Karajan 70s

By 1970, the year this collection begins, the position with Karajan in terms of the musical panorama was –with apologies to the late Frank Loesser-“Whatever Herbert wants, Herbert gets!”It had not always been so, and it had been a struggle along the way to put it mildly.After the struggles of the early 1930s, there followed a period of contentious success under the Nazi regime which involved his enforced membership of the party in 1935 (membership was officially closed in 1933 so as to benefit only “true believers” but there was an established process for those with the right connections to create false backdated applications, a practice which was rife and of which certain so-called historians and so called musicologists should have been aware!) but which ended with Karajan in disgrace for having married a wife who was half Jewish and continuing to programme proscribed works such as the St. Matthew Passion which made far too much reference to Jesus being a Jew!Thus the end of the war found Karajan as a fugitive from the Nazis, then under deep suspicion by the liberating Allies for his party membership.It is fair to state that Walter Legge was his salvation when he found him impoverished in a garret in Vienna, and Legge’s promotion of him revived his fortunes, and by 1956 he was both Lifetime Music Director of the BPO and Intendant of the Vienna State Opera.Still, all was not well with the Karajan project as recording was a major element in his artistic belief and EMI were not treating him with the respect he felt he was due, recording other conductors with the BPO and holding him to his contract to record with the Philharmonia.Walter Legge overplayed his hand through hubris, and made a series of misjudgements that meant EMI were very late entering the stereo recording scene, lost the loyalty of Karajan and ultimately, after the fiasco of his unilaterally disbanding the Philharmonia (or so he thought!) cost him his job and ended his career as a producer, other than for recordings by his wife Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, whose Manager and Agent he was.The flashpoint with Karajan was EMI’s insistence that he record Scheherazade, a piece he had never performed and with which he had no sympathy. This was the final straw in his refusal to enter into new contract negotiations-and EMI management were unbending in their position, with the result that he left-for DGG. Of course, by the time he left had not only entered into negotiations but had actually recorded for them, so how much of this was merely tactical politics of which Karajan was generally a master we can but surmise!!In the immediate post war era, “The German Gramophone Company” had been sold to Polydor, itself part of Siemens Holdings, and was something of a bit player in the cast that featured EMI, Decca, Columbia (CBS), RCA and Philips in the leading roles.The company that had once been owned by EMI and had used the HMV Nipper logo on its recordings now had no first division conductors and orchestras on its roster, though exclusive artists like Fricsay and Jochum were held in great esteem by the cognoscenti, and the radio orchestras that they had founded and led were first rate. Occasional opportunities to record Bohm and Konwitschny in East Germany were occasional and typical DGG releases featured conductors such as Ferdinand Leitner, Leopold Ludwig, Rosbaud, Hans Lowlein, Walter Born, Otmar Suitner and Carl Schuricht –fine artists all, and much admired today but they were not names to turn a recording into a bestseller!Their most successful releases were in fact legacies from the pre-war days-LP releases of remastered 78 releases by Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch with the BPO and VPO to for which they still had licences.New management at DGG in the late 1950s had bigger ambitions-an early ambitious release with a young up and coming conductor Lorin Maazel, with the BPO secured with Karajan’s gracious permission (I wonder why?). This Mono release ushered in a 40 year relationship with that great artist, but the transition came with the exclusive signing of the Karajan/BPO pairing-Karajan still recorded for Decca with the VPO of course.Karajan was daring from the outset and dragged an often reluctant DGG along on his coat-tails –there was real trepidation over the release in 1963 of the first ever complete Beethoven Symphonies set in a single box set, but Karajan’s judgement was entirely correct and it was a smash success-and recording after recording shared the same success so that by 1965 DGG was part of the leading Triumvirate along with EMI and Decca, certainly in Europe.The wheels fell of the wagon in late 1965 when Karajan’s ambitious Salzburg Ring project, complete with dedicated Festival, did not enthuse the management of DGG who unbeknown to Karajan had already contracted to record Bohm live in 1966 &67 in Bayreuth.I have recounted the background to this in some depth in my review of the eventual Karajan recording, but here it is only necessary to recount that Karajan felt betrayed and let it be known that he was open to approaches!It was Peter Andry