beecham say about musicologists?


1967? The right recordings of Bach hadn't been made yet.


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## DavidA

GreenMamba said:


> 1967? The right recordings of Bach hadn't been made yet.


Who's to say what is right anyway? it was a time when more 'period' type practices were beginning. But as a respectable critic even then you were supposed to disapprove of Karajan in Bach. Just the panel chose the wrong one.


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## GreenMamba

DavidA said:


> Who's to say what is right anyway?


I dunno, but when you first brought the issue up, I was expecting it to be recent Musicologists choosing Karajan over HIP or something like that.


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## DavidA

GreenMamba said:


> I dunno, but when you first brought the issue up, I was expecting it to be recent Musicologists choosing Karajan over HIP or something like that.


The same principle applies to musicologists though. They are the same throughout the ages.


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## isorhythm

DavidA said:


> The same principle applies to musicologists though. They are the same throughout the ages.


Which musicologists have you read? What didn't you like about them?


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> Sorry! Out of tune string somewhere. Actually doesn't make much difference anyway! Frankly beautiful is not a word I'd use to describe it.


You can't just throw around phrases like "out of tune" to describe your subjective reactions to things. It has a specific meaning. If the notes played are the right ones, then it's not out of tune.

Well, beautiful is exactly the word I'd use to describe it myself. I have a lot more adjectives, too, if you'd like: dramatic, powerful, stirring, fierce...


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## bigshot

In order to appreciate conductors with individual styles, you have to get beyond the concept of a "proper" performance. Instead of listening to see if it fits your existing ideas, look within the performance for new ideas that you haven't heard in the music before. You can't appreciate a diamond from just one angle. You can't fully appreciate classical music in just a single performance.


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## bigshot

If you want a vivid example of Karajan's uniqueness, listen to the overture to Die Walkure and compare the balances to Barenboim or Solti. Karajan balances of the strings in a completely different way that really emphasizes the modernity of the tonality. It almost sounds like Tristan. That really highlights the emotion in context with the opera.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Okay....to those who tell me to give Karajan a rest, I never said I hated his interpretation or sound, but in some cases I find it unsuitable to the music. There are many recordings he made which I don't hate but can't bring myself to think of them as definitive, or even just better than most of the others I've heard. At the moment I'm trying to find recordings that he made which I find 'definitive' whatever that means. So far, I think his Der Rosenkavalier on EMI is truly amazing! Should I re-listen to more of his Strauss? What Strauss can you recommend?


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## Triplets

In the right repetoire, he could be wonderful. Try his Sibelius, particularly the 4th Symphony. I also enjoy his Bruckner.


----------



## Triplets

isorhythm said:


> This was the first Mozart Requiem I ever heard, so I still have a soft spot for it...but I don't think I've put it on in years and years. He makes Mozart sound almost late Romantic, it's kinda cool.


Karajan's Mozart was not his strength .


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Triplets said:


> Karajan's Mozart was not his strength .


I find that even his earliest recordings of Mozart from the 30s and 40s were not particularly interesting to me....more so than his later ones however.


----------



## brotagonist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> So far, I think his Der Rosenkavalier on EMI is truly amazing! Should I re-listen to more of his Strauss? What Strauss can you recommend?











From Presto Classical:

"Herbert von Karajan's Strauss recordings of the early 1980s, remastered in the 1990s, for the Karajan Gold Edition are a benchmark of lifetime of engagement with the composer in the concert hall and studio, and won unparalleled critical acclaim. For the first time they have been brought together in a specially priced single box."









Marschallin Blair approved


----------



## Woodduck

I have enjoyed some of Karajan's evocative Sibelius and some of his R. Strauss - and, for that matter, his J. Strauss, which he does better than most other non-Viennese conductors. But my first acquaintance with his work was some Beethoven symphonies I heard at about the age of 17. I noticed immediately that he articulated the music as if it were all one long phrase: no "breaths" allowed. It sounded slick and artificial to me after Walter and Toscanini and Bernstein and others. I had absorbed, from listening to other great conductors, the principle (which I believe Bruno Walter emphasized) that instrumentalists should phrase music as if they were singing it, and that taking breaths was a natural, and in fact expressive, part of singing. Karajan clearly did not care about this element of articulation, and I heard his Beethoven whiz by as if on a conveyor belt or an autobahn. Later I heard his Wagner (his complete _Die Walkure_) and felt a similar want of naturalness, a similar desire to remove the instrumentalist's identity as a player of music and make him instead an automaton or a gear in a sound loom turning out seamless aural fabrics. I was pleased to discover later that before his Berlin Philharmonic years Karajan made music quite expertly and more like a human being working with other human beings. I have a number of his opera recordings from the '50s and can recommend any of them. Later on he did hardly anything in which I don't find that someone else provides me with a more genuine experience of music.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I think I can definitely understand where you're coming from, Woodduck. I hadn't thought about this until now actually, and it makes perfect sense now that I think about it and probably one of the reasons I prefer his earlier recordings to his later recordings.


----------



## Lord Lance

Triplets said:


> Karajan's Mozart was not his strength .


Agree to disagree. For me, there simply is no Mozart quite like Karajan's. And Haydn! Don't suppose you are a HIP-ster?


----------



## bigshot

> to those who tell me to give Karajan a rest, I never said I hated his interpretation or sound, but in some cases I find it unsuitable to the music.


There is no "unsuitable" there is only "different". You judge on its own merits.


----------



## Mandryka

Triplets said:


> Karajan's Mozart was not his strength .


Try to hear the Adagio in C Minor K 546 with the BPO strings.


----------



## Mandryka

isorhythm said:


> Can you tell us more about this? I've never heard of it.
> 
> Every Karajan performance of Bach I've heard has been comically bad, so this is hard for me to imagine. But maybe he made some secret good Bach recordings I don't know about.


Have you heard the early B minor mass on EMI, or the cantatas he recorded with Schwarzkopf?


----------



## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> You can't just throw around phrases like "out of tune" to describe your subjective reactions to things. It has a specific meaning. If the notes played are the right ones, then it's not out of tune.
> 
> Well, beautiful is exactly the word I'd use to describe it myself. I have a lot more adjectives, too, if you'd like: dramatic, powerful, stirring, fierce...


Just like you threw phrases around like Karajan's Mahler being unlistenable and his Symphonie Fantastique and his Symphony of Psalms execrable? Come on, we all throw phrases around to show our subjective reaction to things.
Like when you use the adjectives dramatic, powerful, stirring, fierce..


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

bigshot said:


> There is no "unsuitable" there is only "different". You judge on its own merits.


I've always found it highly unusual to play French music in a Viennese style, I'm referencing the waltz in Symphonie Fantastique.


----------



## DavidA

Triplets said:


> Karajan's Mozart was not his strength .


Yet the recordings of Mozart he made for EMI in 1970 are remarkable. Quite different from those he made for DG later in the decade. As long as you're not averse to big band Mozart, which Mozart wasn't when he had the players!


----------



## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> I have enjoyed some of Karajan's evocative Sibelius and some of his R. Strauss - and, for that matter, his J. Strauss, which he does better than most other non-Viennese conductors. But my first acquaintance with his work was some Beethoven symphonies I heard at about the age of 17. I noticed immediately that he articulated the music as if it were all one long phrase: no "breaths" allowed. It sounded slick and artificial to me after Walter and Toscanini and Bernstein and others. I had absorbed, from listening to other great conductors, the principle (which I believe Bruno Walter emphasized) that instrumentalists should phrase music as if they were singing it, and that taking breaths was a natural, and in fact expressive, part of singing. Karajan clearly did not care about this element of articulation, and I heard his Beethoven whiz by as if on a conveyor belt or an autobahn. Later I heard his Wagner (his complete _Die Walkure_) and felt a similar want of naturalness, a similar desire to remove the instrumentalist's identity as a player of music and make him instead an automaton or a gear in a sound loom turning out seamless aural fabrics. I was pleased to discover later that before his Berlin Philharmonic years Karajan made music quite expertly and more like a human being working with other human beings. I have a number of his opera recordings from the '50s and can recommend any of them. Later on he did hardly anything in which I don't find that someone else provides me with a more genuine experience of music.


I think these phrases like 'it sounded slick' etc are highly subjective. I heard critics go on about Toscanini being 'driven', Walter being 'sentimental' and Berstein 'artificial'. Often the 'slickness' is caused by the player playing the right notes in the right places in tune!


----------



## DavidA

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I've always found it highly unusual to play French music in a Viennese style, I'm referencing the waltz in Symphonie Fantastique.


What on earth do you mean by that?


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

DavidA said:


> Just like you threw phrases around like Karajan's Mahler being unlistenable and his Symphonie Fantastique and his Symphony of Psalms execrable? Come on, we all throw phrases around to show our subjective reaction to things.
> Like when you use the adjectives dramatic, powerful, stirring, fierce..


2+2=5 because I hate maths and this is my subjective response!

There's a difference between _using adjectives_ and _using objective statements._ 'Out of tune' is objective because if someone is playing a note a little sharp you can use rules for equal temperament or just intonation to back up your claim. Using the rules of maths correctly I can't say that 2+2 truly equals 5. These are different to the subjective adjectives you list. 'Karajan's Mahler is unlistenable' and 'maths is boring' is subjective because it describes the personal response not the nature of the thing itself.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

DavidA said:


> What on earth do you mean by that?


Karajan adds a Viennese lilt to the waltz in his interpretation.


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## Nereffid

......................

Comment withdrawn. Its good-natured intent could easily be missed.


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## DavidA

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Karajan adds a Viennese lilt to the waltz in his interpretation.


Is that wrong? Berlioz himself paid tribute to the 'Father of the Viennese Waltz' by commenting that "Vienna without Strauss is like Austria without the Danube".


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

DavidA said:


> Is that wrong? Berlioz himself paid tribute to the 'Father of the Viennese Waltz' by commenting that "Vienna without Strauss is like Austria without the Danube".


It isn't wrong, it's an unusual gesture of interpretation which shows Karajan's cultural background rather than the context of the composer.


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## DavidA

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> It isn't wrong, it's an unusual gesture of interpretation which shows Karajan's cultural background rather than the context of the composer.


So we know Berlioz would have disapproved? He has been described as a 'most untypical Frenchman.'


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

DavidA said:


> So we know Berlioz would have disapproved? He has been described as a 'most untypical Frenchman.'


I'm not talking abut Berlioz's opinion, I have absolutely no authority to approve or disapprove of things on his behalf. What I am saying is that I find Karajan's egocentrism and stylistic bias to not not cater for the propulsion created in the said work through rhythmic layering and expressive markings in the score. This only happens at various points in the music though; there seems to be a shift to and from the Viennese lilt and a straighter 1 2 3 just to make things more complicated. :lol:


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## DavidA

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I'm not talking abut Berlioz's opinion, I have absolutely no authority to approve or disapprove of things on his behalf. What I am saying is that I find Karajan's egocentrism and stylistic bias to not not cater for the propulsion created in the said work through rhythmic layering and expressive markings in the score. This only happens at various points in the music though; there seems to be a shift to and from the Viennese lilt and a straighter 1 2 3 just to make things more complicated. :lol:


Why do you use the word 'egocentricism'? AOf course Karajan was egocentric. All conductors are egocentric when they get on the podium, wishing to do it their way. If they weren't they wouldn't be in the business.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> I think these phrases like 'it sounded slick' etc are highly subjective. I heard critics go on about Toscanini being 'driven', Walter being 'sentimental' and Berstein 'artificial'. Often the 'slickness' is caused by the player playing the right notes in the right places in tune!


Yes, of course the word "slick" is a subjective judgment. The quality I mean by it, however, is actual. There is justice in all those descriptions of conductors, in that they refer to something real, even if our personal reactions to that something vary. All musicians have personal styles. I wouldn't contend that Karajan was a poor conductor, or to deny that he could get an orchestra to do superb things and, even in his later, more mannered years, achieve impressive performances. I merely point out what I perceive in his work that puts me off. If I could perceive that peculiar, smoothed-over articulation as a teenager only recently into classical music, I'm unlikely to be just imagining it half a century later. And no, sorry, it has nothing whatever to do with accurate execution of the notes. Surely you're not implying that other conductors don't achieve that quite regularly.


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## Blancrocher

Woodduck said:


> Yes, of course the word "slick" is a subjective judgment. The quality I mean by it, however, is actual. There is justice in all those descriptions of conductors, in that they refer to something real, even if our personal reactions to that something vary.


Exactly--one person's insult is another person's endorsement. Whenever someone on Amazon gives a piano recital a 1-star review and calls the performance "soulless" or the performer a "mere technician" I'm always inclined to buy it :lol:


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Yes, of course the word "slick" is a subjective judgment. The quality I mean by it, however, is actual. There is justice in all those descriptions of conductors, in that they refer to something real, even if our personal reactions to that something vary. All musicians have personal styles. I wouldn't contend that Karajan was a poor conductor, or to deny that he could get an orchestra to do superb things and, even in his later, more mannered years, achieve impressive performances. I merely point out what I perceive in his work that puts me off. *If I could perceive that peculiar, smoothed-over articulation as a teenager only recently into classical music, I'm unlikely to be just imagining it half a century later. *And no, sorry, it has nothing whatever to do with accurate execution of the notes. Surely you're not implying that other conductors don't achieve that quite regularly.


How do you know? Actually the performances we hear as teenagers stick with us. I remember hearing HvK's 1962 Beethoven 9th as a teenager (having only been able to afford the Ace of Clubs recording of the work) and was overwhelmed by it. I still remember it!


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## DavidA

One rod Karajan made for the back of his legacy is that he made too many recordings. The market was glutted with them. Not that they are bad but in some cases they were unnecessary. Certainly his last cycle of Beethoven symphonies is not bad at all - in fact pretty good - but it doesn't add anything to what he had done before and most performances don't reach the peaks of 62 or 77. This meant he was often judged by standards that didn't apply to other conductors. Now if he had made as few recordings as (say) C Kleiber, then he would probably have been spoken of in the same hushed reverential tones.


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## isorhythm

I just remembered, I really like Karajan's recording of Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> How do you know? Actually the performances we hear as teenagers stick with us. I remember hearing HvK's 1962 Beethoven 9th as a teenager (having only been able to afford the Ace of Clubs recording of the work) and was overwhelmed by it. I still remember it!


What do you mean "how do you know"? Is that a general epistemological question? _How do we know anything?_ And what is the relevance of your being overwhelmed by something to my knowing something else, and to how I know it, or to how I know that I know it?

Congratulations on enjoying that recording. It has nothing to do with what I perceive in Karajan's articulation of music, which I merely report. If you don't hear what I hear, happy listening.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> One rod Karajan made for the back of his legacy is that he made too many recordings. The market was glutted with them. Not that they are bad but in some cases they were unnecessary. Certainly his last cycle of Beethoven symphonies is not bad at all - in fact pretty good - but it doesn't add anything to what he had done before and most performances don't reach the peaks of 62 or 77. This meant he was often judged by standards that didn't apply to other conductors. Now if he had made as few recordings as (say) C Kleiber, then he would probably have been spoken of in the same hushed reverential tones.


I agree that he made too many recordings, and I can only see it as the fruit of his immense egotism. I have always found Karajan's early opera recordings superior to his later ones, and some of his nonoperatic ones as well. As time went on, and as his BPO dictatorship allowed, he seemed more and more caught up in his own peculiar musical universe and in the need to subject music - and the very process of recording it - to more consistent "Karajanization." Every musician has new insights as time goes by and many conductors rerecord works, not always to the benefit of the music, but I know of no one doing it on the scale of Karajan (with the possible exception of Fischer-Dieskau, who also might better have stopped sooner).

I don't know about judging Karajan by standards not applied to other conductors. What standards might those be? And as for hushed reverential tones, I think he gets quite enough of those. Me, I save such tones for revelatory music-making which alters my sense of the possible - the sort of profound intuition of which only rare artists such as Furtwangler, Callas, and Szigeti are capable. For others, respectful tones suffice.


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## bigshot

Woodduck said:


> he seemed more and more caught up in his own peculiar musical universe and in the need to subject music - and the very process of recording it - to more consistent "Karajanization."


And it's always good for a performing artist to discover his own style. My only complaint about later Karajan is the recording style. But that is a technical thing. There are a lot of conductors who are nondescript. But only a handful of them that are instantly recognizable as unique performing artists.


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> What do you mean "how do you know"? Is that a general epistemological question? _How do we know anything?_ And what is the relevance of your being overwhelmed by something to my knowing something else, and to how I know it, or to how I know that I know it?
> 
> Congratulations on enjoying that recording. It has nothing to do with what I perceive in Karajan's articulation of music, which I merely report. If you don't hear what I hear, happy listening.


Actually I'm hearing things you don't hear, I think!


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> I agree that he made too many recordings, and I can only see it as the fruit of his immense egotism. I have always found Karajan's early opera recordings superior to his later ones, and some of his nonoperatic ones as well. As time went on, and as his BPO dictatorship allowed, he seemed more and more caught up in his own peculiar musical universe and in the need to subject music - and the very process of recording it - to more consistent "Karajanization." Every musician has new insights as time goes by and many conductors rerecord works, not always to the benefit of the music, but I know of no one doing it on the scale of Karajan (with the possible exception of Fischer-Dieskau, who also might better have stopped sooner).
> 
> I don't know about judging Karajan by standards not applied to other conductors. What standards might those be? And as for hushed reverential tones, I think he gets quite enough of those. Me, I save such tones for revelatory music-making which alters my sense of the possible - the sort of profound intuition of which only rare artists such as Furtwangler, Callas, and Szigeti are capable. For others, respectful tones suffice.


Karajan was the most commercially successful conductor in history and was to some extent the victim of his own success. I don't think he was more egotistical than other conductors - just more siccessful. Hence he could indulge his egotism more, as he did in his films. But then you pay the per and can call the tune! He most obviously lacked people who dared stand up to him and quEstion his judgment. But he was not alone in conductors of his generation who were autocrats!

The standards of excellence reached by Karajan and the BPO did cause them to be judged by higher standards - as in your parallel mention of D F-D. As for reverential treatment, you didn't read the outpouring of bile from certain quarters that accompanied HvK's death? It seemed that the detractors came out of the woodwork to vent their petty jealousies. I'm not defending Karajan the man, but the musician I felt deserved more respect. 
And your choice of Furtwangler, Callas and Szigeti are all highly subjective, as they also have their detractors. For example, I can never see what people see in Furtwangler's Bayreuth Beethoven ninth, which is talked about in reverential tones. His Trstan is another matter! But I would also say that Karajan could be just as revelatory. Not every time, of course, but then who is?


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## DavidA

bigshot said:


> And it's always good for a performing artist to discover his own style. My only complaint about later Karajan is the recording style. But that is a technical thing. There are a lot of conductors who are nondescript. But only a handful of them that are instantly recognizable as unique performing artists.


Someone should have kicked him out of the control room! One of the defects of his multifaceted ability was that he could do everything. But not everything as well as conducting!


