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Home , Arturo Toscanini, Fred Gaisberg, Michel Glotz, Walter Legge

Hammer of thegods Hypnotic? Perfectionism? No conductor’s legacy is as widely – and passionately – debated as Karajan’s. There’s a very good reason for this, argues Peter Quantrill

e still talk of something pluralistic age and perhaps one, in Karajan’s called a classical record prophecy, where “we shall be overwhelmed with industry, some amorphous things that are tenth-rate”. His story is the story collective that produces and of that “classical record industry”, its self- disseminates good music for aggrandising triumphs and moments of theW enrichment of our minds and other men’s sublimity as well as grotesquerie. His reputation pockets. But for all the achievements of Edison, took a nose-dive even as his principal record and , and Compton Mackenzie, to company, , started up the name a few, in creating records and a market for Karajan Heritage industry in 1990 with the them, ’s industrial revolution was egregious and multi-million-selling “Karajan born on 19 January 1946 when met Adagio”. Among his upwards of 500 recordings, in Vienna. The wheel few are now mentioned, fewer still recommended, stopped turning, to the chagrin of record in comparative assessments on radio or in print, executives the world over, on 16 July 1989, when except in dutiful observation that the past is Karajan died at his home in Anif, outside Salzburg. another country. Successive editions of the Listeners have moved on, even if not all Penguin Guide to Classical Records/CDs graphically record-company executives have, to a more reveal the rise and fall, not of the intrinsic merit machris bmg sony borggreve, marco

36 january 2008 GRAMOPHONE www.gramophone.co.uk Karajan Cover

of his recordings, but of critical sympathy to records (and money) and to recover a reputation work on record, and the technology itself them. Even so, the greater portion is still compromised by the lengthy de-Nazification shaped his interpretations more explicitly than available. Someone must like them. process. He seized the Columbia/EMI contract any other classical artist. Much later, he would Legge’s journey to post-war Vienna was in with alacrity. As the producer Andrew Keener have live musicians imitate editing software in search of new EMI artists, but one in particular: a remarks, “In the Philharmonia, Legge created using two oboes for the obbligato solos in conductor to record with his new Philharmonia an orchestra the refinement of which Karajan Bach’s B minor Mass “to help create a long line Orchestra. With Karajan in thrall, Legge seized had never previously encountered. Between and obviate intrusive snatched breaths” – the moment to arrange a series of recordings them, they made recording a recognisable art breaths, you might think, which are written into that vividly capture their troubled times and form in itself for the first time. They shaped the the very fabric of the music. transcend them – Brahms’s German and aesthetics of classical recording.” In fact the mastery of legato that Furtwängler Second Symphony, the last two symphonies of What crucially helped them to do so was the had grudgingly acknowledged in Karajan is Beethoven and, most affectingly, Strauss’s switch from wax masters to the new tape evident from some of his earliest recordings. So, Metamorphosen – where the old gold of technology. You could now drop in a quaver in retrospect, is the continual evolution and Musikverein Vienna still glows but with a new instead of making