# Karajan's Two Mahler 9s



## BartokPizz

Looking for advice from Mahler lovers in this forum.

Does somebody who already owns Karajan's 1980 studio Mahler 9 with the BPO--the one currently available coupled with Christa Ludwig's Kindertotenlieder--have any reason (other than obsessiveness) to make room in his collection for Karajan's live Mahler 9 from the same year?

I've heard the live recording described as legendary, but am not sure whether I need two interpretations by the same forces from the same year.

Studio








Live


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## kanishknishar

my advice-get both

you need to feel both

truly extraordinary...

feats of brilliance


but i like the studio too.


live's good but overly recommended


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## DavidA

I wouldn't really say so. I have the live version which some reckon to be that bit more intense but there is little in it. Both won Gramophone awards of course. I wouldn't buy one for the Kindertotenleider as I can't stand those songs. there is enough in the world to depress us without that!


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## Skilmarilion

Neither: Bernstein, w/ Concertgebouw (if you can find it, that is).


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## Steatopygous

Excellent recommendations above. But for me, the most important Mahler 9 is the Bruno Walter with the Vienna Phil from 1938. There is a tension yet resignation that is entirely appropriate - six weeks later Hitler annexed Austria and Walter had fled, along with (eventually) many Jewish musicians. (Some who did not died in concentration camps.)


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## Vaneyes

BartokPizz said:


> Looking for advice from Mahler lovers in this forum.
> 
> Does somebody who already owns Karajan's 1980 studio Mahler 9 with the BPO--the one currently available coupled with Christa Ludwig's Kindertotenlieder--have any reason (other than obsessiveness) to make room in his collection for Karajan's live Mahler 9 from the same year?
> 
> I've heard the live recording described as legendary, but am not sure whether I need two interpretations by the same forces from the same year....


Studio or Live?

I like the studio for what seems like better playing and spontaneity to my ears. It was recorded over two sessions in 1979 and 1980

The live recording was done in 1982.

So, it appears you must begin again.


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## BartokPizz

Thanks for the replies. So I think I'll pass on the 82 live HvK recording. One of these days I'll get around to the Bernstein: RCO, but for now I will satisfy myself with his NYPhil and BPO recordings, both favorites of mine.


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## Avey

I concur with Skil's sentiment; I vote neither and suggest Rattle (BPO), Abbado (BPO), or even Chailly (Concertgebouw). Or Tennstedt, obviously, with LPO, which is always a fall-back option (read: absurdly high baseline). Karajan not on my radar. Not a fan of his Mahler stuff.


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## Steatopygous

Avey said:


> I concur with Skil's sentiment; I vote neither and suggest Rattle (BPO), Abbado (BPO), or even Chailly (Concertgebouw). Or Tennstedt, obviously, with LPO, which is always a fall-back option (read: absurdly high baseline). Karajan not on my radar. Not a fan of his Mahler stuff.


Love your avatar. When a relationship ended in 1977, the only thing we fought over was who got the Tintin books. I did; she got Asterix. She got the dinner set; I got the car (she got the higher value item).


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## FLighT

Just working my way through all the Mahler 9th performances I own recently and comparing them (for no reason other than my own enjoyment). Many tackle movements 1, 2, and 3 impressively but then fall down in the 4th taking something away from the performance and its impact overall. While listening through my various CD's I note a striking difference in Adagio timings within my collection. I note them here just for those that might be interested.

Mahler 9th, Adagio Timings
Berny RCO 29:34
M.T.T. SFO 27:50
L Cobos Cinn 27:50
VK BPO 26:49 Digital
VK BPO 26:44 Analogue
Berny BPO 26:11
Rattle BPO 26:02
Abbado BPO 25:56
Rattle BSO 24:43
Haitink RCO 24:42
Abbado VPO 24:28
Klemperer NPHilO 24:11
Haitink SBR 23:10
Berny NYP 22:59
Gielen SWR 22:30
Boulez CSO 21:25
Walter Col SO 21:04


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## Steatopygous

That's a fascinating experiment. How curious that Walter is so fast, and Klemperer is also relatively fast, despite his reputation for slow tempi. The point being that both of them knew Mahler and studied with him. 
I'm not suggesting there is only one right way, but it does seem that Mahler might have favoured crisp tempi. Of course, he never conducted this work.


