Karajan's 1980s Digital Beethoven Cycle on DG

[Barbirollians]

I'd be interested to know which "version" of the recording did you get, Barbi; the original release or the Karajan Gold remastering which improved the sound quality somewhat? (I presume that no one has yet taken single issues from the "Karajan '80s" box?!)

But I have a very different reaction from yours to the performance of the Pastoral, which is, I feel, the best of his BPO studio recordings. As ever with HvK, there is a symphonic urgency to the performance (it's a Turner pastoral landscape, rather than Constable) which many recordings overlook in favour of the picturesque - and there's a lovely fleetness of foot and flow that his earlier recordings missed.

It is the original CD issue - which may explain it . Fleet of foot I can handle but silvestrione's description of it as tense in the first movement I get .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Depends whether you want an HST view or a dawdle through the Duchy! I think that many more conductors take a quicker approach, though going back Kleiber Sr did not hang about.

It is the original CD issue - which may explain it . Fleet of foot I can handle but silvestrione's description of it as tense in the first movement I get .

I like "tense" - it's a symphony, after all - but I disagree with silvie's "a little too tense".

[Barbirollians]

I like "tense" - it's a symphony, after all - but I disagree with silvie's "a little too tense".

The Philharmonia set of HVK's first Beethoven cycle has arrived . That is next for audition.

Timings wise the box suggests only the scene by the brook is much different timings wise . There is only 17 seconds in it for the first movement.

[Barbirollians]

The Philharmonia set of HVK's first Beethoven cycle has arrived . That is next for audition.

Timings wise the box suggests only the scene by the brook is much different timings wise . There is only 17 seconds in it for the first movement.

This performance from 1953 is a in a different league . On first hearing I reckon this is one of the greatest Pastorals on record .

The first movement is just as fleet of foot as in Berlin but a carefree lightness of spirit that is missing in the 1980s . The scene by the brook is far from too leisurely and benefits from extraordinarily beautiful and characterful playing by the Philharmonia woodwind principals . The third movement has a real sense of merrymaking and the horns if a bit recessed are a real joy . The storm is terrifying just as it should be - how the players rip into the first big thundercrack and the shepherd's hymn if slightly slower than Berlin is really joyful , an ecstatic real prayer of thanks and the oboe ( I assume Sidney Sutcliffe) is wonderful . The string playing has an extraordinary spirituality - and it is long time since this work brought me close to tears . The sotto voce at the end makes you hold your breath.

Only the Erich Kleiber, Bohm and Boult compare for me - and I am sure that for all the 1953 mono sound that the performance of the finale is the best I have ever heard.

[silvestrione]

This performance from 1953 is a in a different league . On first hearing I reckon this is one of the greatest Pastorals on record .

The first movement is just as fleet of foot as in Berlin but a carefree lightness of spirit that is missing in the 1980s . The scene by the brook is far from too leisurely and benefits from extraordinarily beautiful and characterful playing by the Philharmonia woodwind principals . The third movement has a real sense of merrymaking and the horns if a bit recessed are a real joy . The storm is terrifying just as it should be - how the players rip into the first big thundercrack and the shepherd's hymn if slightly slower than Berlin is really joyful , an ecstatic real prayer of thanks and the oboe ( I assume Sidney Sutcliffe) is wonderful . The string playing has an extraordinary spirituality - and it is long time since this work brought me close to tears . The sotto voce at the end makes you hold your breath.

Only the Erich Kleiber, Bohm and Boult compare for me - and I am sure that for all the 1953 mono sound that the performance of the finale is the best I have ever heard.

I absolutely agree here: has been my favourite 'Pastoral' ever since I first heard it.

[Barbirollians]

This performance from 1953 is a in a different league . On first hearing I reckon this is one of the greatest Pastorals on record .