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## BartokPizz

CoAG, thanks, this has been a great thread. Your reaction to Karajan is similar to mine, but you've articulated things more clearly than I've been able to do to myself--so thanks.

I should say that I find Karajan at his worst in Mahler--I find his Mahler 9s (both of them) rather oppressive in a way I can't quite explain--and at his best in Bruckner. His EMI Bruckner 4 is an especial favorite.


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## AnotherSpin

To enjoy Karajan you need to join Nazi party twiсe, marry Jewish woman in Hitler's Germany, pilot jet and be able to conduct best orchestra in the world with your eyes closed.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

BartokPizz said:


> CoAG, thanks, this has been a great thread. Your reaction to Karajan is similar to mine, but you've articulated things more clearly than I've been able to do to myself--so thanks.
> 
> I should say that I find Karajan at his worst in Mahler--I find his Mahler 9s (both of them) rather oppressive in a way I can't quite explain--and at his best in Bruckner. His EMI Bruckner 4 is an especial favorite.


Yes, similar sentiments about his Mahler, however even his Bruckner I don't enjoy nearly as much as Jochum. Personally, I am quite fond of his Tchaikovsky and R. Strauss! (J Strauss I and II as well, really, better than most I suppose even though I don't really care much for that kind of music)


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Now this is interesting.....






Honestly I don't know what to think of it. Karajan himself did not approve of it, that's for certain, and you can probably see why! He is only really the centre of attention for maybe half of the video when he probably would have been centre screen for almost all of it if he had directed it himself. For me though, I don't know whether to class this as cliché and a bit cheesy or as powerful and innovate.


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## MrTortoise

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Now this is interesting.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Honestly I don't know what to think of it. Karajan himself did not approve of it, that's for certain, and you can probably see why! He is only really the centre of attention for maybe half of the video when he probably would have been centre screen for almost all of it if he had directed it himself. For me though, I don't know whether to class this as cliché and a bit cheesy or as powerful and innovate.


----------



## Woodduck

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Now this is interesting.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Honestly I don't know what to think of it. Karajan himself did not approve of it, that's for certain, and you can probably see why! He is only really the centre of attention for maybe half of the video when he probably would have been centre screen for almost all of it if he had directed it himself. For me though, I don't know whether to class this as cliché and *a bit cheesy* or as powerful and innovate.


A _bit_ cheesy? A _bit,_ did you say?

How about a cross between _Fantasia_ and _Mr. Holland's Opus?_ Or is that an insult to both films?

I think I'd better not listen to the "Pastoral" again for a very long time.


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## isorhythm

^I note they followed his lifelong demand that he be shown only from the left (his good side). What a weirdo.


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## Xaltotun

Favourites:

Dvorak Cello Concerto w/ Rostropovich
Liszt Tone Poems (didn't record all of them, though)
Bruckner symphonies with BPO
Haydn Die Schöpfung
Mahler 5th symphony
Tchaikovsky 5th symphony
Shostakovich 10th symphony
R. Strauss Alpensinfonie
Mendelssohn symphonies


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## millionrainbows

Karajan is like being a victim of abuse: If you _think_ there might have been something wrong, there probably was.


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## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> ^I note they followed his lifelong demand that he be shown only from the left (his good side). What a weirdo.


Heh heh. Wasn't aware of that. There are photos of his right side, though. Nothing wrong with it that I can see.

https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs...-004&fr2=piv-web&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004

It's also worth noting that he had teeth.


----------



## DavidA

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Now this is interesting.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Honestly I don't know what to think of it. Karajan himself did not approve of it, that's for certain, and you can probably see why! He is only really the centre of attention for maybe half of the video when he probably would have been centre screen for almost all of it if he had directed it himself. For me though, I don't know whether to class this as cliché and a bit cheesy or as powerful and innovate.


Karajan did actually approve it though why is a mystery. Maybe there were contractual constraints. It was 'cnceved and directed' by Hugo Niebeling, whose forte was industrial films. While it is easy to be precious about this it must be remembered that Karajan was trying to pioneer something new and pioneering is often fraught with failures!


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

DavidA said:


> Karajan did actually approve it though why is a mystery. Maybe there were contractual constraints. It was 'cnceved and directed' by Hugo Niebeling, whose forte was industrial films. While it is easy to be precious about this it must be remembered that Karajan was trying to pioneer something new and pioneering is often fraught with failures!


In terms of the cinematography there is nothing inherently _wrong_ about it. In fact, it's incredibly effective filming however cheesy it is. Understanding Karajan's preferences (him being centre screen 90% of the time) would probably be key to his dislike of Niebelung's directing. I believe he even said that the films he made of himself were for people who want to conduct, and that's one reason why he should always be centre of attention.


----------



## DavidA

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Now this is interesting.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Honestly I don't know what to think of it. Karajan himself did not approve of it, that's for certain, and you can probably see why! He is only really the centre of attention for maybe half of the video when he probably would have been centre screen for almost all of it if he had directed it himself. For me though, I don't know whether to class this as cliché and a bit cheesy or as powerful and innovate.


I've kust listened to it without the whirling of the camera. It is a pretty good performance actually! Which is of course the object of music making!


----------



## isorhythm

Xaltotun said:


> Mahler 5th symphony


I bought this recording as a teenager and knew immediately that I liked the piece and didn't like Karajan's interpretation, despite the fact that it was the only performance of the piece I'd ever heard. It's not that I was such a musically sensitive teenager so much as that the "Karajan sound" is so overbearing that it was able to repel me even though I couldn't have explained why.

I actually don't mind his Mahler 6 as much, though it's not my favorite.


----------



## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> I bought this recording as a teenager and knew immediately that I liked the piece and didn't like Karajan's interpretation, despite the fact that it was the only performance of the piece I'd ever heard. It's not that I was such a musically sensitive teenager so much as that the "Karajan sound" is so overbearing that it was able to repel me even though I couldn't have explained why.
> 
> I actually don't mind his Mahler 6 as much, though it's not my favorite.


That's extraordinarily impressive to me. I too can remember being acutely sensitive at an early age to the aural "flavor" of different conductor/orchestra/record label combinations, and feeling comfortable or uncomfortable with recordings of music I didn't otherwise know. I'm sure the feeling was based partly on the experience of hearing similar music on other recordings. Still, it's fascinating that we can be critical of performances of unfamiliar music even when our experience as listeners is not extensive. I do believe that our tastes, even though they change and mature with time, are deeply rooted in our personalities and can manifest quite early.


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## gardibolt

Interesting....that sort of subtlety was lost on me until I was well into my forties. If I had a recording of a piece, that was good enough for me. Now that classical music has gotten so cheap and so many wonderful things have poured out of the archives, I've gotten a good deal more selective and I'm eager to hear a dozen takes on it. One of the interesting things about Karajan's enormous recording output is that you can use him as a comparator (for good or ill) for virtually anything in the standard repertoire, because he most likely recorded it, often multiple times.

I grew up on Karajan's Beethoven symphonies, and it's only in the last decade that I've become aware of just how short they fall of being acceptable.


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## DavidA

gardibolt said:


> Interesting....that sort of subtlety was lost on me until I was well into my forties. If I had a recording of a piece, that was good enough for me. Now that classical music has gotten so cheap and so many wonderful things have poured out of the archives, I've gotten a good deal more selective and I'm eager to hear a dozen takes on it. One of the interesting things about Karajan's enormous recording output is that you can use him as a comparator (for good or ill) for virtually anything in the standard repertoire, because he most likely recorded it, often multiple times.
> 
> I grew up on Karajan's Beethoven symphonies, and it's *only in the last decade that I've become aware of just how short they fall of being acceptable*.


Acceptable should read 'acceptable to me and those who think like me'. As the symphonies are superbly played whether they are 'acceptable' or not lies in the realm of subjective judgment.


----------



## gardibolt

Well, obviously. I don't presume to speak for anyone but me.


----------



## Brahmsian Colors

Funny how doors sometimes open when least expected. For years I couldn't break through to liking or appreciating Karajan's interpretations. Then, one day out of the clear blue, I made positive connections listening to his '60s and '70s Brahms Thirds. From there, I found myself enjoying more of Karajan's performances of some other composers' works. I've had similar transformative experiences with Mozart and Shostakovich, but have yet to make a shift with Furtwangler, though I haven't been losing any sleep over it.


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## hpowders

Prescription for Karajan haters:

Sibelius Symphony No. 7

Mahler Symphony No. 9

Schumann Symphony No. 2

Parsifal


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## Pugg

Haydn67 said:


> Funny how doors sometimes open when least expected. For years I couldn't break through to liking or appreciating Karajan's interpretations. Then, one day out of the clear blue, I made positive connections listening to his '60s and '70s Brahms Thirds. From there, I found myself enjoying more of Karajan's performances of some other composers' works. I've had similar transformative experiences with Mozart and Shostakovich, but have yet to make a shift with Furtwangler, though I haven't been losing any sleep over it.


You are way to sensible for that, so far I know.


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## SixFootScowl

From the opening post:


ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I've noticed that across the different genres and styles he covered, the general sound of the orchestra seems to be the same: glossy, silvery sounding melodic line above the rest of the orchestra, inner lines are lost in the muddy texture underneath in favour of bringing accentuating the melody further than it needs to be.


This might explain why I don't like Brahms. I bought a Brahms symphony cycle, Karajan, and never warmed up to it. I thought it was Brahms, and maybe it is, but probably I owe it to Brahms to try a different conductor.

13th post says,


Itullian said:


> His Bruckner is very fine and his 60's Brahms. :tiphat:


My Brahms Karajan cycle is late 70s and 80s.


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## Brahmsian Colors

Pugg said:


> You are way to sensible for that, so far I know.


You are correct, Pugg.... an unnecessary comment, and I would have done better to have omitted it.


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## hpowders

My two favorite von Karajan performances are of the Mahler 9th Symphony and Schumann 2nd Symphony.

I feel these two performances are beyond criticism.


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## Holden4th

I don't have much HvK but have heard a lot of it. Too me it's not bad but I prefer other performances. 

There are, however, four performances that I really like. Interestingly, two of them are not with the BPO and maybe that helps. His early recordings of the LvB 5th are my go to for this work. I also like his Rimsky Scheherazade though the playing of Michel Schwalbe might have something to do with that. I also really like his trio of Tchaikovsky suites, Nutcracker et al. His masterpiece is the Verdi Requiem, recorded on film at La Scala Milan with their orchestra and choir with Ghiaurov, Pavarotti, Cossotto and Pryce as soloists.


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## AfterHours

When Karajan is ON, he is certainly among the greatest of all conductors. I would agree, however, that his style/recording process mitigated the articulation and individuality of various interpretations.

That said, the following are Karajan's greatest contributions in my view. Each are astonishing -- the very best interpretations I've ever heard of their respective works -- and while that is subjective, it is not a superficial conclusion, but has been drawn carefully after hearing many, many others:

_(NOTE: All of these are available on Spotify in the exact issues I've provided in the linked images)_

Symphony No. 9 in D Minor "Choral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1824) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1963) 
http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/a0/0a/a2ff224128a0ad662e3fb010.L.jpg

Symphony No. 9 in D Major - Gustav Mahler (1910) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1982) 
https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51hh8swzgSL._SS500.jpg

Symphony No. 5 - Gustav Mahler (1902) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1973) 
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71UOVcPyscL._SY355_.jpg

Symphony No. 5 in B-flat - Sergei Prokofiev (1944) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1969) 
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81AfkTrOsIL._SY355_.jpg

Symphony No. 2 in D Major - Johannes Brahms (1877) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1987)
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/070/MI0001070185.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique" - Arthur Honegger (1946) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1969) 
https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51mqKRsvkYL._SS500.jpg


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## Pugg

Holden4th said:


> I don't have much HvK but have heard a lot of it. Too me it's not bad but I prefer other performances.
> 
> There are, however, four performances that I really like. Interestingly, two of them are not with the BPO and maybe that helps. His early recordings of the LvB 5th are my go to for this work. I also like his Rimsky Scheherazade though the playing of Michel Schwalbe might have something to do with that. I also really like his trio of Tchaikovsky suites, Nutcracker et al. His masterpiece is the Verdi Requiem, recorded on film at La Scala Milan with their orchestra and choir with Ghiaurov, Pavarotti, Cossotto and Pryce as soloists.


And do not forget his La Boheme and Butterfyl with Freni / Pavarotti.


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## DavidA

millionrainbows said:


> Karajan is like being a victim of abuse: If you _think_ there might have been something wrong, there probably was.


This is an uniformed comment. Biographical details show he wasn't.


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## DavidA

Karajan was the victim of his own success. He was inordinately successful which, of course, annoyed the critics, most of whom have a failure mentality. Being second rate themselves. He was high profile, good looking and generally got his way in most things. I mean, what more could you want for people to hate? The sniping by certain idiot critics on his death which blamed him for everything from the collapse of music to the start of the Second World War was amusing to me. Small minded people in a rage over this guy who has out done them!
However if you listen to the opinions of musicians to work with him you been a very different picture. They looked forward to his concerts as he gave an electricity which was beyond most other conductors. They talk of the incredible power of a Karajan concert.
Of course it didn't always happen and some of his concerts were run through. But this is the same with most conductors. Of course he made too many recordings for his own good, but any discerning listener will know that among them are some of the greatest ever recordings. Like the opera recordings with Legge, the Sibelius cycle, the ground-breaking 1963 Beethoven cycle, etc. Maybe if he had only recorded and conducted as little as his friend, Carlos Kleiber, critics would treasure what we have got. As it is Karajan left a remarkable recorded legacy which is quite astonishing.


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## larold

Karajan was, like Bruno Walter, Furtwangler and Toscanini, a force of history that changed the tide of classical music. He was the most successful conductor of the postwar period that ushered in literalism and changed musicmaking from the more subjective styles that preceded it. He was criticized as being unfeeling, glossy and working to achieve orchestral perfection above music understanding. I once read the he and George Szell were deans of the school of industrial perfection of music. I didn't come naturally to his way but extended listening helped me understand what people who adored him enjoyed. I'd say these are the best recordings of his I know:

Beethoven symphonies 1963
R. Strauss Heldenleben (EMI)
Beethoven Fidelio (Dernath, Vickers)
Verdi Otello (Del Monaco, Tebaldi)


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## hpowders

I wonder:

In a blind listening test, how many who claim to "detest" Karajan performances, could actually choose which ones are conducted by Karajan?


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## WildThing

AfterHours said:


> When Karajan is ON, he is certainly among the greatest of all conductors. I would agree, however, that his style/recording process mitigated the articulation and individuality of various interpretations.
> 
> That said, the following are Karajan's greatest contributions in my view. Each are astonishing -- the very best interpretations I've ever heard of their respective works -- and while that is subjective, it is not a superficial conclusion, but has been drawn carefully after hearing many, many others:
> 
> _(NOTE: All of these are available on Spotify in the exact issues I've provided in the linked images)_
> 
> Symphony No. 9 in D Minor "Choral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1824) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1963)
> http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/a0/0a/a2ff224128a0ad662e3fb010.L.jpg
> 
> Symphony No. 9 in D Major - Gustav Mahler (1910) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1982)
> https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51hh8swzgSL._SS500.jpg
> 
> Symphony No. 5 - Gustav Mahler (1902) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1973)
> https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71UOVcPyscL._SY355_.jpg
> 
> Symphony No. 5 in B-flat - Sergei Prokofiev (1944) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1969)
> https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81AfkTrOsIL._SY355_.jpg
> 
> Symphony No. 2 in D Major - Johannes Brahms (1877) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1987)
> http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/070/MI0001070185.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
> 
> Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique" - Arthur Honegger (1946) / Herbert von Karajan - Berlin Philharmonic (1969)
> https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51mqKRsvkYL._SS500.jpg


Some fine performances on your list, but I can't help but notice it omits his many great contributions to the operatic repertoire. His recording of Der Rosenkavalier with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, his Madama Butterfly with Maria Callas, his Falstaff with Tito Gobbi, his Bayreuth recordings of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tristan und Isolde to name but a few of the most remarkable!


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## Becca

WildThing said:


> Some fine performances on your list, but I can't help but notice it omits his many great contributions to the operatic repertoire. His recording of Der Rosenkavalier with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, his Madama Butterfly with Maria Callas, his Falstaff with Tito Gobbi, his Bayreuth recordings of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tristan und Isolde to name but a few of the most remarkable!


It is interesting that those are all 1950's performances. Even though I am not much of an HvK fan, I do enjoy many of his earlier recordings, particularly with the Philharmonia.


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## Becca

In the video I posted earlier of Simon Rattle discussing HvK, Rattle relates an anecdote told to him by Rostropovich ... When Rostropovich was recording Strauss' _Don Quixote_, Karajan stopped at one point and asked Rostropovich "Why are you making such ugly sounds?" Rostropovich: "Because it is an ugly situation." Karajan: "You must never make ugly sounds, all sounds must be beautiful."

I think that the moral to that is that if you believe that all sounds must be beautiful, then you probably rank Karajan quite highly, otherwise...


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## hpowders

If one still can't enjoy Karajan after so many loquacious, helpful posts, perhaps a hypnotist is in order.


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## AfterHours

WildThing said:


> Some fine performances on your list, but I can't help but notice it omits his many great contributions to the operatic repertoire. His recording of Der Rosenkavalier with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, his Madama Butterfly with Maria Callas, his Falstaff with Tito Gobbi, his Bayreuth recordings of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tristan und Isolde to name but a few of the most remarkable!


Thank you, there are plenty of other great recordings from Karajan, opera and otherwise. The ones I posted are, in my opinion, the very best (no other competition in quite the same class) for their respective works. I haven't listened to much opera recently but when I pick it back up and go through various recordings, I wouldn't be surprised if HvK has some of the best in the repertoire.


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## Heck148

hpowders said:


> If one still can't enjoy Karajan after so many loquacious, helpful posts, perhaps a hypnotist is in order.


Or maybe one just doesn't care for HvK's conducting...I've tried, many times, it just doesn't work for me....that "same sound fits all" concept....monotonous (monotone-ous) in the extreme...not all music should sound rounded off and smoothed over...


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> Or maybe one just doesn't care for HvK's conducting...I've tried, many times, it just doesn't work for me....that "same sound fits all" concept....monotonous (monotone-ous) in the extreme...not all music should sound rounded off and smoothed over...


I just wonder whether you are actually listening to the same conductor. The 1963 Beethoven symphonies? His Tchaikovsky set? Monotonous? I have various recordings by Karajan of the same works and they are completely different. I think people who say this just haven't listened.


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## DavidA

hpowders said:


> I wonder:
> 
> In a blind listening test, how many who claim to "detest" Karajan performances, could actually choose which ones are conducted by Karajan?


Year ago there was a 'blind' listening test on Bach's orchestral suites. The one the 'experts' liked best they found out was by Karajan - to their embarrassment!


