Simon Rattle Talks About Karajan....

[Conchis]

I think I agree witn a lot of what you said there and maybe what you say about Abbado appllies also to Rattle. What Rattle achieved with the CBSO was in many ways more memorable than that with the BPO, and maybe both Abbado and Rattle were less able to stamp their individuality, nor maybe did not feel the need to, when working with the BPO, well oiled machine. They were not in an orchestra building mode - the love of the music was there but, and I hesitate to say this because I do not know enough about the relationships with the orchestra, was the love of the music makers there? Also with Rattle and EMI was he as well served by recording engineers in Berlin as he was in Birmingham or London?

I think he was very badly served by his engineers in both London and Birmingham (I can't speak for Berlin, as I don't know his BPO recordings that well). Talk about 'compromised sound'....

[cloughie]

I think he was very badly served by his engineers in both London and Birmingham (I can't speak for Berlin, as I don't know his BPO recordings that well). Talk about 'compromised sound'....

Not really!

[Richard Barrett]

With regard to the Karajan Second Viennese School recordings: somebody in the recording industry told me that these were, yes, wonderful but totally unlike any possible live performance as the orchestra layout was not only unusual but changed radically between different sections of each work. Can anybody confirm or deny this?

Not during different sections, but during different "pieces" in the Webern sets for example. (Of course any studio recording is "totally unlike any possible live performance" because of editing etc.) i'm sure his 2VS recordings did much to "normalise" those composers' places in the repertoire but I don't listen to them very often in comparison with other more recent interpretations. Whether the composers "would have liked them" is, as always, a completely irrelevant question!

[vinteuil]

One doesn’t criticize Michelangelo for not placing a syphillitic chancre on his David, and if HvK wanted to present us with otherworldly beauty, I will gladly accept the offering

... isn't the evidence that syphilis was a 'New World' disease, introduced to Europe by Columbus's returning sailors - the first written records of an outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1494. Unlikely, then, that David wd have been a sufferer...

[ ... Michelangelo [1475-1564] is another question, of course.]


.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not during different sections, but during different "pieces" in the Webern sets for example.

Oh - I thought it was only in the Schönberg Op31 Variations that these individual re-seatings for each variation was used? (It would be as/even more "appropriate"/"useful" for each of the Webern Op6 pieces, too.) It wasn't (AFAIK) used in the other works by Schönberg, Berg. or Webern works. (There is a bootleg Live recording of the Op33 Variations, which when compared with the studio recording demonstrates Karajan's ability to sustain the overall structure and pace of the whole work whilst recording the individual sections.)

[Conchis]

[QUOTE=Richard Barrett;717478]Not during different sections, but during different "pieces" in the Webern sets for example. (Of course any studio recording is "totally unlike any possible live performance" because of editing etc.) i'm sure his 2VS recordings did much to "normalise" those composers' places in the repertoire but I don't listen to them very often in comparison with other more recent interpretations. Whether the composers "would have liked them" is, as always, a completely irrelevant question![/QUOTE]


'This is the greatest performance of Verklaerte Nacht I have ever heard - or ever will hear.' (Arnold Schoenberg, who in alternative reality, died in the late seventies after giving his approval to Karajan's recording). Imagine the units that might have shifted! :)

I believe Karajan's 2nd Viennese School recordings WERE best-sellers; or, at least, performed better than expectations.

In the Osborne biography, Karajan is quoted saying (maybe with tongue in cheek): 'If all the 2nd VS boxes printed were put on top of each other, they'd be higher than the Eiffel Tower!'

[Richard Barrett]

Oh - I thought it was only in the Schönberg Op31 Variations that these individual re-seatings for each variation was used?

Yes, sorry, my memory was defective, you're right, the Variations were done that way. Were the Webern pieces not also done like that?

[Richard Barrett]

'If all the 2nd VS boxes printed were put on top of each other, they'd be higher than the Eiffel Tower!'

Apparently he partly bankrolled the production himself so I guess he would have been very aware of manufacturing and sales figures!

[jayne lee wilson]

I think he was very badly served by his engineers in both London and Birmingham (I can't speak for Berlin, as I don't know his BPO recordings that well). Talk about 'compromised sound'....

A comment such as this could do with specific examples.... most of the CBSO/Rattle tapings at the Warwick Arts Cente are excellent - spacious mid hall perspective, terrific well-focussed detail, very wide dynamic range; I have many on the original EMI Angel CDs, and they are still a sonic reference. With engineers like - Keener, Clements, Murray, Sheady etc....no wonder. The Symphony Hall was a bigger challenge but as the Haydn and Henze recordings show, one that was well met.
(The Haydn 60/70/90 album is a wonderful example of the sheer beauty and musical excellence of the Warwick sound...for poise, polish and tonal sweetness, rather Karajan-perfect in itself!).
Try the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra/Mandarin c/w if you really want to blow the winter socks off your ears - preferably in the Okazaki Toshiba remaster.....they usually need a fairly high volume setting though, and amp/speaker capability to cope.