The first movement is just as fleet of foot as in Berlin but a carefree lightness of spirit that is missing in the 1980s . The scene by the brook is far from too leisurely and benefits from extraordinarily beautiful and characterful playing by the Philharmonia woodwind principals . The third movement has a real sense of merrymaking and the horns if a bit recessed are a real joy . The storm is terrifying just as it should be - how the players rip into the first big thundercrack and the shepherd's hymn if slightly slower than Berlin is really joyful , an ecstatic real prayer of thanks and the oboe ( I assume Sidney Sutcliffe) is wonderful . The string playing has an extraordinary spirituality - and it is long time since this work brought me close to tears . The sotto voce at the end makes you hold your breath.

Only the Erich Kleiber, Bohm and Boult compare for me - and I am sure that for all the 1953 mono sound that the performance of the finale is the best I have ever heard.

I am still waiting for ferney's take on the Boult recording - which he told me he was about to post three weeks ago !

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am still waiting for ferney's take on the Boult recording - which he told me he was about to post three weeks ago !

I know, I know ... AND I've heard the Kempe Munich recording since then, too. All in the pipeline - just needs DynoRod to pop round!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I like "tense" - it's a symphony, after all - but I disagree with silvie's "a little too tense".

Barbi's comments on the Digital Pastoral led me to play the disc again; I enjoyed it so much, that I've had to play it a few more times, and actually "tense" is the very last feeling I got from the first movement - it is a joyous reading that had me positively bouncing about on my seat as I listened. The perky tempo Karajan observes from the score had me smiling from the very start - but, more importantly, it enables the listener to hear the marvellous shimmering of the cross rhythms that abound in the Symphony: most other recordings treat the triplet figurations very definitely as "accompaniment"; kept in the background as a sort of harmonic mottling. Karajan brings them a little more to the fore, and the spectrum of rhythmic interplay that results brings out the impetus of those repetitions in the Development section, between bars 151 - 174 (so often, in lesser hands, just a sequence of chord/key changes - and even at times a tiresome series of repetitions of a not very interesting phrase). This isn't "interpretation" - this is reading Beethoven's score and presenting it as written; and the Musical results are as fresh and delightful as the day Beethoven imagined them. But more - it's not simply a moment of local colour - Beethoven plants the seeds of these cross-rhythms as early as the Transition section at bar 53, with the first hearing of a triplet figure, and cross-rhythms are first heard at the Codetta of the Exposition, with triplets in the lower strings answered by the return of the First group "duplet" motif, ready for the Exposition repeat (which Karajan, the silly old twonk, doesn't observe ). AND, the cross rhythms recolour the Recapitulation, bars 288 - 311 are transformed by the triplets which didn't occur in the Expo: visually, it's very clear in the score; Karajan allows us to hear this wonderful effect - many others just keep the triplets as a vague accompanimental "mush", ignoring the life in these rhythmic devices.

It's a wonderfully cheeky and playful realization of the score - the articulation brilliantly pointed - and whilst the arrival in the countryside is as brisk as the composer requires, it's by no means relentless: there are subtle touches of rall which colour the phrasing without disrupting the symphonic impetus of the Music. It had me utterly captivated - and Karajan's insights and attention to detail follow through in the other Movements; particularly the way the cross-rhythm relationship between triple and duple patterns recur throughout the whole Symphony (although the fives against fours in the 'celli and basses in the storm get smudged terribly in this muddy recording - inevitable when 20th Century instruments are used in these numbers in this register) - and does any modern instrument performance on record bring out the similarities iof the Scherzo with that of the Eroica as clearly? (Emperors and Peasants - cunning chap, our Ludwig: observant cove, our Herbie! ) And Beethoven's scoring!!! This symphony could be used as a set text for students of instrumentation and orchestration - there's just so much invention and colour!


The sheer pleasure and joy I got from hearing this reading (as distinct from the recorded sound) is greater than from any other modern instrument performance I know - which (as I intend to demonstrate with Boult later - I haven't forgotten, Barbie ) is not intended to "slight" other recordings, many of which are very fine indeed. But I think the point needs to be repeated - a point that is becoming clear even to some reviewers and critics previously hostile to Karajan - that the conductor did not just record the same performances of the same repertory in the same way each time but with newer technology. Whatever Karajan's personal flaws, with the Music he most admired, he continuously sought ever more faithful ways of presenting that repertoire. This superb reading of the Pastoral is one of his greatest successes in this respect - it has become my favourite of modern instrument performances.