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## DavidA

Becca said:


> In the video I posted earlier of Simon Rattle discussing HvK, Rattle relates an anecdote told to him by Rostropovich ... When Rostropovich was recording Strauss' _Don Quixote_, Karajan stopped at one point and asked Rostropovich "Why are you making such ugly sounds?" Rostropovich: "Because it is an ugly situation." Karajan: "You must never make ugly sounds, all sounds must be beautiful."
> 
> I think that the moral to that is that if you believe that all sounds must be beautiful, then you probably rank Karajan quite highly, otherwise...


I think Rattle has dined out on that story quite a bit. Especially as he wasn't there! :lol:


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## Granate

DavidA said:


> Year ago there was a 'blind' listening test on Bach's orchestral suites. The one the 'experts' liked best they found out was by Karajan - to their embarrassment!


I really like Karajan as a Bach conductor. For an operatic MP, I prefer his vast recording to the also good Klemperer.


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## Heck148

DavidA said:


> I just wonder whether you are actually listening to the same conductor. The 1963 Beethoven symphonies? His Tchaikovsky set? Monotonous? I have various recordings by Karajan of the same works and they are completely different. I think people who say this just haven't listened.


I've been listening for years - I tried coming back to HvK many times...doesn't work for me; there are just so many aspects of his conducting that I find deficient, compared with the great podium maestros...HvK is known as a "Napalm" [Nay- palm] conductor - as in - hand in the face, play less, not too much, no hard accents, no bite, everything round and smooth, don't give it full throttle. sounded that way live, too...then there is the "eyes closed" conducting.....

I generally like the real "Drivers" as conductors, who push the orchestra to the limits - Toscanini, Reiner, Solti, Mravinsky, etc...


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## Woodduck

Becca said:


> It is interesting that those are all 1950's performances. Even though I am not much of an HvK fan, I do enjoy many of his earlier recordings, particularly with the Philharmonia.


HvK was a great opera conductor in the 1950s. Those are very nearly the only recordings of his that I have, except for some 1960s Sibelius. In most repertoire his later work is too suavely sound-conscious for my taste, and his late opera recordings, including the Wagner recordings adored by some, have an air of calculation, manipulativeness and narcissism (Listen to what I can do with the strings here! Hear this explosive accent!) that gets between me and the composer.


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## jdec

Heck148 said:


> I've been listening for years - I tried coming back to HvK many times...doesn't work for me; there are just so many aspects of his conducting that I find deficient, compared with the great podium maestros...HvK is known as a "Napalm" [Nay- palm] conductor - as in - hand in the face, play less, not too much*, no hard accents, no bite*, everything round and smooth, don't give it full throttle. sounded that way live, too...then there is the "eyes closed" conducting.....
> 
> I generally like the real "Drivers" as conductors, who push the orchestra to the limits - Toscanini, Reiner, Solti, Mravinsky, etc...





Woodduck said:


> HvK was a great opera conductor in the 1950s. Those are very nearly the only recordings of his that I have, except for some 1960s Sibelius. In most repertoire his later work is too suavely sound-conscious for my taste, and his late opera recordings, including the Wagner recordings adored by some, have an air of calculation, manipulativeness and narcissism (Listen to what I can do with the strings here! *Hear this explosive accent!*) that gets between me and the composer.


Interesting how people can have opposite perceptions of the same thing.


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## Heck148

jdec said:


> Interesting how people can have opposite perceptions of the same thing.


Actually, I think Woodduck's viewpoint is quite similar to mine - the "suave sound-conscious" approach, the narcissism, lack of spontaneity, obsession with control...the eyes closed/it's all about me business


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## Pugg

Granate said:


> I really like Karajan as a Bach conductor. For an operatic MP, I prefer his vast recording to the also good Klemperer.


Me too, and can we please have those glorious covers back.


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## Woodduck

jdec said:


> Interesting how people can have opposite perceptions of the same thing.


These aren't really opposite perceptions. Though there is an overall suavity and smoothed-out quality to Karajan's later style, where a sudden loud accent is indicated he often overplays it. He can be going along dreamily nursing his own loveliness where another conductor would be gathering tension in anticipation of a climax, and he will bring in the climax in a way that feels insufficiently prepared and almost unexpected. An example is the quiet "O sink hernieder" in the Tristan love duet, where he has his orchestra and singers take Wagner's _pp_ marking to an extreme, so that the _forte_ climax seems almost an intrusion. His stereo opera recordings tend to be engineered with an excessively wide dynamic range, which makes sudden loud accents even more disconcerting. If you play the soft parts at a level at which everything is clearly audible over your refrigerator, the loud parts will blow you out of the room or get you sued by your neighbors. Obviously this is the effect Herbie wanted, God knows why.


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## Granate

Pugg said:


> Me too, and can we please have those glorious covers back.


120€ per box, thank you very much.


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## Larkenfield

I consider this an exceptional performance of the Sibelius Seventh, and some of HvK's live Brahms symphony performances (that can be found online) are truly outstanding. When at his best, he could be extraordinarily right; at his worst, he could be extraordinarily wrong, such as his Mahler 5th and 6th recordings, though his performance of the 9th showed remarkable improvement.


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## Guest

karajan is one of my favorite conductors, but i realize he was only exceptional only in a fairly reduced repertoire:
-Beethoven :symphonies
-wagner:tristan and isolde
-bruckner: symphonies
-strauss: methamorposes; death and transfiguration
-debussy:la mer
-Puccini:butterfly and la boheme
-Sibelius:symponies and Pelleas and Melisande


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> Actually, I think Woodduck's viewpoint is quite similar to mine - the "suave sound-conscious" approach, the narcissism, lack of spontaneity, obsession with control...the eyes closed/it's all about me business


If course, you can see the eyes closed bit on disc? And if we're going to disqualify conductors for narcissism then we are left with very slender pickings! :lol:


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> If course, you can see the eyes closed bit on disc? And if we're going to disqualify conductors for narcissism then we are left with very slender pickings! :lol:


Ah, but only a select company of conductors have the gift of making narcissism audible!


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## Merl

HvK is a marmite conductor for many. I'm no Karajan fanboy but I was raised on his Beethoven 63 cycle and it's still my benchmark for LvB cycles. Do I like all his recordings? Well no but I don't like all of ANY conductor's accounts. That's just silly! Everyone's recorded a dud and every conductor of note has made a belter (even Celi, eh Enthusiast! :lol. That Karajan sound is not in vogue at the moment and may never be again but I liked it quite often but not in Schumann, his Tchaikovsky 4-6 and some others. I totally understand why he's not universally loved as we all have different views of what kind of sound we enjoy. However, his contribution to the popularity of CM, the recording process and the rise of CD was huge, IMO. Enjoy his music if you like it, hate it if you don't but please make your own mind up and don't listen to the thoughts of those obsessed with his reputation and not his music.


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## WildThing

marc bollansee said:


> karajan is one of my favorite conductors, but i realize he was only exceptional only in a fairly reduced repertoire:
> -Beethoven :symphonies
> -wagner:tristan and isolde
> -bruckner: symphonies
> -strauss: methamorposes; death and transfiguration
> -debussy:la mer
> -Puccini:butterfly and la boheme
> -Sibelius:symponies and Pelleas and Melisande


Surely not that reduced. He has some great recordings of operas by Verdi and Puccini. And what about his Honegger symphonies? His Sibelius? His Prokofiev 5th?


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## Brahmsianhorn

I think the most humorous thing I have read perusing this thread is that Karajan was a _victim_ of his own fame and having too many recordings available. Not only is that laughable, but it is entirely BECAUSE he was marketed so widely that he is ever confused with the great conductors. Based purely on percentage odds, any conductor is likely to come up with a few good recordings when he is afforded such an absurd amount of circulation. And such was the case with Karajan. But by and large he was a middle-of-the-road interpreter for the reasons stated here.

Unfortunately, for some, fame and reputation are by themselves evidence of greatness, a self-fulfilling prophecy. That was Karajan's career in a nutshell. It was a marketing success perhaps unrivaled in classical music recording history.

Personally I think the "von" really helped. It made people think of "van." :lol:


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## Enthusiast

I'm not sure why but I hardly ever see a Karajan recording as representative of the work. Many of his recordings are frankly wonderful but I seem to hear Karajan as much as I hear the composer. So I can't think of a work where I would place him first but I can think of many where I would consider his recording (or one of them) an essential addition. I tend to think the same way of Celibidache's Munich recordings but with those my reason is much more obvious because Celibidache was more obviously unusual.


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## Guest

Update: since I started this thread I’ve concluded that I enjoy mainly Karajan’s opera recordings from the 1950s and not too much else.


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## Woodduck

shirime said:


> Update: since I started this thread I've concluded that I enjoy mainly Karajan's opera recordings from the 1950s and not too much else.


Karajan was a great conductor before he became Karajan.


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## DavidA

Enthusiast said:


> I'm not sure why but I hardly ever see a Karajan recording as representative of the work. Many of his recordings are frankly wonderful but *I seem to hear Karajan as much as I hear the composer*. So I can't think of a work where I would place him first but I can think of many where I would consider his recording (or one of them) an essential addition. I tend to think the same way of Celibidache's Munich recordings but with those my reason is much more obvious because Celibidache was more obviously unusual.


I think this is true of any conductor with strong convictions. Certainly true of Bernstein, Klemperer, Stokowski, Reiner, Toscanini. Oeople like Fardiner, Harnoncourt's, etc., They put their own vision on a piece, which is surely what a conductor does unless he is merely a time beater.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I think this is true of any conductor with strong convictions. Certainly true of Bernstein, Klemperer, Stokowski, Reiner, Toscanini. Oeople like Fardiner, Harnoncourt's, etc., *They put their own vision on a piece*, which is surely what a conductor does unless he is merely a time beater.


That's called interpretation, but that is not what I hear from Karajan. Everything sounds the same. I don't hear Karajan's vision of Mahler. I hear Karajan's vision of Karajan. A great conductor gives each composer and each work of that composer something different. Karajan merely focuses on the superficial, the beauty of the sound. And it is true he did this less early in his career. His 1947 Brahms Requiem is quite good.


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## ManateeFL

I count myself as a Karajan fan. Some of the criticisms in this thread are fair, and I very rarely if ever have any works that are solely represented by one of his recordings. But he still lead many inspired performances with superb playing. That said, I don't think I would really consider him to be among my very favorite conductors, so when I looked at my own collection after reading this thread I was a bit surprised to see that I have more recordings by him than any other conductor besides Leonard Bernstein. Some of this surely must have to do with the sheer number of recordings he made. Of course, that still makes up less than 2% of my entire collection. Here's what I have from him:

Beethoven: Complete Symphonies ('63)
Bruckner: Complete Symphonies (BPO)
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (VPO)
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (VPO)
Dvořák: Cello Concerto
Haydn: Die Schöpfung
Honegger: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3
Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel
Mahler: Symphony No. 9
Mozart: Horn Concertos
Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5
Puccini: La bohème
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (VPO)
Puccini: Tosca
Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra
Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (Philharmonia)
Strauss: Don Quixote
Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie
Strauss: Salome
Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder
Verdi: Falstaff (Philharmonia)
Verdi: Otello
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Staatskapelle Dresden)
Wagner: Parsifal
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde ('52 Bayreuth)
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (BPO)

Interesting that half of my recordings from him are in the genre of opera, without that he wouldn't take up nearly as much space in my collection, and would mostly consist of Bruckner and Strauss.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> That's called interpretation, but that is not what I hear from Karajan. Everything sounds the same. I don't hear Karajan's vision of Mahler. I hear Karajan's vision of Karajan. A great conductor gives each composer and each work of that composer something different. Karajan merely focuses on the superficial, the beauty of the sound. And it is true he did this less early in his career. His 1947 Brahms Requiem is quite good.


I just wonder how much you listen to. Of course if you listen to the same recordings they sound the same! :lol:

of course to people like you when he interprets the music it is wrong and when he doesn't he is bland. So on a non-started really.

I've got several of Karajan conducting the same piece in different performances and I can assure you they are different! That is unless someone has smuggled another conductor in under the name of Karajan. I'm not saying you should like him but these criticisms which are made are simply not true. In fact they are laughable, put about by critics whose ear is less than it should be.

as for me I'm glad I can enjoy music conducted by Karajan and a host of other conductors who interpret differently. For me variety is the spice of music.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> as for me I'm glad I can enjoy music conducted by Karajan and a host of other conductors who interpret differently. For me variety is the spice of music.





DavidA said:


> And your choice of Furtwangler, Callas and Szigeti are all highly subjective, as they also have their detractors. For example, I can never see what people see in Furtwangler's Bayreuth Beethoven ninth, which is talked about in reverential tones.


Apparently you don't respond to all interpreters. I'll take Furtwangler's dramatic, penetrating rendering of Beethoven's 9th any day over Karajan's superficial soup, thank you very much.


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## MatthewWeflen

This is my first post, so be kind 

As far as Karajan's being the definitive interpretation of anything, I would say his Richard Strauss is pretty nearly. If anyone can provide me with a better Metamorphosen, I'd love to hear it. His Zarathustra is also epochal. His Alpensinfonie, Heldenleben and Tod und Verklarung also can't really be gainsaid.

As far as truly enjoyable and unimpeachable Karajan recordings go, my list would be as follows:
Mendelssohn: 5 Symphonies (DG) (beauty in composition meets the preeminent "beauty" conductor)
Holst: The Planets (Decca) (no better Mars IMHO, terrifying)
New Year's Concert 1987 (DG) (waltzes should be smooth, right?)
Bizet: L'Arlesienne Nos 1 &2/Carmen Suite (DG) (That tambourine!)
Bruckner Symphonies (DG) (I have not seen a cogent criticism of Karajan's approach to these weighty works)

Now, I know Beethoven is a big barrel of fish with a near-infinitude of opinions, but my personal favorite is Karajan's 1977 cycle (newly re-released by DG in Blu-Ray Audio). I respond very favorably to tympani, and the drums in this cycle are really well-miked and apocalyptic. My second favorite cycle is Gardiner's. Then would come Karajan's other two stereo cycles. Chailly's sounds fabulous but is a bit hurry-sick. Bernstein's VPO set on DG left me really cold, the tempi were just too turgid for my tastes.

I understand the basic criticism, that Karajan pushed for sonority and legato in everything, and that some works do not benefit from this. I will never understand it, though, when it is phrased "his music is too beautiful." If only that criticism applied to more!

Karajan is not the premiere Bach, Haydn, or Mozart conductor. But I don't think his renditions are bad _per se_, they're just out of fashion.


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## Larkenfield

"his music is too beautiful."

I think what people objected to was the way that some of that homogeneous beauty was achieved in the recording booth through the knob dialing. Yes, listeners love beauty but they want it to sound genuine and not false. Too many tricks in the recording studio can create a sense of falsity, and I believe listeners want more of the real thing rather than the artificial Photoshop kind. One can see through the falsity and they objected to it. 

The problem with his homogeneous string sound, sometimes too many strings in the heavy violin section as far as I’m concerned, is that it became predictable. Predictability is not necessarily a virtue and his reputation has sometimes suffered from the sense of the artificial sameness of the strings. Let’s have an honest string sound and a natural balance between all the sections of the orchestra that don't sound overly manipulated in the recording studio, though all recordings by anyone get tweaked to a certain degree by engineers. He’s gotten a great deal of backlash from that in his otherwise outstanding and influential career and I don’t think it’s entirely unjustified. 

Hard to imagine somebody like Furtwangler going to that extent. With him, what you hear is what you get including the aesthetic beauty of some occasional human imperfections that are part of the human experience. It was all real and the same experience for the audience as it was for the orchestra and conductor. Not always so with HvK when the orchestra had one experience in reality and the listening audience had a different one through its sometimes manipulated sound.


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## MatthewWeflen

I can agree with the knob-twiddling criticism. I guess the beauty of having re-recorded one's repertoire three (or more) times is that you can always find a version with less of it.


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## Heck148

Enthusiast said:


> ...I seem to hear Karajan as much as I hear the composer.


good point...I agree - he is to conducting like John Wayne is to acting....Wayne always played the same character - might have different names - McClintock, Elder, Rooster, etc, etc....but it's always John Wayne cast as the same character.
for me, same with von Karajan - it's always HvK conducting Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, whoever....not the essence of the composer's music, and particular sound coming thru. "one size fits all"


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## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> ....Everything sounds the same. I don't hear Karajan's vision of Mahler. I hear Karajan's vision of Karajan. A great conductor gives each composer and each work of that composer something different. Karajan merely focuses on the superficial, the beauty of the sound....


Well said!! That's how I hear it, too....


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## Heck148

Larkenfield said:


> "his music is too beautiful."
> 
> I think what people objected to was the way that some of that homogeneous beauty was achieved in the recording booth through the knob dialing. Yes, listeners love beauty but they want it to sound genuine and not false. Too many tricks in the recording studio can create a sense of falsity, and I believe listeners want more of the real thing rather than the artificial Photoshop kind.


I've long suspected that a lot of knob-twiddling went on in the production of HvK's recordings, 
_control room fortissimos_ and all. vK did not want a hard, edgy fortissimo sound quality....wasn't round, smooth, "beautiful"...
Columbia did a lot of knob-twiddling with Ormandy, so it wasn't just HvK....


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## Woodduck

Something Bruno Walter used to say might suggest a key to what bothers some people about Karajan. Not speaking of Karajan, Walter observed that to phrase music properly, instrumentalists should listen to singers in order to learn where to breathe. It's a wise recognition of melody's roots in song, and ultimately in speech. It's no coincidence that we speak of "articulating" musical phrases.

When I was a college student and first encountered Karajan in Beethoven after knowing the symphonies from Walter, Furtwangler,Toscanini, Krips and others, I felt that Karajan conducted the music in one long sentence, virtually unpunctuated by the taking of breath, and that there was something unnatural and off-putting about this. I have since noted this effect in his performances of other music, and have been put off by it. It projects a fanatical need for control of the ensemble which is diametrically opposite to the ideal of older German conductors like Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch, who valued spontaneity, and for whom a performance might have the organic quality of an improvisation, such that no two performances were alike. It seems that not everyone values this in musical performance, and recordings may have taught us to devalue it. In any case recordings seemed to give Karajan an opportunity to exert still greater control over the product. For me it's a fundamentally anti-musical attitude.


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## Red Terror

After reading some of the posts, I asked myself: "Why was Karajan concerned with aesthetics above everything else? The Nazis were similary obssesed". That led me to conduct a brief search: "Karajan, Nazis".

Lo and behold...



> In 1938, the same year that Hitler's Germany annexed Austria, a 30-year-old conductor from Salzburg led the Berlin State Opera in a production of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. The show was spectacular, and the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was hailed as a wonder. Soon after, he signed a lucrative contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Already a member of the Nazi party, von Karajan was on the way to becoming one of the leading musicians of the Third Reich.


I wonder how he and Bernstein got along.

