Though it lacks a first movement, the 1944 Karajan Bruckner Eighth is both a notable performance and an astonishing piece of engineering. The finale, which was recorded in the studios of Berlin Radio in September 1944 in experimental 'two channel' sound, has occasionally been available on LP or CD, though never in such spectacular sound. For what we have here, as I understand it, is not the reproduction of a rough dubbing of the original mastertape but a transfer from the 30ips mastertape itself, part of a recently released hoard of tapes the Russians confiscated after the fall of Berlin in 1945. As for the second and third movements, recorded in mono towards the end of June 1944, these have never previously been released.
Koch's note says nothing about the circumstances in which the recordings were made, though we know from other sources that, between them, Karajan and the Berlin radio technicians managed to secure over 30 hours of studio time for the sessions. And it shows. One or two imprecise entries apart, the playing of the Prussian State Orchestra is superb: rich, silky strings, very fine horns, tolerable woodwinds. Indeed, it says something for the strength in depth of German musical life in those days (and the government's desire to protect it) that they could field such an orchestra in 1944 after the purges of the 1930s and the depredations of war.
As for the engineering, it almost beggars belief. In many ways the sound is sweeter and clearer than on any of Karajan's later commercial recordings of the Eighth, with the exception of the very last one of all made in Vienna in November 1988. In addition to the sheer weight and bloom of the sound, there is greater clarity of detail than we had from EMI in 1957 (nla) or DG in 1975, a recording that DG are now reissuing at mid-price in their Galleria series. In particular, the Berlin Radio engineers secure excellent definition of timpani and winds (solo and tutti) plus a more consistently focused string sound than was sometimes later the case. (True, the solo violin is little more than a shadowy presence at fig. K in the Adagio but that seems to be more a lapse of execution than engineering.)
As for the 'two-channel' recording of the finale, this opens out the sound without, as far as I can detect, providing much in the way of directional stereo. The tapes, I should add, are in pretty immaculate condition. There is a nasty glitch in the Adagio at 16'55'' but the rest is more or less fine with minimal background noise and rock-steady climaxes. (And what climaxes they are.)
As for Karajan's reading, it is astonishingly settled and complete. I was interested by Mr Kluge's remark (''Letters'', November, page 11) that by 1954 Furtwangler's reading of the Eighth had become ''like a single great meditation''. It seems Karajan's was that from the very outset (he first conducted the symphony in Aachen in 1940) where Furtwangler's rival 1944 Vienna radio recording (listed above) is anything but: a glorious performance but an intensely anguished one. There is a palpably anguished feel to Karajan's performance at the start of the Adagio (shades of his later 1947 recording of Brahms's German Requiem), but, in general, Karajan's reading is far more emotionally stable than Furtwangler's, with none of the exaggerated attention to nuance Furtwangler once claimed he heard in Karajan's conducting. For instance, where Furtwangler is frenetic in the Scherzo, Karajan sets and holds a well-nigh perfect Allegro moderato to which he adds a wealth of sympathetically drawn colour. The phrasing is also notably long-breathed and affectionate in a Bruno Walterish kind of way.
If Karajan stumbles it is in the slow movement where the tortuous ascent to the summit (this is Haas's text) sometimes loses momentum. Thus what was to become one of the great glories of Karajan's later performance is here its principal failing. Strictly speaking, the finale should also hang fire. He takes 27'34'' over it (24'07'' in 1975). Yet it never does. The whole thing is enormously compelling. And so very sure of itself. Unlike Furtwangler's, this is a reading that seems impervious to a world at war.
The 1975 set is also very fine, yet despite its new mid-price status and the addition of a svelte Siegfried Idyll, it is not really a match—in character, mood or sophistication of engineering—for the full-price 1988 Vienna Philharmonic set which is the true consummation of Karajan's 50-year-old love affair with a symphony that meant as much to him as any other.'