another four-minute side. sanguine reassessment of a work and his burnish. Legge realised that he had found the Where Furtwängler and others affected baffled approach to it (that, like so much about Karajan, modern kind of conductor he was looking for, contempt for the concept of editing, Karajan has been underestimated, perhaps due to critical and Karajan was hungry – to learn, to make saw technology as his servant in reproducing his spasms of revulsion against the hype). A Berlin www.gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE january 2008 37 Philharmonic Dvo∑ák Ninth becomes hopelessly “Toscanini impressed Karajan for ever”, remarks becalmed in the slow movement. Mozart Michel Glotz, Karajan’s executive producer from symphonies with the radio orchestra in bear 1968 onwards, “by saying that if you want a real out Karajan’s admission of defeat: “I heard in my crescendo, you must go from the most pianississimi inner ear what I wanted to hear and the rest…well, to the loudest fortississimo.” it went down.” Back then he had not learnt how to There are Philharmonia recordings that show take the thrill of “Das Wunder Karajan” from the Karajan learning on the job, creating blueprints concert hall to the studio. The critic Klaus Geitel for much more finished later recordings. One of remembered the “glittering, exciting” thrill of pre- the most telling indicators of his achievements war Berlin concerts with their new repertoire: with the Phiharmonia was the Brahms cycle that concerts with Furtwängler “were like going into a he prepared, but Toscanini conducted, in 1952. cathedral”; with Karajan, it was “like going to the When Toscanini arrived, he found (to his delight) Venusberg, like entering a bacchanal.” he had little to do but direct: the incandescent results are now on Testament. But in the field of Jackboots…and pianissimi opera, his experience as general music director of His fifth concert with the Philharmonia in the theatres in Ulm and Aachen had furnished London set the tone for the reception of Karajan him with The Knowledge – of the repertoire and in English-speaking countries. Where the Daily the art of the possible. Hänsel und Gretel, , Mail resorted to “jackboots marching” in – dazzling jewels of the Beethoven’s Seventh, Eric Blom in the Daily gramophone catalogue, all of them, alongside his Telegraph, more reasonably, heard “hectoring contemporaneous Milanese collaborations with severity”, but went on: “About the symphony in and Lucia di everything was notable, most particularly Lammermoor. He never pretended to the technical perhaps the fact that no incident was less than knowledge of his singers and instrumentalists that meaningful; yet none failed to subordinate itself many conductors consider obligatory, but his to the conductor’s total conception.” sense of timing, and of a singer’s capabilities, From the same concert The Times already enabled him to produce “not one but three or four noted the extreme pianissimi that would become generations of singers,” said . “His one of Karajan’s defining characteristics. primary focus was to instruct the orchestral players London audiences had last heard such orchestral to listen to the sound of the singers.” virtuosity a decade and more previously in the Nor, for all his enduring fascination with concerts that the BBC Symphony had given with technological advances, did he delve into the , who is so vital an influence on particulars: he left that to the experts. Robert Karajan’s early interpretations and recordings: Gooch, one of EMI’s first stereo engineers,