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/karajan-herbert-von/


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## MatthewWeflen

Red Terror said:


> After reading some of the posts, I asked myself: "Why was Karajan concerned with aesthetics above everything else? The Nazis were similary obssesed". That led me to conduct a brief search: "Karajan, Nazis".
> 
> Lo and behold...
> 
> I wonder how he and Bernstein got along.
> 
> http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/karajan-herbert-von/


Karajan joined the Nazi party, as did many millions of people under their control in the 30s and 40s. He was not involved in any political aspects of Nazism. Hitler even disdained his conducting, calling it "un-German." He was mainly given jobs by Nazi officials in order to keep their thumb on Furtwangler, who was far more famous at the time, and who had a history of saying unflattering things about the regime. Karajan also was married to a woman whom the Nazis considered Jewish, and lost work because of it. He was cleared by the Allied Denazification board.

The website you reference says as much, too.

I don't think there is much of a case to be made that Karajan's aesthetic ideals were meaningfully informed by the Nazi party. And even if they were, what of it? The Nazis loved Wagner, Strauss, and Beethoven. Are we to dispense with them?

For the record, he and Bernstein got along fine, albeit competitively, and Karajan lobbied for him to succeed him at the BPO.


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> good point...I agree - he is to conducting like John Wayne is to acting....Wayne always played the same character - might have different names - McClintock, Elder, Rooster, etc, etc....but it's always John Wayne cast as the same character.
> for me, same with von Karajan - it's always HvK conducting Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, whoever....not the essence of the composer's music, and particular sound coming thru. "one size fits all"


 I must say this constant repetition of this particular point and now comparing a great conductor with a ham actor is to me quite ridiculous. It's as if people like you have got a think about it and I looking for an excuse. By all means you don't have to like Karajan's conducting but for goodness sake this particular old chestnut is totally worn out because it's just not true. Your point is totally self-defeating


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> I've long suspected that a lot of knob-twiddling went on in the production of HvK's recordings,
> _control room fortissimos_ and all. vK did not want a hard, edgy fortissimo sound quality....wasn't round, smooth, "beautiful"...
> Columbia did a lot of knob-twiddling with Ormandy, so it wasn't just HvK....


There is far too much now twiddling on some of Karajan's later recordings he made with EMI. Of course he tended to be a pioneer in technology and multichannel mixing had just come in and was a new thing. Unfortunately you couldn't keep him out of the control room often enough


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> That's called interpretation, but that is not what I hear from Karajan. Everything sounds the same. I don't hear Karajan's vision of Mahler. I hear Karajan's vision of Karajan. A great conductor gives each composer and each work of that composer something different. Karajan merely focuses on the superficial, the beauty of the sound. And it is true he did this less early in his career. His 1947 Brahms Requiem is quite good.


 Frankly this can be said of any great conductor with strong interpretive views. I've just listened to Bernstein in Mahler. It's Bernstein's Mahler. When I listen to Kubelik it's Kubelik's Mahler as it's quite different to Burnstein smaller as us Klemperer's Mahler. As it's quite different to Bernsteins Marley as is Klemperer's Mahler. We also get the same principle when we hear Karajan's Mahler. To say it's Karajan's vision of Karajan seems to be ludicrous as its Mahler's music. Just say by all means you don't care for his particular version of Mahler but don't let's for goodness sake apply things to selectively Karajan that are applicable to lots of other strong minded conductors, it just sounds like a series of cheap shots.


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## DavidA

MatthewWeflen said:


> Karajan joined the Nazi party, as did many millions of people under their control in the 30s and 40s. He was not involved in any political aspects of Nazism. Hitler even disdained his conducting, calling it "un-German." He was mainly given jobs by Nazi officials in order to keep their thumb on Furtwangler, who was far more famous at the time, and who had a history of saying unflattering things about the regime. Karajan also was married to a woman whom the Nazis considered Jewish, and lost work because of it. He was cleared by the Allied Denazification board.
> 
> The website you reference says as much, too.
> 
> I don't think there is much of a case to be made that Karajan's aesthetic ideals were meaningfully informed by the Nazi party. And even if they were, what of it? The Nazis loved Wagner, Strauss, and Beethoven. Are we to dispense with them?
> 
> For the record, he and Bernstein got along fine, albeit competitively, and Karajan lobbied for him to succeed him at the BPO.


Karajan and Berstein were never close although they had a mutual respect. Bernstein called Karajan 'my first Nazi' and Karajan referred to Berstein as 'Mr Music'. Of course the press tried to make them appear enemies but that is the job of the press to conjure up news . So not close friends but not enemies either .
There is no doubt that Karajan joined the Nazi Party as he felt it would further his career and help him to get a job at the Aachen opera house. There is no evidence that he ever shared Nazi ideals such as anti-Semitism. In fact by what he said he was far less enthusiastic about the Nazi regime as people like Bohm and Krauss. Of course that does not make his joining of the Nazi party right as it was one of the most objectionable regimes ever in the history of the planet . However it always seems to me strange that people pick on HvK's membership of the Nazi party as a stick to beat him with, yet Soviet artists who were members of Stalin's communist party - an equally murderous and tyrannical regime - are passed over. Perhaps it was because the Russians were allies in the Second World War. Or because the press in this country is generally left-wing and therefore has a blindspot for the horrors of the Communist regime . As I do not blame David Oistrakh for the Russian Gulags, I do not blame Karajan for the horrors of Nazism. It always interests me that Wieland Wagner, who was almost like a son to Hitler and who helped run a concentration camp during the Second World War , managed to shake off the badge of Nazism with the media whereas Karajan did not. It does seem as though sometimes people are extremely selective in what they want to believe


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## Enthusiast

DavidA said:


> I think this is true of any conductor with strong convictions. Certainly true of Bernstein, Klemperer, Stokowski, Reiner, Toscanini. Oeople like Fardiner, Harnoncourt's, etc., They put their own vision on a piece, which is surely what a conductor does unless he is merely a time beater.


Yes - you do have something there. But for some reason it is Karajan and Celibidache-in-Munich who I almost must have but wouldn't choose first and I wouldn't consider I have the work covered by having them. It may not be logical but it is how I find myself thinking!

BTW Karajan I think has made quite a number of really awful recordings. His Mozart symphonies are horrible to me, for example, and his Mahler 5 and 6 are shameful misreadings of the works.


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## DavidA

Enthusiast said:


> Yes - you do have something there. But for some reason it is Karajan and Celibidache-in-Munich who I almost must have but wouldn't choose first and I wouldn't consider I have the work covered by having them. It may not be logical but it is how I find myself thinking!
> 
> *BTW Karajan I think has made quite a number of really awful recordings. His Mozart symphonies are horrible to me, for example, and his Mahler 5 and 6 are shameful misreadings of the works.*


No it's that you don't like them which you have every right not to do. To say his Mahler 5 and 6 are 'shameful misreadings' is to me somewhat puzzling when there are so many interpretations which are different to each other. So which is the correct reading? Is there one reading Mahler would have approved of and the rest are misreadings? It's just that Karajan - because he's Karajan - happens to come in for this sort of hyperbole. By all means say you don't like them but to say they are shameful misreadings seems to me a bit rich


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## Enthusiast

^^^ I usually post my own opinions. I assume most of us do and I often don't see a need for lots of IMOs and IMHOs so long as I cannot be thought of as putting other members down in my post. I may get that wrong sometimes but I don't see how my post on this occasion could cause offense.

Disagreement is a different matter and is the life blood of a forum like this. There are a good many excellent and widely different readings of Mahler 5 and (especially) 6, but _I think _Karajan's are bland and smooth and don't fit in any of my understandings of what Mahler was doing in those works. I don't hear the genius conductor of Sibelius or Strauss. I suppose you will say using the word genius is hyperbole, too, and it is true that Karajan invites it by often being great and quite frequently being very disappointing. If you like his Mahler 5 and 6 that's fine. I can't listen to them much as I would love to love them.


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## DavidA

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ I usually post my own opinions. I assume most of us do and I often don't see a need for lots of IMOs and IMHOs so long as I cannot be thought of as putting other members down in my post. I may get that wrong sometimes *but I don't see how my post on this occasion could cause offense. *
> 
> Disagreement is a different matter and is the life blood of a forum like this. There are a good many excellent and widely different readings of Mahler 5 and (especially) 6, but _I think _Karajan's are bland and smooth and don't fit in any of my understandings of what Mahler was doing in those works. I don't hear the genius conductor of Sibelius or Strauss. I suppose you will say using the word genius is hyperbole, too, and it is true that Karajan invites it by often being great and quite frequently being very disappointing. If you like his Mahler 5 and 6 that's fine. I can't listen to them much as I would love to love them.


Please can I say your post has caused me no offence whatsoever. I believe that people should state their opinions respectfully which you have done. I have stated my opinions - again I hope respectfully. We are both music lovers and also lovers of Mahler. This forum is for discussing our differences as well as our agreements! So no offence taken whatever - we are still friends, I hope!


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## Heck148

DavidA said:


> I must say this constant repetition of this particular point and now comparing a great conductor with a ham actor is to me quite ridiculous.


no, it is not, the comparison is rather valid...with Wayne, it was always about Wayne portraying some character, not the character himself....
I find that consistent with HvK - it's not about the music, it's about Karajan's view of the music...


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> no, it is not, the comparison is rather valid...with Wayne, it was always about Wayne portraying some character, not the character himself....
> I find that consistent with HvK - it's not about the music, it's about Karajan's view of the music...


Oh come off it! I find amazing that people get something into their heads and will think of anything - no matter how far fetched - to prove a point. Frankly the comparison is so ludicrous that it is not even worth discussing. Smacks of folk desperate to prove a point.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> Oh come off it! I find amazing that people get something into their heads and will think of anything - no matter how far fetched - to prove a point. Frankly the comparison is so ludicrous that it is not even worth discussing. Smacks of folk desperate to prove a point.


No, it is a very apt comparison. It is simply the man's opinion, and I agree with it. There is no desperation, no conspiracy, no hate campaign personally against Karajan. We are simply reporting what we hear!



DavidA said:


> It does seem as though sometimes people are extremely selective in what they want to believe


Or they just simply hear the music differently than you do.


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## Red Terror

MatthewWeflen said:


> Karajan joined the Nazi party, as did many millions of people under their control in the 30s and 40s. He was not involved in any political aspects of Nazism. Hitler even disdained his conducting, calling it "un-German." He was mainly given jobs by Nazi officials in order to keep their thumb on Furtwangler, who was far more famous at the time, and who had a history of saying unflattering things about the regime. Karajan also was married to a woman whom the Nazis considered Jewish, and lost work because of it. He was cleared by the Allied Denazification board.
> 
> The website you reference says as much, too.
> 
> I don't think there is much of a case to be made that Karajan's aesthetic ideals were meaningfully informed by the Nazi party. And even if they were, what of it? The Nazis loved Wagner, Strauss, and Beethoven. Are we to dispense with them?
> 
> For the record, he and Bernstein got along fine, albeit competitively, and Karajan lobbied for him to succeed him at the BPO.


Karajan became a member of the NSDAP simply to further his career ... so no harm done then? That whole episode is tailor made for a Mentos commercial-what's an ambitious young conductor to do to make it in Nazi Germany? Join the Nazis of course! What a naughty guy!

Why didn't Dietrich Bonhoeffer think of that?!


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## MatthewWeflen

Red Terror said:


> Karajan became a member of the NSDAP simply to further his career ... so no harm done then? That whole episode is tailor made for a Mentos commercial-what's an ambitious young conductor to do to make it in Nazi Germany? Join the Nazis of course! What a naughty guy!
> 
> Why didn't Dietrich Bonhoeffer think of that?!


I'm not defending his decision. He made the wrong choice. But so did many millions of others, and it's hard to say what choice we would make in similar circumstances.

It's just a simplistic criticism to say "he was a Nazi."


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## Brahmsianhorn

I don't think Karajan had any feelings on the Nazis one way or another. He simply did what he needed to do for his career. He was amoral in this sense. Furtwangler actually went as far as to print his feelings on the Nazis' treatment of Hindemith. I cannot imagine Karajan doing such a thing, not that he would have gotten away with it in any case. Furtwangler survived the war because the Nazis needed him. But most everyone knew he was not in sympathy with their ideology.


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## Red Terror

MatthewWeflen said:


> I'm not defending his decision. He made the wrong choice. But so did many millions of others, and it's hard to say what choice we would make in similar circumstances.
> 
> It's just a simplistic criticism to say "he was a Nazi."


Officially, he was Nazi. Officially, he was an enemy of all the men and women who stood up to the NSDAP, and who chose death rather than sell their souls for a bit of worldly success. People like Bonhoeffer stood hand in hand with those who were senselessly tortured, gassed and murdered. Who was Karajan concerned about when he decided to throw his lot with a bunch of murdering thugs? Himself.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Red Terror said:


> Officially, he was Nazi. Officially, he was an enemy of all the men and women who stood up to the NSDAP, and who chose death rather than sell their souls for a bit of worldly success. People like Bonhoeffer stood hand in hand with those who were senselessly tortured, gassed and murdered. Who was Karajan concerned about when he decided to throw his lot with a bunch of murdering thugs? Himself.


I think it is unfair to expect every German musician to throw themselves on the sword. That is going a bit far. My issue with Karajan is he signed up to join the Nazis not out of obligation but out of desire to advance his career. To me that is a sign of amorality.


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## MatthewWeflen

Red Terror said:


> Officially, he was Nazi. Officially, he was an enemy of all the men and women who stood up to the NSDAP, and who chose death rather than sell their souls for a bit of worldly success. People like Bonhoeffer stood hand in hand with those who were senselessly tortured, gassed and murdered. Who was Karajan concerned about when he decided to throw his lot with a bunch of murdering thugs? Himself.


Eighty years of hindsight is a very comfortable perch from which to pronounce moral judgment, especially for people who have never lived through a failed state (although...?).

Also, what does this have to do with production or interpretive choices with an orchestra?


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## Red Terror

MatthewWeflen said:


> Eighty years of hindsight is a very comfortable perch from which to pronounce moral judgment, especially for people who have never lived through a failed state (although...?).
> 
> Also, what does this have to do with production or interpretive choices with an orchestra?


Hindsight? Ignorance is bliss isn't it? Except there was no way the majority of the German populace could not know what was going on-it is documented.

As conductor Karajan leaves much to be desired.


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## Red Terror

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I think it is unfair to expect every German musician to throw themselves on the sword. That is going a bit far. My issue with Karajan is he signed up to join the Nazis not out of obligation but out of desire to advance his career. To me that is a sign of amorality.


We were discussing Karajan and not every German musician. Was Karajan amoral? Quite possibly.


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## MatthewWeflen

OK, let's talk about that, then.

Personally, he is my favorite conductor to listen to via recording. This is mainly for the tempi he chose (not too fast, not too slow) and for the quality of sound he was able to get out of the BPO. In comparing listening to recordings to being in an orchestra hall (I go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, currently under Riccardo Muti), I find that Karajan's finer recordings give me a similar feeling, of being enveloped by sound, with rich bass response and very high dynamic range. This may be a personal taste thing, of course, but I find older recordings, especially mono ones, to sound as though I am 500 feet away from the orchestra. Those are never the seats I choose live. I have always been within ten rows of the front or even behind the orchestra in the gallery (where the choir stands during performances).

Is there some artificiality to the recording choices? Sure. But a recording can only ever be artificial. It's an approximation of an experience best had live. So I don't fault someone for "knob twiddling" in order to make the experience more like the subjective feeling of "being there." I like booming tympani. I like to feel my insides rumble with the cello or the bass. I like close miked strings. 

I also quite like John Eliot Gardiner, who is obviously very different stylistically, but he is also able to get very good sound out of the L'OR with period instruments and faster tempi. 

Both conductors have a very particular "sound" that is their own. You know it's one of their recordings within ten seconds of starting it. This is either good or bad, according to your tastes.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> No, it is a very apt comparison. It is simply the man's opinion, and I agree with it. There is no desperation, no conspiracy, no hate campaign personally against Karajan. We are simply reporting what we hear!
> 
> Or they* just simply hear the music differently than you do.*


More actually hear it different to you from the record sales.


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## Gordontrek

Red Terror said:


> Officially, he was Nazi. Officially, he was an enemy of all the men and women who stood up to the NSDAP, and who chose death rather than sell their souls for a bit of worldly success. People like Bonhoeffer stood hand in hand with those who were senselessly tortured, gassed and murdered. Who was Karajan concerned about when he decided to throw his lot with a bunch of murdering thugs? Himself.


With that sort of thinking, I assume you have long since thrown out every recording you own that features Richard Wagner, Benjamin Britten, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, every musician who was a rotten human being/did rotten things in their lives. 
As already noted, hindsight is 20/20. Karajan didn't have decades of hindsight like you do. In art appreciation, separating art from artist is sometimes required.


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## DavidA

Red Terror said:


> Officially, he was Nazi. Officially, he was an enemy of all the men and women who stood up to the NSDAP, and who chose death rather than sell their souls for a bit of worldly success. People like Bonhoeffer stood hand in hand with those who were senselessly tortured, gassed and murdered. Who was Karajan concerned about when he decided to throw his lot with a bunch of murdering thugs? Himself.


Yes I agree with that. It was furtherance of his career, which he admitted. Yes it was amoral. However, how do you view the Soviet musicians who were members of Stalin's equally murderous communist party? Were they equally amoral? After all, they could have all equally done what Maria Yudina did when she wrote the letter to Stalin saying she would pray that the Lord would forgive the great sins he [Stalin] had committed against the people and the country. Why didn't they? Were they amoral? Or just trying to survive in a totalitarian system?

For the Yudina story see:

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/maria-yudina-stalin/

We could ask why other German musicians (there were many besides Karajan including most of the BPO and VPO and conductors such as Bohm, Knappersbusch and pianists like Kempff who had an extremely questionable career under the Nazis, let alone the Wagner brothers) didn't take the path of Bonhoeffer. Or why Soviet musicians didn't take the incredibly courageous stand of Yudina.

This is not to justify Karajan's stance at all but to get a bit of perspective. Both Bonhoffer and Yudina are heroes of mine. Karajan is a musician whose conducting I admire. But no hero.


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## Red Terror

DavidA said:


> Yes I agree with that. It was furtherance of his career which he admitted. However, how do you view the Soviet musicians who were members of Stalin's equally murderous communist party? Were they equally amoral? After all, they could have all equally done what Maria Yudina did when she wrote the letter saying she would pray that the Lord would forgive the great sins he [Stalin] had committed against the people and the country. Why didn't;'t they? Were they amoral? Or just trying to survive in a totalitarian system?


Karajan could have left Germany when Hitler came to power. That luxury was not often afforded to Soviet citizens.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> Yes I agree with that. It was furtherance of his career, which he admitted. Yes it was amoral. However, how do you view the Soviet musicians who were members of Stalin's equally murderous communist party? Were they equally amoral? After all, they could have all equally done what Maria Yudina did when she wrote the letter to Stalin saying she would pray that the Lord would forgive the great sins he [Stalin] had committed against the people and the country. Why didn't they? Were they amoral? Or just trying to survive in a totalitarian system?
> 
> For the Yudina story see:
> 
> https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/maria-yudina-stalin/
> 
> We could ask why other German musicians (there were many besides Karajan including most of the BPO and VPO and conductors such as Bohm, Knappersbusch and pianists like Kempff who had an extremely questionable career under the Nazis, let alone the Wagner brothers) didn't take the path of Bonhoeffer. Or why Soviet musicians didn't take the incredibly courageous stand of Yudina.
> This is not to justify Karajan's stance at all but to get a bit of perspective.