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## Triplets

Walter Columbia Studio 9 also no slouch. My personal favorite is Ancerl/Czech PO. Abbado,Bernstein, MTT all are great.
I have the Karajan live, and it doesn't begin to compare with all the above. His 6th, otoh...


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## Triplets

DavidA said:


> I wouldn't really say so. I have the live version which some reckon to be that bit more intense but there is little in it. Both won Gramophone awards of course. I wouldn't buy one for the Kindertotenleider as I can't stand those songs. there is enough in the world to depress us without that!


Have you ever heard of catharsis? The world would be a poorer place without Kindertotenleider.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

best thing is to ignore Karajan's Mahler massacres and go for someone who didn't get in the way of the music. Boulez, for one.


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## FLighT

I think one of the amazing aspects of Mahler's music is that (in my opinion) conductors have a lot of leeway and options when shaping an effective performance, some succeed for me, some don't, and all to varying degrees. That's why I can enjoy Walter as well as Klemperer. Boulez as well as Abbado. I don't think say, Beethoven, will bend as readily to pushing and pulling in such a wide range of tempos, dynamics, phrasing, etc. 

Well, I think I'm Mahler'd out for a bit, and, for some unknown reason I've got a hankering for some Ligeti and Schoenberg listening next.


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## FLighT

Forgot one, the fastest of all in my collection:

Barshai MRSO 20:52


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## bz3

I enjoy both, this is the only symphony of Mahler's for which I enjoy Karajan.


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## Heliogabo

FLighT said:


> Forgot one, the fastest of all in my collection:
> 
> Barshai MRSO 20:52


Great version. It doesn't seems that fast.


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## Guest

I like both--the older one has warmer sound--the interpretations are quite similar.


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## WildThing

Listening to both in a side by side comparison and I have to say the interpretations are remarkably similar. I too am intrigued why the live performance gets all the accolades.

I also wonder what others mean when they consider Karajan to have "butchered" this symphony. Having heard multiple recordings of this work I understand perhaps not liking a particular interpretation as much, but I don't see how Karajan distorts anything.


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## Pugg

WildThing said:


> Listening to both in a side by side comparison and I have to say the interpretations are remarkably similar. I too am intrigued why the live performance gets all the accolades.
> 
> I also wonder what others mean when they consider Karajan to have "butchered" this symphony. Having heard multiple recordings of this work I understand perhaps not liking a particular interpretation as much, but I don't see how Karajan distorts anything.


Perhaps it's just the moment of recording which kept the "right atmosphere"


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## AfterHours

Karajan's live 1982 rendition is peerless. No other can match it and I would strongly recommend getting it. His earlier studio rendition is excellent but does not have the same degree of spontaneity, immediacy and idiomatic character that the instrumentation does in the live version.


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## Pugg

AfterHours said:


> Karajan's live 1982 rendition is peerless. No other can match it and I would strongly recommend getting it. His earlier studio rendition is excellent but does not have the same degree of spontaneity, immediacy and idiomatic character that the instrumentation does in the live version.


Presuming one is Karajan fan I would add.


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## MarkW

The story, by the way, is that after he made the studio recording, he caught Lyme disease and was seriously ill, during which time he re-thought the symphony and asked DGG to re-record it during one of his live performances. I remember reading an anecdote in Stereo Review in which he brought the re-thought version to Carnegie Hall. One of the editors came backstage afterwards and remarked that that had been one of the most intense performances of the Mahler Ninth he'd ever experienced, to which Karajan replied: "Me too."


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## Pugg

MarkW said:


> The story, by the way, is that after he made the studio recording, he caught Lyme disease and was seriously ill, during which time he re-thought the symphony and asked DGG to re-record it during one of his live performances. I remember reading an anecdote in Stereo Review in which he brought the re-thought version to Carnegie Hall. One of the editors came backstage afterwards and remarked that that had been one of the most intense performances of the Mahler Ninth he'd ever experienced, to which Karajan replied: "Me too."


All those nice things one learns every day on this wonderful site.