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38 january 2008 GRAMOPHONE www.gramophone.co.uk Harnoncourt the conductor (below), Musicus Wien (left)

Harnoncourt the Musicus Wien (left)

Harnoncourt the conductor (below), and with Concentus Musicus Wien (left)

Harnoncourt the conductor (below), and with Concentus and with Concentus Musicus Wien (left)

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www.gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE january 2008 39 Karajan Cover remembers Karajan staying in the studio while Philharmonic, Karajan was not slow in taking the recordings live up to the DG recordings of Legge lorded it in the control room, commanding bait of expensive new stereo equipment and an Schumann and Sibelius symphonies, Les préludes minute adjustments of microphones and levels exclusive contract from DG’s president, Elsa and , but even in the Four Seasons there is a that Gooch and his colleagues knew would go Schiller. The first of their Beethoven cycles, in supremely confident sense of Vivaldi’s innovative unheard. Even 30 years later, his sound engineer 1962‑63, illustrates Karajan’s greatest gift, forms that allows Michael Schwalbé free rein from at DG, Günter Hermanns, says it was rare for pinpointed by Sir in an anniversary one bar to the next. One of Karajan’s most Karajan to comment on the takes that he, tribute recorded by the Karajan-Centrum. interesting analogies was to see himself as a Hermanns, had selected. “Karajan gave the orchestra even more than the rider, preparing the horse to leap a hurdle. “You sound which is always part of their birthright. He cannot jump the fence for them. You have to Image and preception had a very, very profound sense of pulse which is point them in the right direction.” On the other side of the Atlantic at the end of the what people tend to forget about his work – he Once Glotz became his executive producer in 1950s, was starting to stage the had a devastatingly strong rhythmic impulse that 1968, the fun with stereo really started. Young People’s Concerts of the New York was underneath it. And that’s why he was often Techniques from pop recording enabled them Philharmonic, and composing music that united able to conduct in such a very, very smooth way to reform the sound(s) of an orchestra into popular and classical idioms. Between them, the but yet keep the pulse underneath it.” The racing, malleable, superimposed layers, blending two men would be the recognisable faces of the the flying, the yachting and everything else all clarinets into violins at will. Voices float in free conductor for decades to come. Both commanded stem from a contemplation of forward movement association around the sound stage, dynamically matchless powers of musical understanding and more commonly observed in great sportsmen. refined to a degree that makes domestic listening psychological acuity. They would sell classical Foreign audiences from the 1960s onwards difficult and headphones a trial. The results can music to millions. One would enlist the word, the heard little from Karajan but Mozart, Beethoven, be heard at their most perverse in – which other, the image. Bernstein’s special quality was Brahms, Bruckner and later on Mahler, but in for all the efforts of Dernesch as Leonora could his approachability, Karajan’s was his aloofness. Berlin and on holiday be renamed That both images were just that, images, is less in St Moritz a library Pizarro, so dark important than their perception. What matters of Western orchestral Karajan would take in and lowering is is not that there were other conductors who music on record, the overall feel, could do certain works better, or were pushed from Albinoni to the new wave of ’60s auteurs brutal, massive, into shadow – of course there were – but that Henze, was peremptory, not these two, Bernstein and Karajan (obliquely united steadily at the cinema – Visconti in the least by their mentor, Dmitri Mitropoulos), knew how accumulated. illustrative of the to harness their talents to their destinies. The ambition and Kubrick tender or vulnerable After his election to the head of the orchestra he is gargantuan, sides of the drama – and had been “born to conduct”, the Berlin and not all the most inspired in Tristan, where the lovers of Vickers and Dernesch swirl round in an ecstatic double helix, oblivious to the rules of time and space. Karajan and Glotz would take in the new wave of ’60s auteurs at the cinema. Karajan was impressed by Visconti and Kubrick’s 2001, of course, but even more by Barry Lyndon, which according to Glotz “corresponded to his idea of beauty”. Kubrick’s retelling of Thackeray’s anti- heroic anti-romance used the widest-aperture camera then built in order to film by the light of three candles, technology at the service of hyper-naturalism. No wonder Karajan loved it. His attention wandered from audio to video, spurred by collaborations with Henri-Georges Clouzot and his productions. A contemporary – and consequent? – lack of care over balance and editing, even orchestral discipline, is painfully obvious in recordings such as the 1975 Sibelius Fifth on EMI and the best- selling DG Planets. “Sometimes there are horrors and glories on the same disc,” notes Keener. “I learnt Stravinsky’s Apollo from Karajan’s recording, and though some said it was beautified, I found it utterly seductive, the huge refinement of the playing. But turn over and you get incredibly slipshod playing in the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta – rhythmically slack, missed entries and so on.” “Perhaps it’s human nature to always want what one doesn’t have,” was Christa Ludwig’s Harnoncourt the conductor (below), and with Concentus Musicus Wien (left) reasoning in her autobiography. “Although www.gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE january 2008 41 Karajan Cover