Why would an Austrian conductor feel he needs to sign up as a Nazi in 1933 to survive?


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> More actually hear it different to you from the record sales.


Are you suggesting I should change my opinion based on record sales? Is that how you base your opinion? It seems to be the case.


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## Phil loves classical

I like Karajan, much more than Bernstein. Karajan's Bruckner 8, Strauss Alpine Symphony, Liszt Les Preludes, Smetana Le Mouldau, Mendelssohn Italian Symphony are very well put together.


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## Red Terror

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Why would an Austrian conductor feel he needs to sign up as a Nazi in 1933 to survive?


You'd have to dig up Karajan and ask him ... or do some quick research (Hoo-ah! HA!). I don't know anything about his financial status at the time, but I do know that many German citizens, including Einstein, opted to emmigrate from Germany to the United States. But the fact is this: Karajan CHOSE to join the NSDAP out of his desire for worldly success. Nothing and no one forced him into it-he played the who®e.


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## DavidA

Red Terror said:


> Karajan could have left Germany when Hitler came to power. That luxury was often not afforded to Soviet citizens.


They could have written letters to Stalin like Yudina did.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Red Terror said:


> You'd have to dig up Karajan and ask him ... or do some quick research (Hoo-ah! HA!). I don't know anything about his financial status at the time, but I do know that many German citizens, including Einstein, opted to emmigrate from Germany to the United States.


Einstein was Jewish


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Are you suggesting I should change my opinion based on record sales? Is that how you base your opinion? It seems to be the case.


No but I get the impression from what you say that the majority of music lovers agree with you. This doesn't appear to be the case.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Why would an Austrian conductor feel he needs to sign up as a Nazi in 1933 to survive?


Karajan didn't join the party to survive but so he could get the job in Aachan. Soviet musicians did not need to be members of the communist party. Yudina remained an uncompromising critic of the Soviet regime and to boot a committed Christian at a time when Christianity was persecuted


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> No but I get the impression from what you say that the majority of music lovers agree with you. This doesn't appear to be the case.


The majority of music lovers go with the flow. I am part of a conscientious minority who believe Karajan is overrated.


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## Red Terror

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Einstein was Jewish


So what? Many "Aryans" left as well. Listen, if you like Karajan's work, be my guest. All I am saying is that he was a Nazi by choice.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Red Terror said:


> So what? Many "Aryans" left as well. Listen, if you like Karajan's work, be my guest. All I am saying is that he was a Nazi by choice.


My point is Einstein had to leave.

I don't agree that all Germans had to flee their homeland to prove they weren't Nazis.

And I'm Jewish myself, but not a fan of Karajan.


----------



## Red Terror

Brahmsianhorn said:


> My point is Einstein had to leave.
> 
> I don't agree that all Germans had to flee their homeland to prove they weren't Nazis.
> 
> And I'm Jewish myself, but not a fan of Karajan.


Many either chose to stay or circumstances did not permit them to leave. Confinement to Germany did not mean one had to join the Party.


----------



## Heck148

DavidA said:


> More actually hear it different to you from the record sales.


surely you aren't going to cite record sales as the standard for greatness??....if so, the rappers, heavy metal, punk stuff is the greatest music to ever exist on Earth!!


----------



## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> The majority of music lovers go with the flow. I am part of a conscientious minority who believe Karajan is overrated.


critic Bernard Jacobson was esp scathing in his review of HvK....called him "an over-rated dullard"....maybe a little strong...lol...


----------



## MatthewWeflen

I am having a difficult time following the musical criticism here...


----------



## Woodduck

MatthewWeflen said:


> I am having a difficult time following the musical criticism here...


So am I. Try to talk about Karajan's musical qualities and you're lucky if anyone notices you. Say "Nazi" and everyone comes to the party (pun intended).


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Heck148 said:


> surely you aren't going to cite record sales as the standard for greatness??....if so, the rappers, heavy metal, punk stuff is the greatest music to ever exist on Earth!!


Well, that's the thing. I really feel that a hundred years ago classical music was more about real artistry and substance. Now it is more about glitz and glamour, and Karajan was at the forefront of this in the mid-20th century.

What I see in this image is not art. It is self-serving charlatanry.


----------



## Woodduck

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Well, that's the thing. I really feel that a hundred years ago classical music was more about real artistry and substance. Now it is more about glitz and glamour, and Karajan was at the forefront of this in the mid-20th century.
> 
> What I see in this image is not art. It is self-serving charlotry.


Either you're trying to say "charlatanry", or you're doing a brilliant portmanteau with "charlatan" and "harlot." Now be honest!


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Woodduck said:


> Either you're trying to say "charlatanry", or you're doing a brilliant portmanteau with "charlatan" and "harlot." Now be honest!


Spelling is not my forte :lol:


----------



## tdc

I'm not a huge fan of Karajan, but sometimes his approach just works. For example his Mozart _Requiem_ I find outstanding.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> The majority of music lovers go with the flow. I am part of a conscientious minority who believe Karajan is overrated.


Pity the great unwashed then! :lol:


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> critic Bernard Jacobson was esp scathing in his review of HvK....called him "an over-rated dullard"....maybe a little strong...lol...


As the Bluffers Guide to Music says: "Critics know nothing about music!" :lol:


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Well, that's the thing. I really feel that a hundred years ago classical music was more about real artistry and substance. Now it is more about glitz and glamour, and Karajan was at the forefront of this in the mid-20th century.
> 
> What I see in this image is not art. It is self-serving charlatanry.


What you see is a modern man who was concerned about his image and took great care with it. Bernstein was the same, and so were many other conductors. Glenn Gould recalls Stokowski's vanity at the publicity photos! But if we are going to make modesty a prerequisite for conductors that rules out most of them.


----------



## MatthewWeflen

tdc said:


> I'm not a huge fan of Karajan, but sometimes his approach just works. For example his Mozart _Requiem_ I find outstanding.


The Dies Irae is amazing.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I tried.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> What you see is a modern man who was concerned about his image and took great care with it. Bernstein was the same, and so were many other conductors. Glenn Gould recalls Stokowski's vanity at the publicity photos! But if we are going to make modesty a prerequisite for conductors that rules out most of them.


No, what I see is a man who made slickness into an art form. If you want to spend money on his recordings, be my guest.


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> No, what I see is a man who made slickness into an art form. If you want to spend money on his recordings, be my guest.


Thanks I have already done so and obtained great enjoyment from them. :tiphat:


----------



## jdec

Brahmsianhorn said:


> No, what I see is a man who made slickness into an art form. If you want to spend money on his recordings, be my guest.


Money (a lot!) well spent to me.


----------



## Red Terror

Woodduck said:


> So am I. Try to talk about Karajan's musical qualities and you're lucky if anyone notices you. Say "Nazi" and everyone comes to the party (pun intended).


errr ... Nazi. :tiphat:


----------



## Bulldog

DavidA said:


> I must say this constant repetition of this particular point and now comparing a great conductor with a ham actor is to me quite ridiculous.


Nonsense. John Wayne was as good an actor as Karajan was a conductor - probably better.


----------



## Guest

Heck148 said:


> I've long suspected that a lot of knob-twiddling went on in the production of HvK's recordings,
> _control room fortissimos_ and all. vK did not want a hard, edgy fortissimo sound quality....wasn't round, smooth, "beautiful"...
> Columbia did a lot of knob-twiddling with Ormandy, so it wasn't just HvK....


I heard him live. He produced an awesome sound. Richer and more powerful than I have ever heard on any of his recordings.

In the 70's, particularly at DG, there was a lot of manipulation. The technology became available and there was a desire to make a sound "better than live" but the results are typically unsatisfying to me. In the 60's (and before) the sound was pretty honest.

There was an emphasis on the quality of sound. And HvK wanted a beauty of sound production, even when it was intense. (I remember a clip from one of the documentaries, in the middle of a rehearsal he stops the orchestra and says (in translation) "that last note must be especially beautiful, or it just drops like a sack of coal." Hilarious!) Sometimes he wanted a strained sound, even when it was soft. He would give string players detailed directions, "play with more pressure on the bow, move the bow more slowly, etc) He did something different. He gave us a different alternative. It doesn't replace the more objective discipline of Szell, Reiner, Solti, etc. It is something else, and sometimes it was sublimely beautiful.

I don't particularly want to convince anyone they should like him, but I like his work, and I like the work of a lot of others who were quite different.


----------



## Red Terror

DavidA said:


> They could have written letters to Stalin like Yudina did.


That's hilarious.


----------



## Heck148

DavidA said:


> As the Bluffers Guide to Music says: "Critics know nothing about music!" :lol:


Jacobson was no favorite of mine....really kind of nasty. didn't agree with him a lot of the time


----------



## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Well, that's the thing. I really feel that a hundred years ago classical music was more about real artistry and substance. Now it is more about glitz and glamour, and Karajan was at the forefront of this in the mid-20th century.
> 
> What I see in this image is not art. It is self-serving charlatanry.


HvK certainly was not the first to cultivate the "GrandMaestro" image.....Nikisch, Stokowski, Toscanini were all there long before....


----------



## Heck148

Baron Scarpia said:


> I heard him live. He produced an awesome sound. Richer and more powerful than I have ever heard on any of his recordings.


I heard him live as well - Bruckner 9 IIRC...big rich, smooth, round, string heavy...but the orchestra throttle never went beyond c85%. Karajan never liked a hard, brilliant, edgy, biting sound....his sound, live, was kind of wimpy compared to Solti, Bernstein, Szell, Stokowski, even Ormandy [live] etc...

When I heard BPO live under Abbado, c 2002[??] Mahler 9 - some of the sections really cut loose - Eb Clarinet, and trombones, produced sounds that HvK would never, ever have allowed....



> In the 70's, particularly at DG, there was a lot of manipulation. The technology became available and there was a desire to make a sound "better than live" but the results are typically unsatisfying to me.


I agree - the "Philadelphia sound" stuff for Ormandy/CBS was annoying - very heavy, glossy string sound, recessed winds and brass...PhilaOrch did not sound that way live at all - sounded terrific, great balance...tremendous tone palette.



> There was an emphasis on the quality of sound. And HvK wanted a beauty of sound production, even when it was intense.


yes, true, TMK....therein lies the problem - not all music is supposed to sound round, smooth and beautiful....sometimes its clean and snappy, brisk, or nasty, rough, harsh, even ugly, esp 20th century music... and HvK simply cannot connect with that concept...

I see people praise HvK's Honegger - Sym #3....sorry, it's sucks, it's a joke...the last movement - the Fascist "Stupid March" is supposed to be ugly, and brutal...it's not "nice" at all, not round and smooth - it's biting, edgy, and nasty....Karajan is completely on the wrong track.....try Mravinsky/LeningradPO!! geezus, now that is aggressive and nasty - sounds like the Russian boys are ripping up sheet metal back there...vicious...


----------



## MatthewWeflen

Now that we're back to discussing music, I thought I might try to explain why someone might "enjoy Karajan."

I've listened to classical music off and on for about 30 years or so. I just sort of picked up things I had heard in other media and explored them. I heard Copland in a documentary, so I got a Copland CD. I heard Brahms on Star Trek, so I ordered some Brahms. I never paid much attention to conductors, I just purchased sets that seemed complete and well-reviewed. One of them was a Karajan Brahms cycle (the red cover one, I believe it is a late 70s recording).

In the meantime, I enjoyed going to free concerts at Millennium Park in Chicago, which broadened my palate a bit. I occasionally went to the CSO to take in a concert live, and have also gone to student concerts at the University of Chicago. In those venues I could get really close, and have often sat in the first 5-10 rows, really enveloped by sound.

Recent events have compelled me to seek beauty in the past. So I wanted to do a big dive into classical, already having enjoyed it. I surveyed my collection, considered the pieces I responded to, and decided that I wanted German Romantic music to feature heavily, and that the Karajan Brahms cycle, having been the most played in my collection, indicated that he might be the conductor to try. So I plunked down for the Karajan 1980s box set. I ordered it after reading many reviews, and even though the 1960s set was more highly recommended by the "elitist" types, the 1980s set had some ardent defenders and the best sound (i.e. least hiss, closest miking).

So I listened to those 78 discs for a while. There was indeed much to like. But I wanted a more complete collection. It was heavy on Haydn but light on Schumann, Schubert, Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, among others. Some of these I purchased Karajan recordings, some of them others (Harnoncourt, Bernstein, Vonk). I also really responded to Beethoven's symphonies (shocking, I know) and wanted to hear some other interpretations. So I bought Bernstein, Gardiner, and Chailly cycles, in addition to Karajan's '63 and '77 cycles.

In listening to it all, I paid the most attention to how I _felt_ when listening. As I mentioned, a great part of my motivation was to retreat from modernity into beauty. And, almost invariably, I felt more deeply and was moved by beauty more when I listened to Karajan's recordings over those of others.

In part I think it's just my taste in music. I clearly like German Romanticism. Karajan seems to excel in this area. But part of it is the "beauty of the sound." I wanted to feel when listening to a recording something close to the way I felt sitting close in a concert hall. I wanted the bass and cello to vibrate into my gut. I wanted to feel surrounded. And whatever you want to say about his production choices, Karajan seems to have wanted to put that across with his miking and mastering.

Quite frankly, I also think a good deal of the supposed "difference" between recordings is kind of a tempest in a teapot. Maybe I'm not attuned to qualities of attack on strings or legato or whatever, but there isn't a ton of difference to me between Bernstein's Schumann 4 and Karajan's. One just has better audio quality than the other.

The criticism of "artificiality" is silly to me. Any recording is inherently artificial. It's a selective representation of an experience that you're not truly having - being in a concert hall with an orchestra playing. Any recording is going to be the product of choices made by the engineers and/or the conductors. Karajan claimed to be seeking to let people hear what he heard on the podium, not in the Loge. Well, that's what I want, too. I want to feel really close to the music, and to hear individual elements really clearly to be able to experience them coming together (Gardiner's recordings are also good for this).

What has been really fascinating is to see the criticism of Karajan. As I have said, criticisms of beauty and artificiality don't resonate with me, because they're almost exactly what I'm looking for. Neither does Nazism, because I won't judge someone for non-fatal actions chosen in difficult circumstances. The other big one seems to be popularity. He was inordinately popular, therefore he must have produced music that appeals to the average mouth-breathing philistine. Similar criticisms are common in all genres of music and indeed in all media, of course. But sometimes, lots of people like things that are actually good. Christopher Nolan is one of the biggest grossing directors, Game of Thrones incredibly popular in terms of viewership.

Maybe Karajan is just pretty good. Middle of the road in interpretation, perhaps. Focused on beauty, to be sure. But ultimately pretty good at producing a lot of different classical music, which is why so many people patronized his concerts and purchased his recordings.

I've got nothing against alternative recordings or the people who prefer them. I prefer Karajan for most pieces (I mentioned before that Bach, Mozart, and Haydn don't seem to be his forte). I enjoy his Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Strauss (Joseph and Richard), Holst, Tchaikovsky, and Dvorak more than other recordings I've heard. I am open to other versions and preferences, but find the vehemence of the criticism to be a bit over the top.


----------



## DavidA

Bulldog said:


> Nonsense. John Wayne was as good an actor as Karajan was a conductor - probably better.


I don't know what that says more about - your judgment of actors or your judgment of conductors! :lol:


----------



## DavidA

Red Terror said:


> That's hilarious.


Why? Just trying to illustrate the double standards that can be used when we look back in judgment. Many musicians operated within the Soviet block under Stalin's of terror who were members of the communist party. From a distance can one blame them for taking cover. In Nazi Germany, Knappersbusch was delighted to see his Jewish rival, Bruno Walter, kicked out. Bohm was extremely enthusiastic about the regime. The pianist, Elly Ney, was an anti-Semite who idolised Hitler. Wilhelm Kempff was referred to as 'Hitler's pianist'. Wieland Wagner actually helped run a concentration camp.And we won't go into the complicated case of Furtwangler, who his admirers rush to defend. Of course, no-one is going to defend Karajan joining the party but he was actually a lot less enthusiastic in his support of the party than many others. All he was interested in, it appears, is his career and so he joined the party at the request of the Aachan authorities. of course, history reveals that he fell from favour with Hitler and the Nazis and by the end of the war was hardly employed, especially having left the party and married a woman who was part Jewish.


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> Jacobson was no favorite of mine....really kind of nasty. didn't agree with him a lot of the time


Not surprised - it was a satirical book which pointed up home truths.


----------



## Red Terror

DavidA said:


> Why? Just trying to illustrate the double standards you use.


Job poorly done.


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> I heard him live as well - *Bruckner 9 IIRC...big rich, smooth, round, string heavy...but the orchestra throttle never went beyond c85%. *Karajan never liked a hard, brilliant, edgy, biting sound....his sound, live, was kind of wimpy compared to Solti, Bernstein, Szell, Stokowski, even Ormandy [live] etc...
> 
> When I heard BPO live under Abbado, c 2002[??] Mahler 9 - some of the sections really cut loose - Eb Clarinet, and trombones, produced sounds that HvK would never, ever have allowed....
> 
> I agree - the "Philadelphia sound" stuff for Ormandy/CBS was annoying - very heavy, glossy string sound, recessed winds and brass...PhilaOrch did not sound that way live at all - sounded terrific, great balance...tremendous tone palette.
> 
> yes, true, TMK....therein lies the problem - not all music is supposed to sound round, smooth and beautiful....sometimes its clean and snappy, brisk, or nasty, rough, harsh, even ugly, esp 20th century music... and HvK simply cannot connect with that concept...
> 
> I see people praise HvK's Honegger - Sym #3....sorry, it's sucks, it's a joke...the last movement - the Fascist "Stupid March" is supposed to be ugly, and brutal...it's not "nice" at all, not round and smooth - it's biting, edgy, and nasty....Karajan is completely on the wrong track.....try Mravinsky/LeningradPO!! geezus, now that is aggressive and nasty - sounds like the Russian boys are ripping up sheet metal back there...vicious...


Interesting what you say - other people have the opposite view of what they heard! :lol:

For example: Gareth Morris, a longtime principal flutist of the Philharmonia, has left behind a vivid word portrait of Karajan conducting Ravel's Bolero:
'With the eyes closed and the hands barely chest high, Karajan gave us the beat with a single finger, and even that barely moved. . . . With each slight lift of the hands the tension became even greater. By the end of the piece, the hands were above his head. And *the power of that final climax was absolutely colossal.'*

It's interesting that all the reviews of the Honegger disagree with you. But then you are a voice crying in the desert! I'm just listening to the Honegger with great enjoyment. thanks for mentioning it. I'm sad you can't do the same! :tiphat:


----------



## DavidA

Red Terror said:


> Job poorly done.