of EMI who seized the opportunity, and negotiations took place wherein Karajan was basically promised free reign and limitless budget (within reason) by EMI.DGG had to respond, and in 1970 Karajan signed new “exclusive” contracts with both EMI and DGG, soon to become just DG with the formation of Polygram.We who have the temerity to express our opinions often refer to the Decca Sound or the Culshaw Sound in my case for he was the architect of the Decca recording philosophy.However, there is a very definite “Karajan Sound”-which as contemporary live recordings show is very different from what took place in the concert hall or opera pit.Karajan embraced recording with same viewpoint as Culshaw-he regarded it as a separate artistic form not in any way designed to replicate the concert experience, but in his case was the method of reproducing an idealised orchestral sound which was just not possible to achieve in live performance. I’m not referring to technical perfection-in fact Karajan was less concerned with this than one might think, as countless anecdotes from his associates confirm-but the balance of the orchestral sound, which I think of as “svelte.”The Karajan Sound was led by the cellos and violas, horns and trombones were restrained and subsumed into an integrated palette, trumpets sounded proudly, timps and percussion such as the tam-tam were there to subtly add weight, not to dominate, woodwind were forward and prominent, violin tone was homogenous (no Viennese “ dirty tone”) and huge!In a recorded performance, spontaneous gestures were eschewed in favour of a “reference “performance-the artistic ideal free from momentary influence!Throughout his career, Karajan was rarely persuaded to allow a live performance to be released-even filmed concerts had the “soundtrack” pre-recorded and what you hear is not what was being played at the concert that you are watching-this even applies to the DVD release of the 1987 New Year Concert.If anyone is left reading, I now turn to this set. From 1970 to 75 Karajan had his finest and happiest hours-he could perform and record whatever he wanted, with his own hand picked recording teams at both DG and EMI.In 1975 he suffered the critical back condition from which he never recovered and from then on was a martyr to constant pain-which if anything spurred him on to greater heights.The 82 Discs in this set replicate LPs which formed the original releases and covers are beautifully reproduced. The discs have all been re-mastered at 24Bits/96kHz-DG’s process which sets out to extract and enhance the original balance and sonics of the LP releases, and further balance adjustments have not been made. This is what DG refers to as “Original Image Bit Enhancement”-this is a mission statement not the description of a specific technical process.The recorded sound is vivid, rich and detailed as never before, backgrounds are generally silent throughout and any balance issues are the same as on the first release.In that sense, the recordings have not been improved; rather the reproduced sound has been enhanced.There are surprises aplenty-the Baroque recordings are far less unidiomatic than the HIP Police would have as believe and Karajan did employ smaller forces, the Beethoven Cycle is superb-arguably his best-I love his Mozart and always will, and we have the complete symphonies of Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schumann as well as ample Tchaikovsky and the popular classics by Bizet, Grieg & Rossini in which Karajan was a peerless interpreter.There are surprises-all the Verdi Overtures, a somewhat abstruse work by Orff which would benefit from a text inclusion (I can’t help feeling Karajan is regretting the whole undertaking throughout-with good reason!) , Austro-German Marches from pre-1914 including the Nibelungen March (a riot!) and the legendary Berg, Schoenberg and Webern recordings- which are sublime.Then there is Richard Strauss, Bruckner Symphonies including the only recorded 6th and Ninth and the only stereo 5th, none of which need any further recommendation-and the entire studio Mahler recordings, with the last discs of the set being the Ninth which I prefer marginally to the later live recording.Finally the Das Lied von der Erde receives the re-mastering it deserves, the sound clean and detailed and the original LP balance restored so that the glorious orchestra is not as distant as on the poor effort available all these years on Galleria!If one considers the contemporary EMI and Decca recordings and the complete opera recordings made during this decade, the effort and energy is preparing such a colossal body of work defies credibility-the average was over releases per year.In the present climate there will hardly be 10 new releases in a decade, on CD at least, though the Digital Concert Hall does provide a valuable platform-Karajan would have loved it for sure!Not everything on this set is ideal, even to the ears of his committed admirers, but the power, beauty and authority of the overwhelming majority of the discs in this compendium is of a level we can only dream of today. A genuine treasure trove! Stewart Crowe.