masterpiece with three strokes. The Vienna reason, will be enough for many with long recordings of the last two Dvo∑ák symphonies, the memories – and some with shorter ones – to last Berlin Beethoven Eighth and Missa solemnis, declare that they can take no pleasure from his achieve more by attending to less, allowing the subsequent career. I am not one of these people. brass their head, and chorus and strings to sing in I am not hypnotised by the “home video legacy” full, untrammelled sweep. For all the standard of the Unitel films; they are a well intentioned wisdom of early=good, late=bad in Karajanology, vanity project that, in Andrew Keener’s phrase, the set of Paris Symphonies from 1980 is only already look “desperately dated and tawdry”. one of many examples where the later recordings Elsewhere, however, I am struck time and again convey more urgently than their predecessors all by an innate stylishness that pertains to the that might be at stake in, say, the unrelenting music itself. Wherever I turn, composers sound G minor drama of No 83. completely themselves. (all three recordings!), Sibelius’s Fourth (DG), Die The great legacy Meistersinger in Dresden (EMI), Prokofiev’s What I have found odd in listening (or listening Fifth, all those Strauss waltzes and polkas in again) to many Karajan recordings during the last London and Vienna. two months is how difficult it is not to strike a Twenty years from now, Karajan’s most defensive stance. The same words recur in critical durable legacy may still be of music from his appraisals from both dismissive and appreciative own war-torn age: Puccini, Strauss, Ravel and standpoints. Hypnotic, for example, which is Shostakovich. Were I charged with preserving frequently applied to the films, and to his one record for posterity, I would pass reluctantly recordings of repertoire from Bach to Ravel. Some over his Schumann Second, his New Year’s Day listeners find the idea of being hypnotised by a Concert and his Schoenberg Op 31 and alight performance a repellent manipulation; for others, upon Shostakovich’s Tenth – not in either of it is simply a consequence of submitting to the blistering DG recordings but Melodiya’s LP Karajan’s control of timbre and . His EMI of the concert given in the recording of Pelléas is sumptuously Wagnerian, no Moscow Conservatoire on May 29, 1969. No question: well, either you believe that Debussy was edits, no sonic swirl, just decent Russian stereo reacting against Parsifal and Tristan, or and collective musical intuition and nerve on the surreptitiously absorbing them. Most loaded of all, verge of what must be humanly possible. Never the accusation of “perfectionism”. Which artist ABOVE Harnoncourt receiving the 2005 does not want every performance to be perfect – Kyoto Award (top) and (above) in rehearsal that is, true to its own lights, and those of the BELOW Harnoncourt receiving the 2005 work? One who returns to Der Rosenkavalier time Kyoto Award (top) and (above) in His most durable and again understands the Marschallin’s injunction Karajan’s greatest toy was stage direction, he to “hold and let go: those who are not like that will legacy may still be hadn’t learnt the craft, so he needed an insane be punished by life and God.” number of rehearsals just for the lighting.” The The drive to eliminate contingency is there – music from his own vast, dark, static productions, and the films from most comically in Karajan’s commission of a which bassoons are banished as too ugly for a cowbell-machine, built like a spit-rotisserie, for war-torn age Télémondial Eden, both show how Karajan’s his 1977 performances of Mahler’s Sixth, so that eyes were out of kilter with the sophistication of the cows would graze a tempo (does the machine his ears. Far more telling, more fiery, more still gather dust in the Philharmonie?). A (in my experience) has the symphony’s sense of honest, are the live telecasts of the Berlin (1959) curiously contradictory charge is one of musical autobiography (at once compelling and and Vienna (1957) Philharmonic tours to Japan, interpretative absence (ironically, once an ideal creepy), of living through difficult and dangerous recently released by NHK’s DVD label, which of the period-instrument movement): that times and emerging at the end unbowed, been bear out Rattle’s observation: “He had a very Karajan wound up the Berlin Philharmonic more wholly conveyed. particular concept of sound and what it is. clock and set it going. I know what The Times The second half (!) was, inevitably, Ein Sometimes when I see films of Karajan as a reviewer of Karajan’s 1965 London performance Heldenleben. This doesn’t survive, but Werner young man it’s astonishing how aggressive his means about his Bruckner Eighth when finding Thärichen, long-time timpanist in Berlin and is. He’s like no one I’ve ever seen, it “bland and empty of personality…the shell of not known as an ally of Karajan, heard an ever and he might have been battling with demons.” a great cathedral without an altar or cross”. The greater depth of identity with Strauss’s tone- The encore from the Berliners is the Air on a G celebrated DG Bruckner cycle all too truthfully poem in his interpretation, honed over 55 years, String, chaste, quite reserved, yet pliable in every reflects its original cover artwork of a frozen four recordings and 70 concerts. By the time of bar. The final rallentando is unconducted, except avian corpse, noble and lifeless. Rattle remembers the last such in May 1988, said Thärichen, “I’m perhaps by telepathy. How did he do it? Karajan saying to him: “‘It’s easy to sing like a bird absolutely certain that this man was conducting It’s in the last few years of his life, when when you’re young like a bird. When you have the story of his life.” Geil – horny – was the word incapacity and power struggles caused him to had life’s tragedies – it’s much harder to sing then.’ used by a German colleague of Jeffrey Tate to reassess his priorities and relinquish It reminds me of that wonderful Auden quote. describe Karajan in the pit (the man himself said administrative power and opera production, that Somebody wrote to Auden, wanting a libretto for he always felt cold in the studio). “It was a a rough passion re-emerged in his conducting. an opera, and he wrote back only one sentence: physical necessity for him to be in contact with In a recent interview, Ben Kingsley referred with ‘Sorry, too sad to sing. Yours, Auden.’” music,” thinks Tate. “His fundamental sensuality admiration to a Japanese artist who hoped that, Knowing that Karajan joined the Nazi party, was pushed into the world of music, which is when he was 90, he would be able to paint a under whatever circumstances and for whatever why Strauss’s music meant so much to him.” G www.gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE january 2008 43