Interesting that you say this giving no explanation whatever.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> Interesting what you say - other people have the opposite view of what they heard! :lol:
> 
> For example: Gareth Morris, a longtime principal flutist of the Philharmonia, has left behind a vivid word portrait of Karajan conducting Ravel's Bolero:
> 'With the eyes closed and the hands barely chest high, Karajan gave us the beat with a single finger, and even that barely moved. . . . With each slight lift of the hands the tension became even greater. By the end of the piece, the hands were above his head. And *the power of that final climax was absolutely colossal.'*
> 
> It's interesting that all the reviews of the Honegger disagree with you. But then you are a voice crying in the desert! I'm just listening to the Honegger with great enjoyment. thanks for mentioning it. I'm sad you can't do the same! :tiphat:


Why do you quote other opinions as if that should make a difference in our own? It's ironic that my argument against Karajan is that he was more a product of a hype machine than anything else, and you actually bolster that argument yourself every time you defend him merely by alluding to his popularity. Why do you listen to classical music at all if popularity is what drives your tastes?


----------



## DavidA

I found this article to be pretty balanced in its assessment:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-trouble-with-karajan/


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Why do you quote other opinions as if that should make a difference in our own? It's ironic that my argument against Karajan is that he was more a product of a hype machine than anything else, and you actually bolster that argument yourself every time you defend him merely by alluding to his popularity. Why do you listen to classical music at all if popularity is what drives your tastes?


 Well when you listen to the musicians who played with him, they would tell you differently. Yes there was a hype machine around Karajan, but I also remember a hype machine around Solti and other conductors of the day. That was the way the record companies operated . You tend to present your arguments as though yours is the only opinion, which is I know a way many peopke debate, In quoting his record sales and other reviews I am just saying that many people disagree with you and that you are not the last word on this topic . I listen to classical music because I love it and because I had my own opinions even at school about it when all my friends liked pop music. there is one thing I look for in classical music and that is enjoyment. I am also very pleased I can enjoy performances from a wide variety of musicians and conductors because I believe it gives different points on the music


----------



## Guest

Heck148 said:


> I heard him live as well - Bruckner 9 IIRC...big rich, smooth, round, string heavy...but the orchestra throttle never went beyond c85%. Karajan never liked a hard, brilliant, edgy, biting sound....his sound, live, was kind of wimpy compared to Solti, Bernstein, Szell, Stokowski, even Ormandy [live] etc...
> 
> ...
> 
> yes, true, TMK....therein lies the problem - not all music is supposed to sound round, smooth and beautiful....sometimes its clean and snappy, brisk, or nasty, rough, harsh, even ugly, esp 20th century music... and HvK simply cannot connect with that concept...


Clearly I will never convince you, but for others dropping in on this discussion, this does not at all match my impression. In the concert I attended, Bruckner 8, there was no limit at "85%". The volume of sound and intensity was turned up to the proverbial "11" (as in spinal tap). At the at the end of the first movement one of the players from the first violin section ran off the stage because he had snapped a string and had to repair his violin. The stage door opened and he returned for the start of the third movement. Control of sonority does not mean a uniform "round" tone. It means a rich round sound when called for, and at other times a strident sound, and the amazing thing about Karajan was that he could create a soft beautiful sound with great power, or a strident pianissimo, and anything in between.

The concert was a unique experience. When the piece was done the audience instantly jumped to their feet in an enthusiastic standing ovation. As Karajan looked around the hall, turning his head from left to right, people would cheer more loudly when they realized he was looking towards them. It was as though his gaze was a searchlight that was animating the audience. From beginning to end, the most extraordinary musical experience I ever had.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> You tend to present your arguments as though yours is the only opinion, which is I know a way many peopke debate, In quoting his record sales and other reviews I am just saying that many people disagree with you and that you are not the last word on this topic.


Huh? When and where do I ever imply that mine is the only opinion??? I even stated flatly earlier that mine was a minority opinion!



DavidA said:


> I am also very pleased I can enjoy performances from a wide variety of musicians and conductors because I believe it gives different points on the music


Again, you stated earlier in this thread that you never understood the appeal of Furtwangler's Bayreuth Beethoven 9th, which is arguably the most acclaimed recording of the work. I am just curious how you came to that opinion. Would you be willing to share your impressions?


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Huh? When and where do I ever imply that mine is the only opinion??? I even stated flatly earlier that mine was a minority opinion!
> 
> Again, you stated earlier in this thread that you never understood the appeal of Furtwangler's Bayreuth Beethoven 9th, which is arguably the most acclaimed recording of the work. I am just curious how you came to that opinion. Would you be willing to share your impressions?


Perhaps just the way you write gives that impression. Like when someone who disagrees with you is accused of 'conspiracy theories'!

I must confess I do find Furtwangler's Bayreuth account disappointing. It is said he himself was disappointed with it as was Legge. Just one review: 'As to the performance itself, this is still one of the poorest accounts of the first movement ever recorded. It's desperately slow-slower even than Klemperer, and far slacker. Opening with shaky ensemble, and painfully flabby in the second subject and much of the development section, it's a disgrace to the memory of a fine musician.' So universal acclaim? 
I have another version of the night by Furtwangler with the VPO which is in every way superior to the Bayreuth account. Furtwangler was a variable conductor and to me the Bayreuth performance doesn't show him and his best


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> Perhaps just the way you write gives that impression. Like when someone who disagrees with you is accused of 'conspiracy theories'!


I was going off your own words where you invented reasons why people are against Karajan when it could be they just think he is an overrated conductor.

I like all Furtwangler's 9ths. I find the Bayreuth beautiful and spiritually uplifting. It was actually the first recording to turn me on to Furtwangler 20 years ago, and I have been a fan ever since. But then again I enjoy many conductors. I think variety is the spice of life.


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I was going off your own words where you invented reasons why people are against Karajan when it could be they just think he is an *overrated conductor.
> *
> I like all Furtwangler's 9ths. I find the Bayreuth beautiful and spiritually uplifting. It was actually the first recording to turn me on to Furtwangler 20 years ago, and I have been a fan ever since. But then again I enjoy many conductors. I think variety is the spice of life.


If you think Karajan is overrated that's fine. You are entitled to your opinion. I think the same about the Bayreuth Beethoven 9th. A pretty dreary affair.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I think the same about the Bayreuth Beethoven 9th. A pretty dreary affair.


And you have quotes to prove it. :lol:


----------



## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> So am I. Try to talk about Karajan's musical qualities and you're lucky if anyone notices you. Say "Nazi" and everyone comes to the party (pun intended).


Fair enough ... but isn't there some similarity between our wanting to keep our music discussions pure and untainted by politics and what Karajan and Furtwangler may have done? How do you separate the political from the musical? Conductors in Nazi Germany saw their orchestras purged and, even those who were so pure and unworldly as to not know what was happening in the country, needed to reach an accommodation with that in order to retain their positions. It is an interesting phenomenon. It is about both music and musicians.

For what it is worth I think the parallel case of Stalinist Russia was a little different to the German situation in that the Russian situation developed slowly - an almost feudal situation descended into an anarchy that was slowly and violently resolved in favour of a revolution that may at first seemed to offer relief. Many felt patriotic and that was enough for them. Stalin came later and showed his nature more slowly. It was like the frog which doesn't jump our of slowly heated water.


----------



## Enthusiast

I shouldn't be but am surprised by knowledgeable and experienced collectors being so down on Karajan's music making. I had always seen dislike of Karajan as a sort of "teenage" dislike of what he stood for as well as a reaction against his (many) bad records and perhaps a sort of team supporting mentality (Karajan vs. x or y). What gets me, though, is that there are so many stunningly good Karajan recordings (to say nothing of memories of live performances) that experienced collectors must have come across. it is hard to imagine that a blind hearing of one of them would fail to recognise their greatness.


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> And you have quotes to prove it. :lol:


Not to prove it. But to prove not everyone shares your view


----------



## DavidA

Enthusiast said:


> I shouldn't be but am surprised by knowledgeable and experienced collectors being so down on Karajan's music making. I had always seen dislike of Karajan as a sort of "teenage" dislike of what he stood for as well as a reaction against his (many) bad records and perhaps a sort of team supporting mentality (Karajan vs. x or y). What gets me, though, is that there are so many stunningly good Karajan recordings (to say nothing of memories of live performances) that experienced collectors must have come across. it is hard to imagine that *a blind hearing of one of them* would fail to recognise their greatness.


One amusing case was a 'blind' listening to Bach's Brandenburgs by musicologists on Radio 3 many years ago when historically informed styles were just developing. The 'experts' picked Karajan as the best - much to their embarrassment when they found out who it was! :lol:


----------



## Heck148

DavidA said:


> Interesting what you say - other people have the opposite view of what they heard! :lol:
> 
> For example: Gareth Morris, a longtime principal flutist of the Philharmonia, has left behind a vivid word portrait of Karajan conducting Ravel's Bolero:
> 'With the eyes closed and the hands barely chest high, Karajan gave us the beat with a single finger, and even that barely moved. . . . With each slight lift of the hands the tension became even greater. By the end of the piece, the hands were above his head. And *the power of that final climax was absolutely colossal.'*
> 
> It's interesting that all the reviews of the Honegger disagree with you. But then you are a voice crying in the desert! I'm just listening to the Honegger with great enjoyment. thanks for mentioning it. I'm sad you can't do the same! :tiphat:


it is pretty well accepted amongst musicians that eschewing eye contact with musicians is to neglect a major channel of communication between conductor and orchestra...re the grand climax, remember that vK's climax was only about 85% of that delivered. by Solti, Bernstein, Reiner, Stokowski, etc....those who like his Honegger have likely not heard better versions....it is not smooth, round, glossy music....neither is Shostakovich....


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> it is pretty well accepted amongst musicians that eschewing eye contact with musicians is to neglect a major channel of communication between conductor and orchestra...re the grand climax, remember that vK's climax was only about 85% of that delivered. by Solti, Bernstein, Reiner, Stokowski, etc....those who like his Honegger have likely not heard better versions....it is not smooth, round, glossy music....neither is Shostakovich....


That's why musicians are fascinated as to how Karajan got the results he did with no eye contact. Funny, you keep banging on about this 85% but that's not what other people hear, including the musicians who played with him. But you apparently know better than they did. . And his Honegger often comes out top in comparative reviews. You are no doubt another voice crying in the wilderness against the evils of Karajan.


----------



## Heck148

DavidA said:


> That's why musicians are fascinated as to how Karajan got the results he did with no eye contact. Funny, you keep banging on about this 85% but that's not what other people hear, including the musicians who played with him. But you apparently know better than they did. . And his Honegger often comes out top in comparative reviews. You are no doubt another voice crying in the wilderness against the evils of Karajan.


the closed eye technique is generally considered a technical flaw by many orchestra musicians.. it is also regarded as rather insulting, and self-aggrandizing...I've no idea who you talk to, but don't presume to tell me about orchestra musicians, I've been in the profession for 50 years... re the suppressed dynamics and limited tone.....HvK was known as a "Napalm" conductor [as in nay-palm, aka as hand in the face to suppress volume]....I could not give a crap whether people "like" his Honegger or Shostakovich...the concept is wrong, so is the sound...music interpretation is not a popularity contest....I go by what I hear, I couldn't care less what some critic, or your so-called 'other people" think..


----------



## Heck148

Baron Scarpia said:


> Clearly I will never convince you, but for others dropping in on this discussion, this does not at all match my impression. In the concert I attended, Bruckner 8, there was no limit at "85%". The volume of sound and intensity was turned up to the proverbial "11" (as in spinal tap). At the at the end of the first movement one of the players from the first violin section ran off the stage because he had snapped a string and had to repair his violin. The stage door opened and he returned for the start of the third movement. Control of sonority does not mean a uniform "round" tone. It means a rich round sound when called for, and at other times a strident sound, and the amazing thing about Karajan was that he could create a soft beautiful sound with great power, or a strident pianissimo, and anything in between.
> 
> The concert was a unique experience. When the piece was done the audience instantly jumped to their feet in an enthusiastic standing ovation. As Karajan looked around the hall, turning his head from left to right, people would cheer more loudly when they realized he was looking towards them. It was as though his gaze was a searchlight that was animating the audience. From beginning to end, the most extraordinary musical experience I ever had.


my live experience with HvK was good. not great....the sound was full, round, balanced, but lacked the color and full dynamic range produced by other orchestras...the 85% effect was definitely evident....just did not have the tonal and dynamic range of PholaOrch, NYPO, Cleveland, LSO, ASO..next to Solti/CSO, it was more like 70 or 75%!! 5he precision was admirable, and the balance within sections....just needed more "oomph", more brilliance..


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## eugeneonagain

They had to play 'strident pianissimo' for Karajan near the end so as not to wake him as he slept at the podium. The magic of Karajan, asleep while waving his arms.


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> the closed eye technique is generally considered a technical flaw by many orchestra musicians.. it is also regarded as rather insulting, and self-aggrandizing...I've no idea who you talk to, but don't presume to tell me about orchestra musicians, I've been in the profession for 50 years... re the suppressed dynamics and limited tone.....HvK was known as a "Napalm" conductor [as in nay-palm, aka as hand in the face to suppress volume]....I could not give a crap whether people "like" his Honegger or Shostakovich...the concept is wrong, so is the sound...music interpretation is not a popularity contest....I go by what I hear, I couldn't care less what some critic, or your so-called 'other people" think..


I just wonder what orchestras you've been in. I assume not the Berlin Philharmonic! Funny that other musicians who have actually played under him don't say that/ They remark on the power of the performance


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I just wonder what orchestras you've been in. I assume not the Berlin Philharmonic! Funny that other musicians who have actually played under him don't say that/ They remark on the power of the performance


It would be nice to hear more about what YOU think of Karajan as opposed to quotes from others. Who cares what others think? The whole point of being on this forum is that we all have something to say ourselves about classical music. Isn't it?


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> It would be nice to hear more about what YOU think of Karajan as opposed to quotes from others. Who cares what others think? The whole point of being on this forum is that we all have something to say ourselves about classical music. Isn't it?


I think if you read what I say you will note I am not short of saying things. I like a whole range of conductors, Karajan included. It's just that when you make sweeping statements that I find the need to back up my own.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I think if you read what I say you will note I am not short of saying things. I like a whole range of conductors, Karajan included. It's just that when you make sweeping statements that I find the need to back up my own.


Well I can tell you that when I make sweeping statements and you respond by quoting others, it is very unconvincing for me. One can conjure up quotes to support anything. I'd rather hear what you have to say.


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## Heck148

those that played under vK were working under a very tight range of tone and expression, whether or not they realized it....as I said, when I heard BPO under Abbado, early 2000s, some members and sections of the orchestra were producing some sounds, and exhibiting an exuberance. that HvK would never have tolerated....
.
funny story about vK' eyes closed deal, related to me by a member of Royal Choral Society...karajan was conducting an English Orchestra, Philharmonia, I believe....with eyes closed, he gives a downbeat....no sound!! nothing from the orchestra!! startled, vK looks up, opens his eyes, looks around....all the orchestra musicians have their eyes closed, too!! lol!!


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Well I can tell you that when I make sweeping statements and you respond by quoting others, it is very unconvincing for me. One can conjure up quotes to support anything. I'd rather hear what you have to say.


I must confess your sweeping statements are not very convincing either


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> those that played under vK were working under a very tight range of tone and expression, whether or not they realized it....as I said, when I heard BPO under Abbado, early 2000s, some members and sections of the orchestra were producing some sounds, and exhibiting an exuberance. that HvK would never have tolerated....
> .
> funny story about vK' eyes closed deal, related to me by a member of Royal Choral Society...karajan was conducting an English Orchestra, Philharmonia, I believe....with eyes closed, he gives a downbeat....no sound!! nothing from the orchestra!! startled, vK looks up, opens his eyes, looks around....all the orchestra musicians have their eyes closed, too!! lol!!


Sounds an apocryphal tale. There are many. About Beecham too.


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## Heck148

the Chorus member who told me was there, he saw it.


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## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> the Chorus member who told me was there, he saw it.


Don't belueve everything you hear! í ½í¸„


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I must confess your sweeping statements are not very convincing either


I simply speak my truth. Whether others agree is up to them.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I simply speak my truth. Whether others agree is up to them.


No you give your opinion.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Heck148 said:


> the Chorus member who told me was there, he saw it.


With his eyes closed?


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> No you give your opinion.


My opinion is my truth


----------



## wkasimer

Heck148 said:


> no, it is not, the comparison is rather valid...with Wayne, it was always about Wayne portraying some character, not the character himself....
> I find that consistent with HvK - it's not about the music, it's about Karajan's view of the music...


Well, of course it's "Karajan's view of the music"! It's called "interpretation". If we didn't care about various musicians' views of the music they perform, our collections would be minuscule.

Let's face it - every great musician has a streak of narcissism. Some of them just manage to hide it better than others.


----------



## larold

I don't know if you are still viewing but, if so, I scrolled through some of these pages and found no reference to any of these recordings:

*Beethoven Symphonies 1963* -- Gramophone magazine once listed what it called its 5 greatest sets of Beethoven symphonies. This was among them. I would concur.

*Beethoven Overtures 1966 *-- I don't know another inclusive set equal to this in performance.

*Beethoven Fidelio 1970* w/Helga Dernesch and John Vickers -- I find this so much more heroic than the Klemperer.

*Dvorak Cello Concerto with Rostropovich* -- I listened to this for years. It is a "thick" performance with heady orchestral work supporting Rostropovich's gigantic tone. It was listed among the 100 greatest recordings of the 20th century in the Gramophone magazine reader poll.

*Mendelssohn Symphonies* -- I owned this box at one point and thought some too Germanic with pounding timpani or too brassy. However, it contains a delightful "Italian" symphony, light, airy and dancelike.

*R. Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 1976* -- this was recently reintroduced in a super audio recording that does not have equalization meaning there was no dial twisting during the recording. There is also a similar Japanese SACD of the 1959 London Zarathustra, the one played in 2001 A Space Odyssey. That one is playable anywhere. The 1976 needs a super audio player but it's worth it.

I also enjoyed Karajan's Strauss recordings of the *Alpine Symphony* (DG) and his *Domestic Symphony *(EMI) and, to lesser extent, *Ein Heldenleben *(EMI).

In a lot of other core German repertoire like Bruckner, Brahms and Schumann I found Karajan up and down, somewhat inconsistent in recordings. He always seemed better in "live" recordings on the Andante label where his habit for calculation gave way to more spontaneity.

It was similar with Baroque music. Sometimes I thought his Bach and Vivaldi gooey or old-fashioned and other times it seemed OK to me.

*Verdi Otello 1958* with Mario Del Monaco in the leading role -- the Vienna Philharmonic has never sounded bigger or better than in this recording. There was once a lot of chatter about Aldo Protti's Jago but that is in the main in the past. Del Monaco's reputation of singing to the rafters is intact here.

