HvK best at ... ?

[jayne lee wilson]

I was going to mention Mahler, and specifically the Lied which was the recording I got to know the work from; subsequently I've heard recordings I've ended up preferring but I'll always return to it now and again. The same is not true of his Wagner, specifically the Ring - nobody else's measures up in terms particularly of the perfect relationship between voices and orchestra. Or, come to mention it, his Strauss (R). And of course Honegger.

I rather like his Stravinsky too, even if Stravinsky didn't, and his Bartók Music for... is beautiful too. I would really like to appreciate his Bruckner, but strangely it leaves me cold - I listened to the 8th not so long ago and wasn't drawn into it at all, maybe that was me.

So apart from Wagner my favourite HvK recordings are all of 20th century music. One of my first records was his Bach "orchestral" Suites 2 & 3 - I would have to be strapped down and sedated to be able to listen to that these days.

There are quite a few Karajan Bruckner 8ths...! (Including the startling 1944 of movements 2-4 only, the finale in early experimental stereo)

https://www.abruckner.com/recordings/Karajan/Herbert_von

Sound, approach and timings do vary...I guess yours was one the three better known - Berlin 1957, Berlin 1975, VPO 1988...?
He recorded the first three symphonies late in his life (1980/81), and they can be surprisingly volatile, exciting and texturally spare.

[Richard Barrett]

Sound, approach and timings do vary...I guess yours was one the three better known - Berlin 1957, Berlin 1975, VPO 1988...?

It was the second of these.

[cloughie]

I do think he was very good at adding that extra schmalz to certain works. The DG issue of Italian Intermezzi was wonderful and his Albinoni-Giazetto Adagio was disgustingly syrupy but brings a smile to the face.

[cloughie]

It was the second of these.

Which is in the EMI box. In the past it was also a WRC double LP.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Which is in the EMI box. In the past it was also a WRC double LP.

No - the 1975 "second one" is the DG version (on LP it had the feathers motif on the cover). The First version from 1957 is the one in the big box and was on the WRC double LP.

[cloughie]

No - the 1975 "second one" is the DG version (on LP it had the feathers motif on the cover). The First version from 1957 is the one in the big box and was on the WRC double LP.

I misunderstood!

[Petrushka]

I've just watched the performance on DVD of Bruckner 8 which Karajan gave with the VPO in St Florian 40 years ago this very night, June 4 1979. It's a tremendous performance and, as it was a straight live relay there is little of the idiosyncratic TV direction that hobbled so many of Karajan's films. There's plenty of the maestro, as you would expect, but I don't find it overdone here and I'd strongly recommend it to all but those totally allergic to HvK.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bruckner-Symphonies-Te-Deum-DVD/dp/B000YD7S26/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=karajan+bruckner&qid=1559684028&s=dvd&sr=1-1

[verismissimo]

For those of us of a certain age, the picture was rather clear. The dominance of Karajan in the recording industry between roughly the end of WW2 and his death in 1989 was followed by a growing period of neglect, as though in reaction.

So Peter Quantrill's lengthy feature article in the January 2008 issue of Gramophone - 'Karajan - A God among Conductors' - came as something of a shock. What's more, Quantrill is not one of those (like me) who grew up musically with K, he is of a completely new generation of observers.

Here is his piece: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/editori...eter-quantrill

[Richard Barrett]

So Peter Quantrill's lengthy feature article in the January 2008 issue of Gramophone - 'Karajan - A God among Conductors' - came as something of a shock. What's more, Quantrill is not one of those (like me) who grew up musically with K, he is of a completely new generation of observers.

Very interesting read, thanks.

[gradus]

Ditto, thanks for the posting.

[jayne lee wilson]

For those of us of a certain age, the picture was rather clear. The dominance of Karajan in the recording industry between roughly the end of WW2 and his death in 1989 was followed by a growing period of neglect, as though in reaction.

So Peter Quantrill's lengthy feature article in the January 2008 issue of Gramophone - 'Karajan - A God among Conductors' - came as something of a shock. What's more, Quantrill is not one of those (like me) who grew up musically with K, he is of a completely new generation of observers.

Here is his piece: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/editori...eter-quantrill

Yes - insightful piece I read when it appeared, with very good historical and cultural eagle-eye about it, but - he's wrong about the DG Bruckner Cycle which isn't consistently "lifeless" - those first three, last and late recorded, symphonies, and the 9th, are on a different level of immediacy, freshness and intensity. I'm sure many would feel the same about the 5th & possibly the 6th too.

[jayne lee wilson]

(Here's one I made earlier...)

I was one of those 1970s LP-purchasers and Radio 3 listeners who followed everything Karajan did... so often I recall wonderful Sunday morning relays or recordings from Salzburg, RIAS or ZF Berlin, with both the VPO and the Berliner Philharmoniker. It was through those that I first thrilled to - Mahler 5 and 6, Bruckner 8 and 9, Brahms 2, an almost apocalyptically dark Schubert Unfinished ....there was a relay of, of all things, Schoenberg's Pelléas et Melisande, live from the Philharmonie during a Radio 3 German Weekend.
Live from Berlin! You could scarcely believe it was happening.

