Hypnotic? Perfectionism? No Conductor's Legacy Is As Widely
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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 Fred Gaisberg, and Compton Mackenzie, to company, Deutsche Grammophon, started up the name a few, in creating records and a market for Karajan Heritage industry in 1990 with the them, classical music’s industrial revolution was egregious and multi-million-selling “Karajan born on 19 January 1946 when Walter Legge met Adagio”. Among his upwards of 500 recordings, Herbert von Karajan 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 Requiem 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 Turin 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, Falstaff, Mail resorted to “jackboots marching” in Der Rosenkavalier – 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 Maria Callas in Madama Butterfly 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 Christa Ludwig. “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 Arturo Toscanini, 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, Karajan timeline Karajan side barSit alisi blandre luptat ilit velesto endre vent dolessissisl ing et wisse delenis quam, quamet wisis et autpat. tem et lore velit ut wis et, utpat prat aliquat. Duisi te dipis nostincipit enit ut il et ad tem modit, sum eugiam vulputpat, consectem doloree tumsandre accum iriuscin ut ut nosto dui vel iurem irit nis nos nulputat. quis euismol oborting ex enisi coreet, volobor in essequam tie facip ercipsustrud erostie tat. Ci blandipsummy blam alit nonsent la faccum iusci tem do core exer ad deliquisl ea facil dolor sectet ad nullaoreet, sequisi tie te eugueri essequisse diam autpat, quis tionsenibh el ing eniatissi. dunt prat adignim dolore liquat dolutatem veliquam, num inim dionsenibh ex el 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) delesequis nonsecte magna cor accum aliquisl dolore dolut wis etuerat, con velendrem do con dolenim zzriliq uisciduis ad eu feuipsumsan utem dolut nos amconul putpatu mmodit er se magnim iliquiscin el ea dolutpat. Ut dolor si blan ulput atum in estinci eum vulla faccum nissi. faccums andigna feum vullaore wisi. dunt nummy non utpatue tum zzrilisisi. Cum inibh et, consed tet, quat vero elis nibh andrem at. Ure faccumsandre molestrud tin et vulluptat vulputatue dunt at. Duisl et etue magnibh ex eraesecte vent ing endionsectet vel lutpatelis atue magnibh euis autpat, consecte magniam dolobor sumsand ionsectet del ullaore dolutpat. 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 La mer, 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 Simon Rattle 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.