I tried Karajan several times with works of the Second Viennese School and thought them flabby, tubby and bland. I know a lot of people that thought they were incisive and wonderful, however.

I knew a lot of Karajan acolytes that owned everything he did and preferred him to anyone else. I also knew Karajan haters that derided him and called him the leading exponent of the school of industrial perfection. I never felt either way and could always see and hear the greatness in his musicmaking others found.

No one is for everyone but Karajan is, with Toscanini, Ormandy, Neville Marriner, James Galway and Bernstein, among the greatest-selling classical artists in history. There's a reason for that that goes far beyond personality or fame. I saw his music in almost every collection I ever saw.


----------



## Heck148

DavidA said:


> Don't belueve everything you hear! ������


I tend to believe this really happened, or something very similar....to be performing difficult, demanding music, with the conductor not even acknowledging your presence is pretty offensive...


----------



## Heck148

eugeneonagain said:


> With his eyes closed?


the orchestra had their eyes closed, not the chorus...it was the introduction


----------



## Heck148

wkasimer said:


> Well, of course it's "Karajan's view of the music"! It's called "interpretation". If we didn't care about various musicians' views of the music they perform, our collections would be minuscule.
> 
> Let's face it - every great musician has a streak of narcissism. Some of them just manage to hide it better than others.


of course, but most musicians don't try to apply a "one size fits all" approach to music-making


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

larold said:


> I don't know if you are still viewing but, if so, I scrolled through some of these pages and found no reference to any of these recordings:
> 
> Beethoven Symphonies 1963 -- Gramophone magazine once listed what it called its 5 greatest sets of Beethoven symphonies. This was among them. I would concur.
> 
> Beethoven Overtures 1966 -- I don't know another inclusive set equal to this in performance.
> 
> Beethoven Fidelio 1970 w/Helga Dernesch and John Vickers -- I find this so much more heroic than the Klemperer.
> 
> Dvorak Cello Concerto with Rostropovich -- I listened to this for years. It is a "thick" performance with heady orchestral work supporting Rostropovich's gigantic tone. It was listed among the 100 greatest recordings of the 20th century in the Gramophone magazine reader poll.
> 
> Mendelssohn Symphonies -- I owned this box at one point and thought many were too Germanic with pounding timpani and too brassy. However, it contains a delightful "Italian" symphony, light, airy and dancelike.
> 
> R. Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 1976 -- this was recently reintroduced in a super audio recording that does not have equalization meaning there was no dial twisting during the recording. There is also a similar Japanese SACD of the 1959 London Zarathustra, the one played in 2001 A Space Odyssey. That one is playable anywhere. The 1976 needs a super audio player but it's worth it.
> 
> I also enjoyed Karajan's Strauss recordings of the Alpine Symphony (DG) and his Domestic Symphony (EMI) and, to lesser extent, Ein Heldenleben (DG).
> 
> Verdi Otello 1958 with Mario Del Monaco in the leading role -- the Vienna Philharmonic has never sounded bigger or better than in this recording. There was once a lot of chatter about Aldo Protti's Jago but that is in the main in the past. Del Monaco's reputation of singing to the rafters is intact here.
> 
> I tried Karajan several times with works of the Second Viennese School and thought them flabby, tubby and bland. I know a lot of people that thought they were incisive and wonderful, however.
> 
> I knew a lot of Karajan acolytes that owned everything he did and preferred him to anyone else. I never felt that way but could always see and hear the greatness in his musicmaking others found.
> 
> In a lot of other core German repertoire like Bruckner, Brahms and Schumann, I found Karajan up and down, somewhat inconsistent in recordings.
> 
> No one is for everyone but Karajan is, with Toscanini, Ormandy, Neville Marriner, James Galway and Bernstein, among the greatest-selling classical artists in history. There's a reason for that that goes far beyond personality or fame. I saw his music in almost every collection I ever saw.


This is why I am careful to use the word "overrated" when describing Karajan. He was not a bad conductor. He just has an overblown reputation due to his marketing and exposure. I'd say he was about even with Bernstein. They both had their fair share of hits and misses. But neither was a master on the level of Furtwängler, Klemperer or Walter. Or Barbirolli for Mahler or Knappertsbusch for Wagner. I will say that Richard Strauss was a composer for whom Karajan was well-suited.


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> the orchestra had their eyes closed, not the chorus...it was the introduction


Peculiar because as far as I know, Karajan never conducted the Royal Choral Society. The Philharmonia had their own chorus


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Does anyone else find it ironic that a discussion over Karajan turns into a debate over the validity of individual, dissenting opinion vs following the masses? I would imagine there were many similar debates in 1930s Germany. Many were ridiculed for not falling in with the party line. It all relates, doesn’t it?


----------



## Heck148

DavidA said:


> Peculiar because as far as I know, Karajan never conducted the Royal Choral Society. The Philharmonia had their own chorus


I'm not sure it was Philharmonia....it was some English orchestra...I know vK conducted Philharmonia often...story stands, don't be silly.


----------



## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Does anyone else find it ironic that a discussion over Karajan turns into a debate over the validity of individual, dissenting opinion vs following the masses? I would imagine there were many similar debates in 1930s Germany. Many were ridiculed for not falling in with the party line. It all relates, doesn't it?


Exactly, and now we have "Gramophone" chiming in, as if it had any validity....


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Heck148 said:


> HvK certainly was not the first to cultivate the "GrandMaestro" image.....Nikisch, Stokowski, Toscanini were all there long before....


My point was not that Karajan was the only conductor to display vanity. My point was that it was intrinsic to his music-making. Nikisch, Stokowski, and Toscanini all had guiding musical principles apart from their personal vanity.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Heck148 said:


> Exactly, and now we have "Gramophone" chiming in, as if it had any validity....


I dare not think for myself on this thread, lest I become bombarded with propaganda, er, quotes from experts


----------



## eugeneonagain

Brahmsianhorn said:


> My point was not that Karajan was the only conductor to display vanity. My point was that it was intrinsic to his music-making. Nikisch, Stokowski, and Toscanini all had guiding musical principles apart from their personal vanity.


But you see Karajan doesn't just have his own vanity, he has a gaggle of sycophants all helping him along. He's not like other conductors in this respect. He's only one people seem to think was some kind of magician.


----------



## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> My point was not that Karajan was the only conductor to display vanity. My point was that it was intrinsic to his music-making. Nikisch, Stokowski, and Toscanini all had guiding musical principles apart from their personal vanity.


right. every conductor is an egotist, you have to be as a requirement of the profession, but you are correct. others had their own musical concepts, not entwined with their personality...I think the John Wayne equation is quite applicable to HvK.


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> right. every conductor is an egotist, you have to be as a requirement of the profession, but you are correct. others had their own musical concepts, not entwined with their personality...*I think the John Wayne equation is quite applicable to HvK*.


Frankly that is ludicrous. Just read a bit of biography.


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> My point was not that Karajan was the only conductor to display vanity. My point was that it was intrinsic to his music-making. Nikisch, Stokowski, and Toscanini all had guiding musical principles apart from their personal vanity.


Oh dear! You do appear to be digging an intellectual grave for yourself with these arguments imo. In fact they are so removed from reality and history that it is pointless discussing anything with you. Have your opinion, friend, but this is pointless.


----------



## DavidA

Heck148 said:


> Exactly, and now we have "Gramophone" chiming in, as if it had any validity....


Well you chime in! :lol:


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> Oh dear! You do appear to be digging an intellectual grave for yourself with these arguments imo. In fact they are so removed from reality and history that it is pointless discussing anything with you. Have your opinion, friend, but this is pointless.


This response contains literally zero substance. It's a bit like listening to a Karajan recording.


----------



## MatthewWeflen

larold said:


> I don't know if you are still viewing but, if so, I scrolled through some of these pages and found no reference to any of these recordings:
> 
> *Beethoven Symphonies 1963* -- Gramophone magazine once listed what it called its 5 greatest sets of Beethoven symphonies. This was among them. I would concur.
> 
> *Beethoven Overtures 1966 *-- I don't know another inclusive set equal to this in performance.
> 
> *Beethoven Fidelio 1970* w/Helga Dernesch and John Vickers -- I find this so much more heroic than the Klemperer.
> 
> *Dvorak Cello Concerto with Rostropovich* -- I listened to this for years. It is a "thick" performance with heady orchestral work supporting Rostropovich's gigantic tone. It was listed among the 100 greatest recordings of the 20th century in the Gramophone magazine reader poll.
> 
> *Mendelssohn Symphonies* -- I owned this box at one point and thought some too Germanic with pounding timpani or too brassy. However, it contains a delightful "Italian" symphony, light, airy and dancelike.
> 
> *R. Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 1976* -- this was recently reintroduced in a super audio recording that does not have equalization meaning there was no dial twisting during the recording. There is also a similar Japanese SACD of the 1959 London Zarathustra, the one played in 2001 A Space Odyssey. That one is playable anywhere. The 1976 needs a super audio player but it's worth it.
> 
> I also enjoyed Karajan's Strauss recordings of the *Alpine Symphony* (DG) and his *Domestic Symphony *(EMI) and, to lesser extent, *Ein Heldenleben *(EMI).
> 
> In a lot of other core German repertoire like Bruckner, Brahms and Schumann I found Karajan up and down, somewhat inconsistent in recordings. He always seemed better in "live" recordings on the Andante label where his habit for calculation gave way to more spontaneity.
> 
> It was similar with Baroque music. Sometimes I thought his Bach and Vivaldi gooey or old-fashioned and other times it seemed OK to me.
> 
> *Verdi Otello 1958* with Mario Del Monaco in the leading role -- the Vienna Philharmonic has never sounded bigger or better than in this recording. There was once a lot of chatter about Aldo Protti's Jago but that is in the main in the past. Del Monaco's reputation of singing to the rafters is intact here.
> 
> I tried Karajan several times with works of the Second Viennese School and thought them flabby, tubby and bland. I know a lot of people that thought they were incisive and wonderful, however.
> 
> I knew a lot of Karajan acolytes that owned everything he did and preferred him to anyone else. I also knew Karajan haters that derided him and called him the leading exponent of the school of industrial perfection. I never felt either way and could always see and hear the greatness in his musicmaking others found.
> 
> No one is for everyone but Karajan is, with Toscanini, Ormandy, Neville Marriner, James Galway and Bernstein, among the greatest-selling classical artists in history. There's a reason for that that goes far beyond personality or fame. I saw his music in almost every collection I ever saw.


This looks suspiciously like the list I wrote so many pages of vitriol ago...

Coriolan and Consecration of the House were particularly well done on the Overtures platter...


----------



## KenOC

In my view, the “legendary conductors” of HvK’s time were simply those who held major recording contracts, and whose records we bought when building our collections. This means that they led major orchestra, positions they would hardly have achieved unless they were pretty darned good at their jobs.

Naturally their styles and approaches varied to some extent. It’s fine to like some more than others; but I can’t see that as grounds for savaging any of these fine musicians. Nor are their ostentatious autos and planes, or their politics, or their proclivity to leap about wildly at the podium relevant in any way to the quality of their music.


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## Heck148

sure, 'cause I know what I'm hearing!!


----------



## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> My point was not that Karajan was the only conductor to display vanity. My point was that it was intrinsic to his music-making. Nikisch, Stokowski, and Toscanini all had guiding musical principles apart from their personal vanity.


Karajan had guiding musical principles, too. It's just that you don't care for them.


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## Zhdanov

the point about Karajan is that he seems trying to remove Romanticism from the music and replace it with Classicism for some reason only he and those behind him could have explained...


----------



## Enthusiast

eugeneonagain said:


> But you see Karajan doesn't just have his own vanity, he has a gaggle of sycophants all helping him along. He's not like other conductors in this respect. He's only one people seem to think was some kind of magician.


A gaggle of sycophants and a gaggle of nay-sayers for whom he did nothing well. He was, I think, a great conductor who made quite a number of great recordings. He also made an even bigger number of not-so-great recordings and worse. He was not the only great conductor of his times but he was one. There are a lot of stories about his habits and behaviour but most of these are told with a smile and a laugh. I don't really get the need some people have to rubbish everything he did or to worship him as a god. I this as someone who avoided everything he did .... but then I started listening to a few of the older recordings and then it spread. I think of becoming open to his work (liking some and disliking others) as a sort of growing up!


----------



## DavidA

Enthusiast said:


> A gaggle of sycophants and a gaggle of nay-sayers for whom he did nothing well. He was, I think, a great conductor who made quite a number of great recordings. He also made an even bigger number of not-so-great recordings and worse. He was not the only great conductor of his times but he was one. There are a lot of stories about his habits and behaviour but most of these are told with a smile and a laugh. I don't really get the need some people have to rubbish everything he did or to worship him as a god. I this as someone who avoided everything he did .... but then I started listening to a few of the older recordings and then it spread. I think of becoming open to his work (liking some and disliking others) *as a sort of growing up!*


Yes I think I agree with this except for the fact that I think his good (not great) recordings outstripped his not-so-good. Like any conductor he was better at some things than others. He also made some really great recordings.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Enthusiast said:


> A gaggle of sycophants and a gaggle of nay-sayers for whom he did nothing well. He was, I think, a great conductor who made quite a number of great recordings. He also made an even bigger number of not-so-great recordings and worse. He was not the only great conductor of his times but he was one. There are a lot of stories about his habits and behaviour but most of these are told with a smile and a laugh. I don't really get the need some people have to rubbish everything he did or to worship him as a god. I this as someone who avoided everything he did .... but then I started listening to a few of the older recordings and then it spread. I think of becoming open to his work (liking some and disliking others) as a sort of growing up!


I own Karajan recordings, quite a few. He was one conductor among many great or well-known conductors. I'm merely irked by the people who speak about him as some kind of demi-god. Pointing out Karajan's flaws is the only way to shake them awake from their ridiculous daydream.


----------



## MatthewWeflen

Zhdanov said:


> the point about Karajan is that he seems trying to remove Romanticism from the music and replace it with Classicism for some reason only he and those behind him could have explained...


Yeah, I'm not seeing this at all. If anything, it's the reverse - he tends to Romanticize Baroque and Classical pieces (not that there's anything wrong with that...).


----------



## DavidA

eugeneonagain said:


> I own Karajan recordings, quite a few. He was one conductor among many great or well-known conductors. *I'm merely irked by the people who speak about him as some kind of demi-god.* Pointing out Karajan's flaws is the only way to shake them awake from their ridiculous daydream.


I don't think you'll find too many outside Vienna. He was a great conductor but as a man only too human. Unfortunately when he got very powerful he became knee deep in doormats. A pity he didn't have Legge or Culshaw with him. But still made some great recordings even then.


----------



## Zhdanov

DavidA said:


> Another of your statements which appears to have no foundation in reality!


are you sure?.. here you go -


----------



## DavidA

Zhdanov said:


> are you sure?.. here you go -


Everything Karajan says to the orchestra points to a romantic interpretation.


----------



## Woodduck

Zhdanov said:


> are you sure?.. here you go -


What is it that you think this shows? Beyond the fact that Karajan knew what he wanted, knew why, and knew how to get it?


----------



## Zhdanov

DavidA said:


> Everything Karajan says to the orchestra points to a romantic interpretation.


nope, precisely the opposite, he drives it to a classical interpretation.



Woodduck said:


> Karajan knew what he wanted, knew why, and knew how to get it?


i did not say he knew not what he wants, on contrary he did it all on purpose, but as to 'why' - i don't believe the reasons he gives the orchestra.


----------



## Woodduck

Zhdanov said:


> nope, precisely the opposite, he drives it to a classical interpretation.
> 
> i did not say he knew not what he wants, on contrary he did it all on purpose, but as to 'why' - i don't believe the reasons he gives the orchestra.


Speaking as a practicing musician, and a rather experienced (i.e. elderly) one, I find nothing in what Karajan is asking of the orchestra in this rehearsal session to fit any possible definition of "Romantic" or "Classical." His instructions all make perfect sense in terms of the music's clear content. Precision of intent and result is what impresses here, and that is neither Classical nor Romantic. If you believe that this is "Classical" or "un-Romantic," you'll need to explain in what way.


----------



## Zhdanov

Woodduck said:


> Precision of intent and result is what impresses here, and that is neither Classical nor Romantic.


that he pulls up the orchestra at the very start and files away the attack off the introducing forte is of course neither classical or romantic move; the orchestra had played it correctly, so he appears to intentionally kill the forte... it is what he does on the violins that sounds asexual and rather tame, unlike it should have if you want to convey the spirit of the piece.


----------



## Larkenfield

Simon Rattle on Herbert von Karajan:






What an awkward interview because I don't think he's speaking freely at all about one of his predecessors to the orchestra. But I do not go along with the hatchet job that's being done on HvK on the forum.

He was first a prodigy on piano and then as a conductor. As unfortunate as it ultimately was to be in Nazi Germany, he was only 24 years when Hitler came to power, unlike Furtwangler who was already established as a world-class conductor, and he may have made some bad decisions because of his youth. Even somebody like pianist Cortot was fooled by him. Nevertheless, he may have been sympathetic with the German leadership, but he was never accused of war crimes and he was able to resume his conducting career about two years after the war. He received numerous honors over the years including in England and France, the enemies of Germany during the war. So evidently even they forgave him because of all the fine performances he gave over the years.

I like some of his Sibelius very much and I've heard some excellent live Brahms recordings. His worse sin to me? Conducting with his eyes closed that could easily be interpreted as trying to impress the audience, as if conducting was a magical feat where he knew every score by heart and exactly where everybody sat in the orchestra to cue them. For all he knew, though, somebody in the violin section could have been having a baby and he wouldn't know it or the Timpani player a heart attack, and he opened himself up to a great deal of criticism for what looked like a very pretentious way of conducting. And just think: the orchestra might have sounded even better if he'd looked at them, because by not looking at them he created a gap, a distancing between them the size of the Grand Canyon, as far as I'm concerned. It looks like there may gave been a connection, but it's hard to know whether it was real or not or just something he was compelled to do out of a strange kind of insecurity to impress himself or others.

He conducted the top orchestras in the world with some of the greatest artists in the world, and he was also a mentor to young musicians. I don't think he deserves a wholesale condemnation. I also give him credit for later playing Mahler and Mendelssohn when they had been banned in Nazi Germany. I think that shows some kind of personal growth and evolution. While I don't care for his fifth and sixth Mahler symphonies, I'd rather hear his ninth than Barbirolli's that I find far too bleak and depressing.


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## Woodduck

Zhdanov said:


> that he pulls up the orchestra at the very start and files away the attack off the introducing forte is of course neither classical or romantic move; the orchestra had played it correctly, so he appears to intentionally kill the forte... it is what he does on the violins that sounds asexual and rather tame, unlike it should have if you want to convey the spirit of the piece.