Of those early LP purchases, the Nielsen 4th stands out (whatever I might think of it now - so much more “competition”...) as a musical discovery and (along with the BSO/Berglund 5th) the start of a lifelong passion for Nielsen. The 1975 BPO Bruckner 8th and incandescent 1980 3rd (1889 Novak) (with what seemed state-of-the-art stereo sound for the time), the BPO Parsifal... when it appeared, the Mahler 6th seemed far ahead of the recorded competition from Solti, Haitink, Levine and so on.. (I found the CSO/ Abbado slightly too Romantic at the time but admired it far more off CD).
I bought the BPO Saint-Saens' 3rd Symphony, adored it, and used to play it unfeasibly loud with the windows open!

The 4-LP 2nd Viennese set was a revelation at the time,. for those of us raised upon the plainspoken BBCSO/Boulez broadcasts of such. Such power, beauty and intensity! Certainly not "safe" or "comfortable".... just put on the Berg Op.6 at high levels and try to remain calm in the face of the onslaught......

***
Oddly though, I never really got on with what I encountered of his EMI LP Catalogue: I recall returning 1970s Berlin boxsets of the Brahms and Schubert Symphonies after struggling to enjoy either sound or interpretation. But then his readings of earlier Romantic or Classical repertoire - of Beethoven (perhaps with the partial exception of the 1962 BPO set), Schumann, Mendelssohn, never really appealed to me - at least, the little I heard of them back then. Listening to streamed excerpts recently hasn't changed my mind.

***

Fast-Forward to my late-90s-aquisition of a CD player, and as per my list, it would be the 1960s BPO DG Sibelius 4-7, the Franck D Minor Symphony and Ravel anthology with the Orchestre de Paris, Debussy Pelléas et Melisande (EMI evidently more aurally-sympathetic off of CD) but above all the 2VS set (stunning off CD) Berlin Honegger 2 & 3 and the Stravinsky set of the Symphony of Psalms, Symphony in C Major and Concerto in D.... as aforementioned, I should note, too, his early mono 1947 recording of the Roussel 4th with the Philharmonia; it does not have, for me, such classic status as say, Robert Layton afforded it, but remains a wonderfully pioneering record.

A limited list perhaps, and I don't revisit his recordings much now; but he was one of those classic-age-stereo recording artists that made me fall in love with Classical Music, and Orchestral Music especially. Honour Him.

[Conchis]

I love the description of Karajan’s Sibelius as ‘the freezing wildness of the icy fjords as viewed from the interior of a centrally heated limousine.’

I actually love von K’s Sibelius, but I think there may be a shred (or more) of truth in that observation.

The idiot Lebrecht takes Karajan to task for the ‘smoothness’ of his Mahler and the aforementioned (bestselling) 2nd Viennese School recordings, but i think there is a case to be made for ‘smooth’ Mahler.

Incidentally, the last live performance I heard of Mahler 6 persuaded me that the work is, among other things, full of mordant comedy. The first movement in particular could be a self-portrait of the composer laughing at his own moroseness and bad humour - a bit like Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man enjoying the agony of his own toothache.

[doversoul1]

For those of us of a certain age, the picture was rather clear. The dominance of Karajan in the recording industry between roughly the end of WW2 and his death in 1989 was followed by a growing period of neglect, as though in reaction.

So Peter Quantrill's lengthy feature article in the January 2008 issue of Gramophone - 'Karajan - A God among Conductors' - came as something of a shock. What's more, Quantrill is not one of those (like me) who grew up musically with K, he is of a completely new generation of observers.

Here is his piece: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/editori...eter-quantrill

A very interesting article.
even in the Four Seasons there is a supremely confident sense of Vivaldi’s innovative forms that allows violinist Michael Schwalbé free rein from one bar to the next.

Is this the ‘cow pretending to be a dog’ recording? Whatever we think about it now, it must have been quite something when it came out.

[Richard Barrett]

even in the Four Seasons there is a supremely confident sense of Vivaldi’s innovative forms that allows violinist Michael Schwalbé free rein from one bar to the next.

It was actually the first recording of those works that I ever heard, although, unusually I suppose, I was already very familiar with the ASMiF recording of op.3 and numerous other Vivaldi works before the appearance of the then new HvK disc at my local library tempted me to have a listen. I remember quite liking it, but I haven't heard it since then: once Harnoncourt's op.8 came out in 1977 I realised I would probably never again have to listen to Baroque music played as if it were written in the 19th century.

Something disappointing about HvK in general is that he doesn't seem to have been at all curious about repertoire outside the established canon (with the strange exception of Honegger, I wonder how that happened, and I suppose the Second Viennese School) - with his reputation and clout he could easily have expanded that canon rather than entrenching it further, but no: for him it consisted only of works that others before him had anointed as masterpieces.