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## AfterHours

MarkW said:


> The story, by the way, is that after he made the studio recording, he caught Lyme disease and was seriously ill, during which time he re-thought the symphony and asked DGG to re-record it during one of his live performances. I remember reading an anecdote in Stereo Review in which he brought the re-thought version to Carnegie Hall. One of the editors came backstage afterwards and remarked that that had been one of the most intense performances of the Mahler Ninth he'd ever experienced, to which Karajan replied: "Me too."


Yes, such a fitting anecdote, thank you. In no other rendition do the instruments simultaneously play with so much passion, despair, devastation and folly, with each maintaining the "theatrical character" of its part in their actual sound qualities: in the depth of their _tone_, their _sonority_, their _timbre_. The very quality with which the instruments are played (not just what they attempt to evoke) and how nuanced their elicitation is, actually sound like they're being pressed to their limit, that their "voices" are cracking and death-stricken, that they are fading away on their last breath and on last ditch efforts to survive, that they are nearly broken from overwhelm. The fact that the work is also performed with such spontaneous immediacy and such meticulous craft and holds such transcendent beauty as well, only adds to its power and the tension and sense of consequence. Because this rendition seems to show all that vivid beauty, Mahler's titanic urge, the desire of a life, perhaps the whole natural world -- all of it -- internalized and externalized, bursting at the seams, collapsing into broken dreams, stumbled by folly and confusion, cowering into the shadows, crumbling apart and befallen, edging forth into the twilight of nostalgia and then overwhelmed by fate and tragedy.


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## AfterHours

Pugg said:


> Presuming one is Karajan fan I would add.


I'm not sure it should matter. I don't see how a Mahler fan could dismiss such an incredible rendition but I am surprised occasionally to find out they're around.


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## Pugg

AfterHours said:


> I'm not sure it should matter. I don't see how a Mahler fan could dismiss such an incredible rendition but I am surprised occasionally to find out they're around.


The Karajan / Mahler "haters" are in the majority, believe me.


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## AfterHours

Pugg said:


> The Karajan / Mahler "haters" are in the majority, believe me.


Well, whether that's the case or not, I strongly doubt Mahler himself would have agreed with them if he heard Karajan's live rendition of his 9th.


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## Merl

I also own HvK Mahler 9th (live) and thoroughly recommend it. It is a very intense performance. Karajan had his faults but he got it right, for me, with that one.


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## hpowders

Karajan beat Bernstein on the latter's home turf.

No two musicians are more incompatible tempermentally than the cool Karajan and intense Mahler, except for perhaps, Boulez and Mahler.

Yet for me it is Karajan who has made the finest recordings of Mahler 9; not Bernstein.


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## Pugg

AfterHours said:


> Well, whether that's the case or not, I strongly doubt Mahler himself would have agreed with them if he heard Karajan's live rendition of his 9th.


As Mahler and Karajan did both goes to deep length of perfection, I do think you are right.


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## Larkenfield

I agree about the 1938 Bruno Walter performance, and I also consider his performance with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in the early 1960s as outstanding. One of the advantages he had over HvK is that he was actually friends with Mahler and his recordings sound entirely idiomatic of the composer to me. For me, von Karajan was a very late bloomer when it came to Mahler, but he did do a couple of excellent 9ths though his 5th and 6th with the BPO I felt were infuriating with gargantuan climaxes I believe the composer would've hated. I felt that von Karajan may have been conflicted for years about playing the Jewish composer who had been banned when Hitler was in power, and the conductor may have had to work that out, which I feel to his credit that he did in his two performances of the Mahler 9th, neither of which I have a preference of one over the other.


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## CanadianMaestro

His two 9th's sound practically identical to me. 
No preference.
cheers


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## gustavdimitri

I would buy neither of them, THE recording for the 9th is the Haitink recording 1988 with the RCO, Christmas Matinee live!


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## Heck148

gustavdimitri said:


> I would buy neither of them, THE recording for the 9th is the Haitink recording 1988 with the RCO, Christmas Matinee live!


same here. HvK does little or nothing for me...for Mahler #9 there are so many that are better...


