Karajan "The vienna Years"

I agree Chris - he was probably too busy to be really good with humour. There was something else he lost as well, which is tellingly revealed in that 1944 Bruckner VIII I mentioned in the historical Bruckner thread - and that is humility. I do rather like Karajan's Olympian view of Bruckner actually, but the Adagio in 1944, whilst almost identical in design to the late 1988 reading in Vienna, has a sense of humbleness that is most affecting and was rarely present in Karajan's later work. This is another early example of why this conductor was able to scale the heights he did so quickly after the war - the unhurried interpretation of Karajan's conception of the work is already there, but the playing of the orchestra, the strings in particular, is quite phenomenal and the performance is also quite something - that this was achieved in the difficult and dark days of Berlin in 1944, in the early medium of studio recording, beggars belief really. As does the sound - the last movement was done in stereo and sounds quite astonishing! Typically, once Karajan had heard the results, he wanted to re-record the whole lot again in stereo !!!!!

LD

Pleased you haven't been offended - and apologies for me not knowing how to put the accidental on Senor on my computer (it was meant to be "Mr"!)

I'm looking forward to reading your comments too on the remainder of your early Karajan discs as well !

LD1

Thank you Señor McCarthy ! I'm only pleased Oscar has a good sense of humour !!

That said, I agree with your comments regarding the earlier Karajan recordings when comparing them to the later ones. With the exception of the Strauss Metamorphosen and the first Philharmonia Sibelius Five, I nearly always prefer the later renditions, although of course he only recorded the Reznicek, Roussel and Balakirev the once. I'm sure you have read it already, but this period is most interestingly documented in Richard Osborne's biography on Karajan "A Life in Music" - an awful lot of planning had to go into thinking when side breaks had to occur as well as dealing with the vagaries of the fuel supply in post-war Vienna. In particular, the story of the chorus disappearing behind a cloud of their own vapour in a freezing cold hall once they had started singing in the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth amusingly seems to sum everything up !

LD1

Carlos Kleiber has done the same thing, on Orfeo. However, I trust this is the production team and the label's arrogance or shortcomings rather than the conductor's.

Parla

Just so! Not least because reading such a well-chilled anecdote is far preferable to experiencing it in the flesh!

(I mean to imply nothing grumpy or cheaply sardonic in the preceding remark, incidentally. I have occasionally related mud- and misery-free details of my reluctant combat service in Vietnam many decades ago, and I am, thank the good Lord, at an age where my scrubbed recollections have practically routed my unscrubbed ones, even on my own memory's ground.)

Yes indeed, and it was 1951, though it was Varnay, not Mödl as Brünnhhilde. So far only Rheingold and Siegfried have surfaced from Karajan's cycle, and in pretty wretched sound unfortunately. The EMI Walküre Act 3 offers a glimpse of what might have been, and there are persistent rumours that EMI's tapes of the rest still exist, but alas no sign so far.

Chris