Thank you. Not a twinge of cavil here. One thing that impressed me was how often HvK and the band clarified music that could be muddled or tortured or could simply drown in “chromatic sludge” elsewhere. I thought I knew Pelleas pretty well, but when I heard this it was like someone had turned on the lights.
I have no doubt that I gravitated to this sort of thing because of youthful exposure to scores like Sawtell's KRONOS, Ifukube's GODZILLA, Frontiere's OUTER LIMITS, and Lubin's ONE STEP BEYOND. I once heard a story about a first-grade teacher playing classical music for her class and their favorite piece was Crumb's BLACK ANGELS. We absolutely accept this sort of dissonance in films, you bet.
A slam dunk. Plus, a LaSalle Quartet 2nd Viennese School set on DG I've always associated with the Karajan. I recall buying them on vinyl very close to each other.
And the fabulous documentation that came with both. Do you remember how much you paid for those boxes at the time? I was always curious. The Karajan came with a complete book!
Excellent appraisal of the music & recordings. Despite the hype around Karajan, he turned in some really great accessible & ideology free performances as on this set - Boulez & some others notwithstanding. So many moods here along with superb & atmospheric playing from the Berliners opens up these dark worlds in ways never to be forgotten.
It's a shame Karajan never got around to recording Schoenberg's 5 Orchestral Pieces, op. 16, which are such remarkable pieces ! I'd love to know what you consider to be the best recordings of these !
I'd have to go back and do some intense listening to answer that question. I love the music, but it's not the sort of thing that sticks firmly in the memory--at least not mine!
I like how you framed this discussion because it now has me thinking about how a top tier conductor and orchestra can legitimize works. This set was a mystery to me when I was first listening to classical and I never really related to it until I heard the Berg pieces performed live.
I wholeheartedly agree that the Karajan Second Vienese School set is a non-contentious no-brainer... Even people, who normally don't like this kind of music, tend to like it! 😂
I remember owning these fine recordings and had me looking for a Karajan performance of Webern's one romantic foray, Im Sommerwind. I never could find a Karajan take on the piece. I think it would have been fun to hear.
While they were recording these great discs (much of it over the space of a few months) in between those sessions they also recorded the two-discs of German and Austrians Marches (otherwise known as (Nazis on Parade… 😂)…
Actually, the title of the album is: "Prussian and Austrian marches", indicating that the marches stem from before the great cataclysm, i.e. WW1, and, in the wake of the war, the dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian double monarchy (K&K) and the abdication of Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia. Some time before anyone thought of any nazis...although, it's difficult not to shudder by the title of one of the marches, "Alte Kameraden" ('Old Comrades in Arms'). This was, I think, one of the ways former nazis after WW2, referred to each other. A cryptic euphemism, as when Winifried Wagner after WW2 wasn't thinking of the United States, when she in correspondance to some 'Alte Kameraden' mentioned USA. She instead hinted to "Unser Seligen Adolf" ('Our Blessed Adolf')!
I learned to love this music when i learned to let go of my notions of what music is "supposed" to be. It's scary to realize all our beloved rules are made up, but also liberating. Is all such music "good"? Ultimately that's up to each of us as liberated individuals to decide for ourselves.
They were great recordings. Isn’t it also the case that Schoenberg was, at heart, a Romantic composer, who wanted a very lush, Romantic style of performance? He wasn’t like Stravinsky, who wanted a more straight, cool, modernist style.
Stravinsky lived in LA until the late 60s Then he got into a fight with Ernest Fleischmann or Martin Bernheimer or someone and said he's moving to Paris because no one appreciates him in Los Angeles. And so he did!
If - as has often been said - Karajan "paid" for these recordings himself, do we know how much it would have cost him (and how much was the conductor paid?!)
While I still don't like Schoenberg and Berg's music, Karajan certainly changed my mind on Webern. I have listened to Webern a few times before, but they were by third rate orchestras with third rate conductors who were trying so hard to tell the world that they are deep and profound. But their performance was honestly trash. Karajan however, showed me what Webern can sounds like when played right, and it just blew my mind. Nowadays if I am somehow in the mood to hear 12 tone, Webern is my go-to.
It is interesting that you often state Karajan's weaknesses (correctly so), yet so many reference recordings (also correctly so) reviewed in this series are his.
If you haven't done so already, a comparison of the Pelleases by Faure, Debussy, Sibelius and Schoenberg would be interesting. Heard Schonberg's decades ago, I think Karajan, the piece impressed me as a roiling mass of chromaticism pushed to its tonal outer limit. Few years ago I got Mitropoulos' recording on Music and Arts, liked it better. Got to tour the Schonberg archive at UCLA in the early 80's, I think, with the 20th Century Music prof and class. She knew Larry, his son. Saw the manuscript of Friede auf Erden.
I think it was at SC, right? Not UCLA. And then the family got pissed for some reason and moved it to Vienna as I remember. UCLA has that Schoenberg Square place on campus --'which a few years ago they wanted to rename for David Geffen, and there was such an outcry at the idea that he told them to forget about it. He took the medical school instead!
Since you mention Karajan and Shosty - does anyone know why he only did the 10th? It sounds to me like he really got along with Shosty so why didn't he do others?
For the reasons mentioned in the clip. When Karajan did a non-standard work (and DS was non-standard at the time) he wanted the field to himself. The Seventh already had a bit of history, and the Fifth had also several recordings and associations. The Tenth - at the time Karajan first tackled it - was comparatively new and largely unknown outside the USSR. I think in the West the only other recording was by Mitropoulos (I think Stokowski's was contemporaneous with Karajan's first one). Plus it was *the* showpiece of the Berliners' trip to Moscow.
According to Richard Osborne’s biography of Herb, he did make efforts to record the Fifth and the Eighth. But EMI said no. He evidently liked the Sixth, but felt Mravinsky’s recording couldn’t be bettered.
Dear Dave, I would love to pop here something totally out of topic, but wanted to share with you an observation about Gustavo Dudamel. I was casually listening to a few of his recordings. I am a big fan of Constantin Silvestri, and I love his Tchaikovsky 5th and his Dvorak 8. Listening the recordings have done Dudamel, I find so so clearly the influence of that recordings on him. As I found before the horrible influence of Barenboim in his Beethoven. Apparently he doesn't have so many ideas, maybe he has his favorite records and just copy them. Is that something that you have casually observed also? Would love to know your view on this detail. Thanks !
I have the first Boulez-conducts-Webern box, and I always thought of Webern’s 6 pieces for orchestra as a lesser work, lesser than the immediately surrounding works. Maybe it’s a bad performance- even the recording quality seems worse to me!
And, I suppose, it will be Karajan with Mahler‘s fifth symphony as the old reference recording, again. It is incredible, how influential and style forming this guy and the DGG were - back in the days. At times, it was somewhat annoying. I remember very vividly buying very reluctantly his very expensive integral recording of Pelleas and Melisande (Debussy) only because there was no alternative recording to be bought at the time or in a foreseeable future.
"It is incredible how influential and style forming this guy and DGG were..." - except that Karajan's Pelléas et Mélisande was on EMI (now Warner)! I agree, that Karajan's Mahler 5th might be a strong contender for a reference, but, personally, I would put my money on Bernstein in Vienna!