[silvestrione]

A wonderful, detailed account of your response to that performance, Fernie, thank you so much! It's certainly sending me back to have another listen.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A wonderful, detailed account of your response to that performance, Fernie, thank you so much! It's certainly sending me back to have another listen.

My pleasure, sivestrione (I hope you enjoy it - or, at the very least, "enjoy it more" - this time.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Some (other) Versions of Pastoral

(With apologetic thanks to William Empson )

Boult's recording with the LPO from 1977 is lovely - I can easily see why this might be many people's favourite recording of the work (I don't know any of his previous versions - there are at least two: one from the late fifties with the LPO under a pseudnym with n added "Promenade" to its name; the other a BBC recording with the BBCSO.)

Its tempi are more leisured than Beethoven's metronome markings suggest, but they are by no means sluggardly - its a gentler reading than Karajan's enthusiastic exuberance; Constable, rather than Turner (especially in the Storm movement), but entirely satisfactory in its own terms. The recording, in the Warner box remix, is much better than DG's original digital from six years later - and Boult's clear ear for the detail is readily communicated from the speakers, although the cross-rhythm effects Karajan brings out are much less noticed by Boult, who treats them "traditionally" as foreground and background. There is more obvious observation of "traditional" tempo modification not noted in the score, but these are spontaneous-sounding, and do not distort the flow of the Music anything like as much as some other recordings.

Orchestral playing is so felicitous so frequently - flutes in the First Movement; Horns in the Second; solo oboe against unison Bassoons in the Scherzo a touch I'd never noticed before (and a particularly lovely touch of Beethoven's affectionate humour, bringing back memories for me of my own experience as a player in amateur ensembles with "unbalanced" numbers of instruments - a Jupiter with no Double Basses and more Violas than Violins ); Double Basses in the Storm. There are a couple (literally) of moments when - armed with the score - the ensemble makes a noticeable fluff in timing, but I can quite see why these were not retaken: correcting them to fit in with the really lovely Music-making surrounding them would have disrupted the "magic"

Boult's ear for the details in Beethoven's score is consistently fine - the sfzs that pepper the score are given due weighting, AND (the biggest point in its favour for me) all Beethoven's repeats are faithfully and Musically observed, to the benefit of the timing and proportion that the composer envisaged - and which is so beautifully "placed" when played like this.

One of Boult's finest achievements in the recording studio, and a recording I shall certainly be returning to with great pleasure and affection.

[Barbirollians]

Perhaps my problem with the late Karajan is the fact i have a cheap second hand copy of the original release of the HVK recording . The 1953 knocks it into numerous cocked hats IMO on the evidence I have heard .

[pastoralguy]

Perhaps my problem with the late Karajan is the fact i have a cheap second hand copy of the original release of the HVK recording . The 1953 knocks it into numerous cocked hats IMO on the evidence I have heard .

I have a, presumably, remastered version in my Karajan '1980's' set which is pretty good. I suspect that once Karajan had gone to conduct the great orchestra in the sky, the engineers and producers re-mastered all the maestro's twiddlings.

[Petrushka]

I have a, presumably, remastered version in my Karajan '1980's' set which is pretty good. I suspect that once Karajan had gone to conduct the great orchestra in the sky, the engineers and producers re-mastered all the maestro's twiddlings.

Indeed. The results, which sound very fine, are contained in the 60s, 70s and 80s boxes which are prized possessions in Petrushka Towers.

[richardfinegold]

I have a, presumably, remastered version in my Karajan '1980's' set which is pretty good. I suspect that once Karajan had gone to conduct the great orchestra in the sky, the engineers and producers re-mastered all the maestro's twiddlings.

As they did with the recordings of George Szell, another legendary 'control freak' who thought he knew the recording console better than the trained Engineers