I see. Well, whether the violins at a particular point are too restrained has to be judged in context. This is the very beginning of the piece, where holding back a bit may aid the accumulation of force over the course of the movement and make the climactic moments stronger. "Romantic" music-making doesn't mean playing everything for maximum expressiveness, even in Mahler. As for that opening chord, Karajan is looking for a particular kind of accent, not a sharp-edged one but one that suggests heaviness, and so he asks for a slight blurring of the attack. This is actually a Romantic device we can hear in the conducting of other German conductors such as Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch.


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## Zhdanov

Woodduck said:


> "Romantic" music-making doesn't mean playing everything for maximum expressiveness, even in Mahler. As for that opening chord, Karajan is looking for a particular kind of accent, not a sharp-edged one but one that suggests heaviness, and so he asks for a slight blurring of the attack. This is actually a Romantic device we can hear in the conducting of other German conductors such as Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch.


yes, Knappertsbusch does exactly the same on those two power chords in the beginning of the 1st part of Shumann 4th, however the rest of the piece he conducts in a completely different way and its quite expressive imo. Karajan meanwhile, later on further into the movie, instructs the violins give it the longest bow they can and hold on a note as long as possible right up to a next one, that has produced this kind of thin sound we may hear through out most of his works.


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## Woodduck

Zhdanov said:


> yes, Knappertsbusch does exactly the same on those two power chords in the beginning of the 1st part of Shumann 4th, however the rest of the piece he conducts in a completely different way and its quite expressive imo. Karajan meanwhile, later on further into the movie, instructs the violins give it the longest bow they can and hold on a note as long as possible right up to a next one, that has produced this kind of thin sound we may hear through out most of his works.


It's his "hyperlegato" approach, eliminating the "breaths" between phrases, which I don't like. It underarticulates music, makes it a kind of supercontrolled surfboard ride. I wouldn't call it "Classical" though. I don't think there is a name for it.


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## Zhdanov

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't call it "Classical" though. I don't think there is a name for it.


might that be 'Apollonian' (as opposed to Dionysian) by some means?


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## Woodduck

Zhdanov said:


> might that be 'Apollonian' (as opposed to Dionysian) by some means?


That seems to fit well.


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## sethmadsen

Well, if you can find a better Beethoven's 9th recording, I'm all ears.






I have issue with sometimes how slow he directs the orchestra on certain pieces I find much more invigorating by other directors. I will say when I sample different recordings probably 1 out of 3... I find Karajan the best interpretation. One that I find just as good as Bernstein is Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 35-41.


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## MatthewWeflen

Here is some help with enjoying Karajan:


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## Brahmsianhorn

Wow, that Rattle interview was quite revealing. “Lack of humanity” was the phrase I first applied to Karajan back in the 90s. Even his impressive Mahler 9th is icy compared to a Barbirolli or Walter.

And Rattle echoes what several of us have said, that Karajan fit all the composers into his sound and style.

Karajan was to sound what Toscanini was to rhythmic accuracy. Everything else became secondary. Music is more than that.


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## DavidA

Larkenfield said:


> Simon Rattle on Herbert von Karajan:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What an awkward interview because I don't think he's speaking freely at all about one of his predecessors to the orchestra. But I do not go along with the hatchet job that's being done on HvK on the forum.
> 
> He was first a prodigy on piano and then as a conductor. As unfortunate as it ultimately was to be in Nazi Germany, he was only 24 years when Hitler came to power, unlike Furtwangler who was already established as a world-class conductor, and he may have made some bad decisions because of his youth. Even somebody like pianist Cortot was fooled by him. Nevertheless, he may have been sympathetic with the German leadership, but he was never accused of war crimes and he was able to resume his conducting career about two years after the war. He received numerous honors over the years including in England and France, the enemies of Germany during the war. So evidently even they forgave him because of all the fine performances he gave over the years.
> 
> I like some of his Sibelius very much and I've heard some excellent live Brahms recordings. His worse sin to me? *Conducting with his eyes closed that could easily be interpreted as trying to impress the audience, as if conducting was a magical feat where he knew every score by heart and exactly where everybody sat in the orchestra to cue them. For all he knew, though, somebody in the violin section could have been having a baby and he wouldn't know it or the Timpani player a heart attack, and he opened himself up to a great deal of criticism for what looked like a very pretentious way of conducting.* And just think: the orchestra might have sounded even better if he'd looked at them, because by not looking at them he created a gap, a distancing between them the size of the Grand Canyon, as far as I'm concerned. It looks like there may gave been a connection, but it's hard to know whether it was real or not or just something he was compelled to do out of a strange kind of insecurity to impress himself or others.
> 
> He conducted the top orchestras in the world with some of the greatest artists in the world, and he was also a mentor to young musicians. I don't think he deserves a wholesale condemnation. I also give him credit for later playing Mahler and Mendelssohn when they had been banned in Nazi Germany. I think that shows some kind of personal growth and evolution. While I don't care for his fifth and sixth Mahler symphonies, I'd rather hear his ninth than Barbirolli's that I find far too bleak and depressing.


He liked to conduct eith his eyes closed so he could see the music. It must be added that he only did this with professional orchestras like the BPO who certainly don't need someone to constantly help them beat time. Interesting to hear his musicians say that if one of them got out of step he would immediately open his eyes and beat them back into step. His method was to get the players to listen to each other. Of course, he was a very vain man and conscious of his image, but that was not why he closed his eyes.
Interesting to note that Rattle has had the same sort of criticism hurled at him in charge of the BPO. Tall poppy syndrome again!


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## larold

_In my view, the "legendary conductors" of HvK's time were simply those who held major recording contracts, and whose records we bought when building our collections. This means that they led major orchestra, positions they would hardly have achieved unless they were pretty darned good at their jobs._

There were notable exceptions -- Leopold Stokowski, who lived and recorded until 1977, did not hold a major orchestral post in the stereo era. Rudolf Kempe was another, Jascha Horenstein still another. I would agree all became known through recordings, like Karajan and others, but none of these transcendent conductors held posts in either the big five American or European orchestras in the stereo era.


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## DavidA

The sync is a bit out on this documentary but it gives a fairly balanced picture.

One downright untruth at the end when his wife claims he died in her arms. Not true. He died when he was talking to a Sony executive about a video recording contract. His wife was out at the time. I just don't know why she said that. Wishful thinking?


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## Merl

There's a lot more to many famous conductors than we see. I find the most renowned conductors fascinating, from Toscanini to Celi, Reiner to Furtwangler, Bernstein to Karajan..... Complicated characters with often even more complicated back-stories. I find Furtwangler's story especially fascinating. Living through the Nazi regime, and in Germany, must have been a nightmare not only for those deemed as enemies of the state by the party or individual nazis. We have hindsight. They just had to live on their wits (or escape).


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## DavidA

Merl said:


> There's a lot more to many famous conductors than we see. I find the most renowned conductors fascinating, from Toscanini to Celi, Reiner to Furtwangler, Bernstein to Karajan..... Complicated characters with often even more complicated back-stories. I find Furtwangler's story especially fascinating. Living through the Nazi regime, and in Germany, must have been a nightmare not only for those deemed as enemies of the state by the party or individual nazis. We have hindsight. They just had to live on their wits (or escape).


 I think it's also the nature of the regime. No one was safe. Certainly under Stalin even his nearest party members felt unsafe and it was probably true of Hitler as well . Certainly Furtwangler and Karajan were (willingly or unwillingly) used as political pawns by factions in the Nazi party before Karajan fell out of favour because Hitler did not like his Wagner conducting. And of course he married a wife with Jewish ancestry which did not go down well . He certainly was trying to leave the party before the war ended. He certainly was trying to leave the party before the war ended.


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## NLAdriaan

In all there is no need to get to like Karajan. He has dominated the classical recording industry for decades and there are merely a few of his recordings that are really standing out. He recorded works many times over and in most cases it didn't improve artistically, only in technical recording quality.

I guess it is good that he didn't live in our current age, as he would sure have created tsunami's on social media He was posh and a socialite before the words even existed.

As mentioned before, I guess that Brahms and Beethoven 60's cycle are really worthwile as is my personal exception: Mahler 9, live 1982. This Mahler is one of my all time favourite recordings, by any conductor. 

Funny detail: the Berliner Philharmoniker plays incredibly loud, even under Simon Rattle, it could be a heritage from Karajan. last year I went to a concert and afterwards I had this beep in my ears, as if it was a rock concert.


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## SONNET CLV

*Please help me to enjoy Karajan *.

No.

It's a waste of time.


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## MatthewWeflen

I am a Karajan fan. I enjoy his approach. I understand (though I do not share) the criticism, that there is an over-emphasis on legato and "surface beauty." But for my part, I enjoy the feeling of an orchestra at full throttle, blowing my hair back like in the Maxell tape ads from the 80s.

With that said, there are piano passages galore at which he excels, too.

What I don't get is the knee-jerk "Karajan can do no right" opinion. I mean, the guy sold 200 million albums over his career. I'm willing to discount 50 million of those as "people bought it because there was no other alternative, or it was their first purchase." But the other 150 million? Somebody must have thought he was doing something right. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be that people felt he offered brisk, plush, powerful readings of things with excellent sound quality.

Is that always the "right" approach? Is there a right approach? Who knows. 

So what I would say to the hypothetical person who doesn't "get" Karajan but isn't a knee-jerk hater would be to try those recordings that are acknowledged to be a good fit between style of conducting and composition - namely Richard Strauss, and the symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mendelssohn. Go in knowing that you're getting a certain style, and appreciate it for what it is. Then listen to Gardiner or Hogwood or something if you want to hear a different take.

Both approaches are valid. All exhibit technical excellence in playing.


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## Brahmsianhorn

We all look for different things. There was a time when I was younger when I prioritized sound quality and having my hair blown back. Then my priorities changed. A big moment was discovering Furtwangler's Bayreuth Beethoven 9th. I could hear the spiritual qualities that were largely absent - for me - in Karajan, which emphasized more the sensual elements. Again, a matter of taste and priority.

Karajan's sound was impressive. Toscanini's rhythmic precision was impressive. Reiner's clarity was impressive. Klemperer's absolute commitment to a singular vision was impressive. Furtwangler's ability to interpret the score was impressive. Bernstein's passion was impressive. Carlos Kleiber's kinetic energy was impressive.

They all had their qualities. It is a matter of what you are looking for.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Speaking of all these conductors, has there ever been a cooler photo? From 1929 - Walter, Toscanini, E. Kleiber, Klemperer, and Furtwangler


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## Heck148

NLAdriaan said:


> Funny detail: the Berliner Philharmoniker plays incredibly loud, even under Simon Rattle, it could be a heritage from Karajan. last year I went to a concert and afterwards I had this beep in my ears, as if it was a rock concert.


Years ago, I heard them live, with HvK, Bruckner 9th, IIRC....it wasn't that loud - full, round, smooth, but the brass, woodwinds never cut loose the way you might hear from Chicago, NYPO, Cleveland, LondonSO, the Russians, etc...vK just did not want that hard-edged, brassy, "at the edge" sound...[I've always suspected that the recordings featured "control room crescendi", tho I have no proof of that]

I heard the BPO again, years later, with Abbado, for Mahler #9 in Boston Symphony Hall - very fine performance, but the orchestra was not that loud....woodwinds were small-sounding [excellent ensemble and balance, of course]; and the trumpets were really weak, a major problem - those rotary trumpets simply could not scream out those "high Cs" in the first mvt......
in the final measures of the Finale, the BPO strings were quite magnificent - so soft, sans vibrato, perfectly in tune, so-so-soft - great section playing...some idiot started clapping too soon, but it didn't matter...it was very special...

not long after, I heard BSO with Levine, again Mahler #9 - the BSO played much louder, overall -not necessarily a favorable thing, it could have used a bit more dynamic contrast - funny thing, they had a substitute principal trumpet,and he had real trouble with the part as well...overall, I thought Abbado had a more effective approach to the work - more dynamic contrast, excellent dramatic flow, very cohesive...


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## DavidA

NLAdriaan said:


> In all there is no need to get to like Karajan. He has dominated the classical recording industry for decades and there are merely a few of his recordings that are really standing out. He recorded works many times over and in most cases it didn't improve artistically, only in technical recording quality.
> 
> I guess it is good that he didn't live in our current age, as he would sure have created tsunami's on social media He was posh and a socialite before the words even existed.
> 
> As mentioned before, I guess that Brahms and Beethoven 60's cycle are really worthwile as is my personal exception: Mahler 9, live 1982. This Mahler is one of my all time favourite recordings, by any conductor.
> 
> *Funny detail: the Berliner Philharmoniker plays incredibly loud, even under Simon Rattle, it could be a heritage from Karajan.* last year I went to a concert and afterwards I had this beep in my ears, as if it was a rock concert.


Careful! We have someone who swears they only played at 85% :lol:


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## Larkenfield

NLAdriaan said:


> ...
> Funny detail: the Berliner Philharmoniker plays incredibly loud, even under Simon Rattle, it could be a heritage from Karajan. last year I went to a concert and afterwards I had this beep in my ears, as if it was a rock concert.


 Bingo. I noticed that too with some of HvK's recordings, such as the obscenely loud passages in his performances of the Mahler fifth and sixth-in fact, my head's still ringing like a church bell. That's one of the things-well, I probably shouldn't say that I _hated_ it-but what the hey, I did. I thought to myself, "Oh, how revealing. This guy loves naked _power_'" I also thought, "How Germanic-the love of power and all the trouble it had gotten Germany into historically," and I could hear that same quality in his music that I didn't care for it at all-I thought it was a huge turn-off because it was _misapplied_ where it didn't belong. But I never felt that with Furtwangler or Addado. But did HvK always do this in the recordings I've heard, such as his Sibelius? No.


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## DavidA

Larkenfield said:


> Bingo. I noticed that too with some of HvK's recordings, such as the obscenely loud passages in his performances of the Mahler fifth and sixth. That's one of the things-well, I probably shouldn't say that I _hated_ it-but what the hey, I did. I thought to myself, "Oh, how revealing. This guy loves naked _power_'" I also thought, "How German-manic - the love of power and all the trouble it had gotten Germany into," and I could hear that same quality in his music and I didn't care for it at all-I thought it was a huge turn-off because it was misapplied where it didn't belong. But I never felt that with Furtwangler or Addado. But did HvK always do this in the recordings I've heard, such as his Sibelius? No.


Interesting so now we gave someone saying he was too loud and another not loud enough. Who is right guys? :lol:


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## MatthewWeflen

Larkenfield said:


> Bingo. I noticed that too with some of HvK's recordings, such as the obscenely loud passages in his performances of the Mahler fifth and sixth. That's one of the things-well, I probably shouldn't say that I _hated_ it-but what the hey, I did. I thought to myself, "Oh, how revealing. This guy loves naked _power_'" I also thought, "How German-manic - the love of power and all the trouble it had gotten Germany into," and I could hear that same quality in his music and I didn't care for it at all-I thought it was a huge turn-off because it was misapplied where it didn't belong. But I never felt that with Furtwangler or Addado. But did HvK always do this in the recordings I've heard, such as his Sibelius? No.


Unlimited power you say?


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## millionrainbows

*Please help me to enjoy Karajan
*
When COAG made this post back in 2011, there seemed to be a "blockage" he was dealing with. Was there something he wasn't telling us?
Ex-member "Mahlerian" said this, revealingly focussing on Mahler: _"__I find his Mahler next to unlistenable. It doesn't sound like Mahler at all. The balances which Mahler so carefully perfected are gone, the phrasing is muddled and destroys Mahler's lines, and the counterpoint isn't as prominent as it should be."
_
AnotherSpin, in post #85, said: _"__To enjoy Karajan you need to join Nazi party twiсe, marry Jewish woman in Hitler's Germany, pilot jet and be able to conduct best orchestra in the world with your eyes closed."
_
RedTerror, in post # 154: _"After reading some of the posts, I asked myself: "Why was Karajan concerned with aesthetics above everything else? The Nazis were similary obssesed". That led me to conduct a brief search: "Karajan, Nazis".
Lo and behold..._

_
In 1938, the same year that Hitler's Germany annexed Austria, a 30-year-old conductor from Salzburg led the Berlin State Opera in a production of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. The show was spectacular, and the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was hailed as a wonder. Soon after, he signed a lucrative contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Already a member of the Nazi party, von Karajan was on the way to becoming one of the leading musicians of the Third Reich.
_

_I wonder how he and Bernstein got along."

_Again, RedTerror in post # 157: "Karajan became a member of the NSDAP simply to further his career ... so no harm done then? That whole episode is tailor made for a Mentos commercial-what's an ambitious young conductor to do to make it in Nazi Germany? Join the Nazis of course! What a naughty guy! Why didn't Dietrich Bonhoeffer think of that?!"

Brahmsianhorn, in post #260, observes: _"__Does anyone else find it ironic that a discussion over Karajan turns into a debate over the validity of individual, dissenting opinion vs following the masses? I would imagine there were many similar debates in 1930s Germany. Many were ridiculed for not falling in with the party line. It all relates, doesn't it?"

_DavidA. in post #300: "I think it's also the nature of the regime. No one was safe. Certainly under Stalin even his nearest party members felt unsafe and it was probably true of Hitler as well . Certainly Furtwangler and Karajan were (willingly or unwillingly) used as political pawns by factions in the Nazi party before Karajan fell out of favour because Hitler did not like his Wagner conducting. And of course he married a wife with Jewish ancestry which did not go down well . He certainly was trying to leave the party before the war ended. He certainly was trying to leave the party before the war ended."

Larkenfield, in post #308: "Bingo. I noticed that too with some of HvK's recordings, such as the obscenely loud passages in his performances of the Mahler fifth and sixth-in fact, my head's still ringing like a church bell. That's one of the things-well, I probably shouldn't say that I _hated it-but what the hey, I did. I thought to myself, "Oh, how revealing. This guy loves naked power'" I also thought, "How German-manic - the love of power and all the trouble it had gotten Germany into," and I could hear that same quality in his music and I didn't care for it at all-I thought it was a huge turn-off because it was misapplied where it didn't belong. But I never felt that with Furtwangler or Addado. But did HvK always do this in the recordings I've heard, such as his Sibelius? No."

_This reinforces my assertion that music is a product of "being," and that this can be acknowledged or ignored. Those who wish to be "objective and scientific" strive not to be affected by notions of "being" or "soul" or personality, preferring a detached attitude.

Woodduck's observation that Karajan avoided "breathing points" in the music simply means "not rubato." Karajan wanted a more idea-based objective approach, more detached, less dramatic. KenOC in post #272 says: "In my view, the "legendary conductors" of HvK's time were simply those who held major recording contracts, and whose records we bought when building our collections. This means that they led major orchestra, positions they would hardly have achieved unless they were pretty darned good at their jobs...Naturally their styles and approaches varied to some extent. It's fine to like some more than others; but I can't see that as grounds for savaging any of these fine musicians. Nor are their ostentatious autos and planes, or their politics, or their proclivity to leap about wildly at the podium relevant in any way to the quality of their music."

Again, there are some who wish to de-emphasize the "being" and personality quirks of music-making, but it is inescapable that music emanates from a place of "being."


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