Berlin on EMI? Yes, far more variable... but, sonically, that is largely due to the hall, as many Abbado recordings show (Or compare the Berlin/Rattle Brahms/Schoenberg Op.25 with the CBSO one...).
This was better managed on some DCH webcasts - perhaps it is better with an audience in....with careful adjustment of the acoustic canopy; it often seems to sound better with smaller groups.
Best Berlin/Rattle for sound and music? Possibly those unexpected Dvorak tone-poems.

They should have stuck with the J-C Kirche - terrific recording venue as per most of HvK's 60s efforts (the earlier Bruckner 4,7,9 etc).....

(...still awaiting someone to tell me - contextually - what "repellent" means...)

[ahinton]

"the greatest performance of Verklaerte Nacht I have ever heard"

wasn't conducted by Karajan. Indeed, it wasn't conducted by anyone and didn't need to be since it was given by just six players. Just saying...

[Conchis]

A comment such as this could do with specific examples.... most of the CBSO/Rattle tapings at the Warwick Arts Cente are excellent - spacious mid hall perspective, terrific well-focussed detail, very wide dynamic range; I have many on the original EMI Angel CDs, and they are still a sonic reference. With engineers like - Keener, Clements, Murray, Sheady etc....no wonder. The Symphony Hall was a bigger challenge but as the Haydn and Henze recordings show, one that was well met.
(The Haydn 60/70/90 album is a wonderful example of the sheer beauty and musical excellence of the Warwick sound...for poise, polish and tonal sweetness, rather Karajan-perfect in itself!).
Try the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra/Mandarin c/w if you really want to blow the winter socks off your ears - preferably in the Okazaki Toshiba remaster.....they usually need a fairly high volume setting though, and amp/speaker capability to cope.

Berlin on EMI? Yes, far more variable... but, sonically, that is largely due to the hall, as many Abbado recordings show (Or compare the Berlin/Rattle Brahms/Schoenberg Op.25 with the CBSO one...).
This was better managed on some DCH webcasts - perhaps it is better with an audience in....with careful adjustment of the acoustic canopy; it often seems to sound better with smaller groups.
Best Berlin/Rattle for sound and music? Possibly those unexpected Dvorak tone-poems.

They should have stuck with the J-C Kirche - terrific recording venue as per most of HvK's 60s efforts (the earlier Bruckner 4,7,9 etc).....

(...still awaiting someone to tell me - contextually - what "repellent" means...)

The CBSO Mahler 7 taped at Snape Matings is notorious.

[jayne lee wilson]

The CBSO Mahler 7 taped at Snape Matings is notorious.

But that is neither London (which did you have in mind there?) nor Birmingham - the Mahler 7 is very much an Aldeburgh one-off, live complete with applause - and should be contextualised as such.

See ES in Gramophone 9/92 for a careful appraisal.
He felt it was too confining an acoustic for Mahler yes, as I do myself (though never off-puttingly so - the listener is always aware of the acoustical distinctiveness, which doesn't prevent clarity or a wide dynamic range - it is playing pleasurably as I write) and it is a shade dry, but he also said "tonal quality is first class..... a clear gently ambient sound serving both intimacy and atmosphere..."....
It was as it were rushed into service, as Rattle was dissatisfied with a previous studio attempt.

Perhaps not "notorious" then, (from whose accounts?) - especially given its interpretative and orchestral excellence.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, sorry, my memory was defective, you're right, the Variations were done that way. Were the Webern pieces not also done like that?

I don't remember ever reading that this was the case, and I can't find sources to support it. (It would only have been necessary and/or practical for Op 6, wouldn't it? No such solo/group focussing necessary in the Passacaglia, Symphony, and Op 5 String Movements?) After recording the Schönberg Op31, Karajan immediately dropped the work from his repertory (he'd been programming it since October '62, and apparently had rehearsed individual sections in the same way that he recorded them separately over a decade later) - which meant replacing scheduled concert programmes, including one at the 1974 Berlin Festival. He was greeted with booes when he came on to conduct the Mozart Concerto that he'd substituted.

And you're right that Karajan partly bankrolled the project - DG wanted to commemorate the Schoenberg Centenary but hadn't expected such a "luxury" conductor & orchestra would be involved. Karajan waived his fee, spread the recordings over a two-year period, and gave DG a 2LP set of German Marches, played by the BPO winds & percs all to offset the costs. As it was, the four LP set outsold the 2LP Marches.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

wasn't conducted by Karajan. Indeed, it wasn't conducted by anyone and didn't need to be since it was given by just six players. Just saying...

The finest performance of Verklaerte Nacht that I have ever heard Live was conducted by Karajan: the composer's 1947 revision of his own 1920s edition for String Orchestra - RFH, October, 1988.

[Conchis]

Just noticed this blog entry from Robert Meyer, recounting the Philharmonia's US/Canada tour with Karajan, the one which included the 'Peter Gibbs incident'.

https://robertmeyer.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/last-tour-with-von-karajan/