July 16 is the anniversary of Herbert von Karajan's death. I'm of several minds where taking note of somebody's death-day is concerned. On the one hand, it's kind of creepy. On the other hand, the day of one's death is a more secure dividing line than the day of one's birth; the former is a razor-sharp transition from one state to another, while the latter is merely a change of address. My opinions on the matter notwithstanding, a number of classical music publications have seen fit to mark the anniversary. I suppose it was a slow news day, but then again, most days in the classical music biz are slow new days.
I have never been one to get all hotly negative about particular musicians. I'm just not a vendetta type. Instead, I run towards warm and abiding relationships, although I'm not particularly inclined to form passionate all-encompassing and exclusive relationships. Thus if I'm not a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Toscanini-ite, neither do I swoon over ever auditory jot and tittle from the Italian-American superstar. I take them as they are, listen and enjoy, and usually find something of interest. Perhaps that marks me as an undiscriminating floozy, but I like it that way. I just love hearing what various performers bring to the table, and musical omnivore that I am, I just never have any problem making a satisfying meal out of it all.
When Herbert von Karajan's 100th anniversary rolled around (change of address, not state of being) I had just started writing San Francisco Classical Music Examiner, an online column hosted by Examiner.com (not to be confused with the San Francisco Examiner, which is whole 'nother ballgame.) I decided to write about the anniversary, especially given that—as would be obvious from my above remarks—I'm not a flag-waving anti-Karajan who shreds the scenery by roasting, boiling, and fricaseeing the chap at every opportunity. As it happened, one of my links was picked up by a journalist who has made a specialty of Karajan-shredding, and a rather lively, if uncomfortable, exchange followed. I removed the link, not at his request, but to end what had become tiresome. Temperate discussions are not possible with intemperate people.
"Happy Birthday, Herbert" is not an Examiner article that I chose to preserve on my personal web site, but of course I have a copy hanging around on the computer. So in honor of a great—and terribly misunderstood—musician, I'm going to reprint it here, albeit exercising my artist's prerogative to perform some nips & tucks, including giving the puppy an altogether new ending. Here goes:
As a music-obsessed teenager in a culturally-limited American city I was challenged by the task of finding classical records. If a well-stocked record store in town existed, I didn't know about it. I was constrained to bicycling range, which meant that the local Target was my primary supply. The pickings were paltry, consisting only of recent releases by the big labels. The only thing more modest than Target's selection was my budget. I learned quickly where to focus, and in particular, what to avoid.
Target was just cool enough to carry some of the latest Deutsche Grammophon releases, which were dramatically more tantalizing than the everyday stuff from Columbia Masterworks or RCA Victor. Those yellow shields across the top with their German titles, the European orchestras and conductors; they bore potent witness to that sophisticated musical world that seemed so infinitely remote from my suburban blandness. Eventually I took a deep breath and bought one — Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, in the Brahms 2nd Symphony.
This LP was my first exposure to the Brahms symphonies, and to Karajan. Everything about the record thrilled me down to my toes — the piece, the performance, the multi-lingual program notes, the lush recording, the high-class pressing itself. Deutsche Grammophon and Karajan were, to me, the epitome of sonic class and high-end musicianship. I've never really lost that opinion, truth be told.
Articles, books, studies, essays, about Karajan have been written hither and yon, some of them heaping praise on the man and his music, others roundly condemning both. He has gotten press from journalists like Paris Hilton gets press, except that he's dead and she's not. Now, people don't get this worked up over other deceased front-rank conductors such as, say, Eugene Ormandy. What made Karajan so controversial?
Part of it is personal — his Nazi party membership, his dictatorial control over several major European opera houses and orchestras, his remote aloofness, his wealth, his power. But Karajan's musicianship and conducting come in for some brickbats as well. Much of that carping concerns the inflexibility of his orchestral sound, especially during his last decade. But what comes across as static and stultifying to one listener may be heard as sustained opulence to another.
Karajan left us an astounding legacy of recorded music. His discography includes gold-standard versions of the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Sibelius; he was one of the great opera conductors of the century — consider the Aida with Renata Tebaldi, Pelleas et Melisande with Frederika von Stade, the Dresden Meistersinger, or the major Mozart operas with Schwarzkopf, Gobbi, and Simoneau. He's routinely charged with slighting contemporary music, but it's a bum rap. He was no Koussevitzky or Bernstein, to be sure, but nonetheless he did his share. Only a very dedicated musician could have endured the endless, enervating frigidity of Cart Orff's 'De temporum fine comoedia', but —if anybody cares — Karajan left us an immaculately executed premiere (and only) recording.
He was a well-rounded musician, one whose style perhaps reflects the values of the pre-WWII era, but who was at home in a much wider repertoire than most of his contemporaries. For those who associate Karajan primarily with Germanic repertoire, it's worth remembering that he was an outstanding interpreter of both Sibelius and Debussy. As he grew older his range narrowed, but he could create astonishing performances right up to his very last days, capping his recording career with a spellbinding Bruckner Seventh Symphony.
I'll let the carpers and pickers and naysayers carp, pick, and naysay. I just keep on listening to his half-century recorded legacy, fascinated by just how much music-making it is possible to carry out in one lifetime. For those who would like to explore the lion's share of that astonishing discography, three box sets will do the trick and then some. Two whoppers from EMI cover his entire recorded legacy with the label—one for instrumental music, the other for vocal—and a recent release from Deutsche Grammophon gives us 85 CDs (original jacket style, which I love) documenting his glory years in the 1960s. The three sets together come out to 243 CDs. That's a lot, and it isn't even complete. A 9-disc set chronicles his stunning recordings for Decca (it includes that incredible Holst Planets in Vienna) while a 6-disc set lets you hear him in his early days, long before he was a European institution. In all likelihood you could bankrupt yourself trying to collect every single disc, every reprint, every collection and retrospective and anthology. Remember that this is a conductor who recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies five times. It's a cinch that more remains to be released—for one thing, Deutsche Grammophon should be releasing a 1970s-80s set to complement the recent 1960s collection. Broadcasts, Salzburg Festival stuff, live captures…it goes on and on. And there's a whole lotta video.
For a solid appraisal of Karajan's place in the scheme of things, you just can't do better than Richard Osborne's Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music, from 1998-99. Doggone thing's out of print, but it's easy enough to find copies via the miracle of Internet shopping.