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## CnC Bartok

I have both these Karajan Mahler 9ths, both are, for me anyway, very powerful performances. Very hard to say which is better, the studio version is in no way inferior. But neither is a first choice for this work. For me the most enjoyable and powerful performances are the wonderful Ancerl recording on Supraphon, with what was very much his Czech Philharmonic at that time, and although it to some extent underplays the heart-on-sleeve aspects of the Finale, the raw energy of Georg Solti in his earlier, London recording on Decca, is really second to none. Both are incomparable in the First movement, debatably the greatest single movement Mahler wrote...
Get Ancerl, a giant.


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## KJ von NNJ

I think the Karajan Gold is a very special recording. I find the hype surrounding it to be distasteful because it invites a certain degree of conflict between the lovers, haters and neutrals among listeners. It has a unique depth to it. Just a miraculous recording and performance. I do like many of Karajan's recordings but I also feel he misses the mark in some things. 
I find his story to be interesting. I have read the Richard Osbourne biography of HVK (twice). It answers a lot of questions and provides a good critical analysis of the pros and cons in relation to Karajan's story. An excellent book that I may read again just to refresh the memory.


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## Heck148

Robert Pickett said:


> .... For me the most enjoyable and powerful performances are the wonderful Ancerl recording on Supraphon, .......the raw energy of Georg Solti in his earlier, London recording on Decca, is really second to none. Both are incomparable in the First movement, debatably the greatest single movement Mahler wrote...


for me, Greatest Mvt I of Mahler 9 = Giulini/CSO...a remarkable achievement, that builds the series of climaxes perfectly, each with growing intensity, until the 4th one, the "arrythmia motif" is sounded forth with a stentorian power that I've never heard matched...Boulez/CSO is very good also, very close competitor to Giulini... Walter/ColSO definitely honorable mention - miking is a little more distant....


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## Star

Larkenfield said:


> I agree about the 1938 Bruno Walter performance, and I also consider his performance with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in the early 1960s as outstanding. One of the advantages he had over HvK is that he was actually friends with Mahler and his recordings sound entirely idiomatic of the composer to me. For me, von Karajan was a very late bloomer when it came to Mahler, but he did do a couple of excellent 9ths though his 5th and 6th with the BPO I felt were infuriating with gargantuan climaxes I believe the composer would've hated. I felt that von Karajan may have been conflicted for years about playing the Jewish composer who had been banned when Hitler was in power, and the conductor may have had to work that out, which I feel to his credit that he did in his two performances of the Mahler 9th, neither of which I have a preference of one over the other.


We sometimes don't realise how rare Mahler was until Berstein and others championed him. Just to gave one of his symphonies on record was an achievement before the Mahler explosion.
There doesn't appear to be any conflict with Mahler with Karajan. The fact is that the Orchestra were obviously not used to playing it. Any resistance to Mahler certainly came from the orchestra, as spoken of by the then leader, Schwable, who was Jewish.
Karajan came late to Mahler's music after a long period of time developing the musical sound world of the great Austrian composer. After the war he had been offered the chance to do all the Mahler symphonies but declined as the rehearsal time was not sufficient. 
He said: "Mahler is very difficult for an orchestra. First, you must, as a painter would say, make your palette. But the difficulty is great, and the greatest danger is that if it is not well performed the music can seem banal" He actually programmed Das Lied Von das Erde in 1960 with Ross-Majden and Konya but the orchestra wasn't ready. Barbirolli then worked with the orchestra in the early 1960s conducting Mahler and givng us the remarkable 9th and also a concert 6th with the BPO (much better than his studio effort).
Maybe in line with Barbirolli, the interpretations from Karajan that gradually emerged during the 1970's and 1980's did not emphasise the modernistic features of this music. In fact, by stressing the romantic elements, Karajan's performances often looked backwards thus seeing Mahler's music as a great conclusion to 19th-century Romanticism. 
By this time Karajan had a Jew leading his orchestra and a Jew (Glotz) producing the recordings. His pallette prepared for Mahler more ways than one! Between the Karajan live and the studio there is little to choose. Don't be without the remarkable Barbirolli though - and his incredible 5th.
As a footnote when Rattle showed Karajan the completion of the10th symphony he was interested but then reluctantly said that by then he was too old to learn such difficult scores.


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