A Bigger Tent

I am giving away no secrets by acknowledging that I’m getting older. (What else, pray tell, would I be doing?) Aging, while no Sunday stroll in the park, has its privileges. Lots and lots of them, in fact. Among the list of advantages, the opportunity to temper one’s prejudices, to extend one’s enthusiasms, and to broaden one’s critical sphere must rank high. Maybe not quite up there with purchasing power, security, and social authority, but still nothing to sneeze at.

That isn’t to say that all folks enlarge their tents as they mature. We all know our fair share of grumpy codgers who shrivel ever inward, burrowing into their own private zones of intolerance and willful blindness. Don’t confuse me with the facts, one such coot used to snarl any time I attempted to point out the logical fallacies behind his sharply dualistic viewpoints. But he was him, and I’m me, and I can say with some confidence that my aesthetic opinions have not only broadened with time, but they have acquired a flexibility and nuance that I could never have achieved back in my twitchy youth.

I am a bonafide orchestra wonk and follower of conductors and orchestras, and yet I have managed to avoid the sad practice of singling out some conductors for unrestrained lavish praise while condemning others to eternal hellfire. Collectors and enthusiasts tend to develop such dualistic snobberies; they become drooling Furtwängler fans or frothing-at-the-mouth Toscanini haters, for example. I’m happy to say that I neither drool nor froth. Oh, I have my preferred orchestras and conductors—I’m not blissfully uncritical of everybody and everything—but the hard-edged gimlet eye is simply not for me.

Over the past several years the good folks at Deutsche Grammophon have continued milking that seemingly inexhaustible cow, Herbert von Karajan, he of the 900+ DGG recordings, not to mention hundreds more on EMI. Karajan made a whole lot of people a whole lot of money during his spectacular career, and his death did nothing to stem the flow of shekels. First at the Philharmonia, then at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic, and finally with the Vienna Philharmonic in his late years after ill-will and conflict had made his Berlin post nearly intolerable, Karajan set down umpty-million recordings of repertoire from Baroque to Modern. His DGG albums are exceptionally high-quality productions, meticulously recorded in either Berlin’s Lukaskirche or in the Philharmonie, and beautifully packaged in shiny albums with the bright yellow cartouche across sophisticated artwork or photography. Back in their original LP releases, their pressings were mostly superb save towards the end of the LP era when DGG jumped on the el-cheapo bandwagon and started releasing flimsy, tortilla-thin discs that wore out quickly. Karajan was one of the prime movers of the development of digital recording and the compact disc, then later on, the DVD. His digital recordings begin straightaway with the 1980s and continue on to his death in 1989.

Now Deutsche Grammophon has released the capstone of their complete Karajan orchestral/choral recordings, in the hefty 78-CD box set Karajan 80s, the final complement to the equally hefty Karajan 60s and Karajan 70s. (Hmm?? Well, of course I have both of those as well, sheesh.) These are deluxe sets employing the “original jackets” style in which each CD is encased in an exact copy of the original LP or CD jacket. Each of the three sets includes a hefty booklet containing essays and meticulous track lists. All three sets are a tremendously good deal, and offer a rich assortment of first-class music-making.

Generally speaking Karajan’s plush orchestral imagery is out of step with modern thinking on matters Baroque and Classical. Most modern collectors are apt to sniff or even snarl at Karajan’s Haydn and Mozart interpretations, big-band and big-boned performances that bulge with the sonic effulgence of the mighty Berlin and Vienna Phils. Any number of collectors come over all vinegar and thistles when the subject of Karajan’s Haydn symphony recordings of the 1980s come up. Too thick, they gripe. The minuets are too slow, they whine. Limousine Haydn, they quip. Lips curl and fingers wag.

Well, I’ve got news for the curlers and waggers. I’ve been listening to those exact Haydn symphony recordings, expertly remastered for Karajan 80s by DGG’s crackerjack engineers, and you know what? They’re not particularly thick. The minuets are indeed leisurely but they gain a certain elegant hauteur in the process. And it’s the Berlin Philharmonic, ferkrissake. Strings to die for. And the winds? Puh-leeze.

More to the point, I—who was once a merrily and twittily intolerant HIPster—find Karajan’s interpretations compelling, valid, and interesting. I adore the sound of the Berlin Phil players as they revel in the endless inventiveness of Haydn’s masterful orchestration. Lovely resonant audio just adds to the pleasure.

I’m also delighted with Dorati’s Haydn recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica, and with Adam Fischer’s fascinating set with the pickup “Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra.” Not to mention Jochum conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, or Colin Davis and the mighty Concertgebouw, or Bernstein in Vienna. And to round things off, I’m also just fine with performances evincing a more HIPster approach, such as the series from Thomas Fey and the Heidelbergers, or the Haydn outings by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, or Mark Minkowski’s fascinating traversal through the “London” Symphonies with his Musiciens du Louvre. About the only ones that don’t float my boat are those painfully academic and scholarly affairs such as Christopher Hogwood’s aborted set on Oiseau-Lyre or the early attempts at “period” Haydn from Max Gobermann at the head of the downright ratty Vienna State Orchestra. But that isn’t to say that I go postal on the subject of the Hogwoods or Gobermanns or any of those hapless discs that I tend to leave vegetating on the shelf. I just don’t like them as much as the others.

I’ve been lucky in my aging. I could have turned into such a prissy little thing, the kind of insufferable twit who grimaces when he hears the barest hint of string lushness in Haydn or Mozart. Instead I have come to appreciate the many glories of the big-band folks in the Baroque and Classical repertory. And that includes big plush ol’ Herbert von Karajan and his big plush ol’ Berliners. Mazeltov, guys.

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