Certain "media commentators" and music critics claim that Karajan would "round off the edges" making music sound too beautiful and "Mantovani-like". Well, this myth has been trotted out for decades, perpetuated by Karajan's detractors who failed/fail to accept that Karajan would play through a phrase - even the last note in a phrase! Beautiful, yes. Rounded off, no! These "experts" ought to take a listen to Karajan's recording of Bruckner's Fifth or the Ninth included in this box-set - these recordings indicate quite clearly that HvK was able to bring taut objectivity to bear, a precision and forensic analysis of the notes worthy of, say, Szell and Reiner. And Karajan's 70s Beethoven cycle, or his Brahms cycle for that matter, can hardly be considered "Mantovani-like". The Tchaikovsky cycle remains a firm favourite and yes the music is beautiful, but its beauty is written into the score - and Karajan would commit a music score to memory...I could say more - much more - but I find it counterproductive. Suffice it to say, there is quite possibly no finer set of recordings available at the present time and purchase will guarantee a lifetime of musical pleasure.

This was sold to me as having auto-rip. It looks like all the tracks are in the MP3 store but split into four volumes, and to date Amazon have provided only the third volume on my cloud player. I keep getting contradictory responses from "advisors" who know little and understand less. The current position seems to be that they are not going to provide the rest. Legal action is pending. If you don't want hassle, don't buy from Amazon, and don't rely on their promises.The actual CD set is well worth buying, as long as you're not allergic to Karajan (any many are, of course). I'm not, although I'm equally not a Karajan worshipper. This set does contain many of his best recordings and is excellent value assuming you don't have too many of them already. There are reviews on the amazon.com website giving information about remastering that is not mentioned in the booklet for this European release. Briefly, many of the recordings had been OIBP remastered and many (but not all) of the rest have been remastered for this release. I have listened to the remastered Beethoven Pastoral and it certainly doesn't sound like the previous CD release. I remember the LPs as sounding rather manipulated and those effects, approved by HvK, are back. The previous CD sounded smoother but introduced a bland effect that is now thankfully absent.As with the 1960s set, presentation is excellent. There have been a few tweaks since that set. The CD number is now printed at the top of the rear of the cardboard sleeves rather than obscuring part of the text as they did before. They have been less rigid in laying out the discs as they were on LP, which brings both losses and gains. For example, I am pleased to say that Beethoven's ninth has not been split across two discs. On the other hand, some of the LP contents have been squeezed two to a CD, which means you lose out on the sleeve notes of one, even though the LP front cover is shown in the booklets. Pieces to suffer this way include Beethoven's fifth (here coupled with the fourth) and seventh (here coupled with the Pastoral). And wouldn't it have been nice if they had made the cardboard sleeves slightly larger to accommodate paper liners on each CD to enhance the mini-LP effect?Still, I shouldn't really gripe. Overall, four stars for this release but no stars for Amazon.

I bought this following my absolute delight with the 1960's Karajan collection and I must say this is an equally superb feast of quality classical music. Beautifully presented and crystal clear, the Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Mozart, Mahler, Liszt works are all wonderful, but the Bach 'St. Matthew Passion' and 'Mass in B' are just outstanding. There is so much to choose from, it is just a joyous indulgence to plunge in and listen. This set is worth every penny and I can't recommend it highly enough - 82 CDs of sheer bliss!

Good value

here we have a winner