Karajan Beethoven
Why is Karajan so popular?
The only two composers I’ve heard him conduct well are Brahms and Beethoven. Beethoven, only because the extremely sonerous, perfectly balanced sound Karajan manages to produce simply works for beethoven. Brahms because Brahms is so terribly dry and lacking in vitality and passion that Karajan’s lack of vitality and passion is less noticible. I am wondering, what gives Karajan’s conducting such popular appeal?
This is not to dismiss his talent as a conductor. I’m simply wondering what makes his style to appealing to so many people when other, much more emotional and passionate, conductors are discounted.
I am now quite well known in the section as NOT being an appreciator of Karajan. Karajan was a very clever and astute man. He built-up a cult of personality right from his very early days in the late 1930s. He was always immaculately turned out, had tremendous charisma and was the epitome of the great Arian man that Hitler so recognised in him.
It is true that some of his recordings from the 1930s and 1940s are fairly rough-hewn, but his amazing musicality was evident right from the start. In the 1950s he made some wonderful recordings with the Philharmonia and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras which have stood the test of time and, in my humble opinion, are among his best ever. And then he went to Berlin. His already bloated ego knew no bounds and he took firm control over everything he was involved with – even to the point of directing opera productions he conducted (more or less unheard of elsewhere) and having the final say in the sound of the recordings he made.
Karajan nurtured his image fastidiously and in the end, for me at least, the persona became more important than the music. It was Karajan who mattered most to Karajan – not the composers whose music he was supposed to be serving.
Karajan made a huge number of recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic. He moulded the sound, both in the concert hall and in the recording studio, to such a level that all rough edges were shorn from the sound (even when the music needed a rough edge) and produced this larger-than-life, slick and impersonal sound (not impersonal in that you didn’t know it was Karajan but in the clean, soulless way the music was put across) that I cannot accept. I do have a few Karajan recordings in my collection which I enjoy, but they number a handful only. Don’t misunderstand me: I accept that Karajan was a magnificent musician. However, he became so self-serving during his last 15 years or so that this musicianship was subsumed beneath his ego.
Why is he so popular? Firstly, his carefully cultivated image. Next, the very number of recordings he made over half a century means that the law of averages means that many of his recordings will remain in the catalogue and the public eye. And it didn’t hurt that he was recording with possibly the world’s finest orchestra recording in one of the world’s best concert halls with a first-rate recording team! Lastly, Karajan was perfect for the CD age – playing music note-perfect and with the most beautiful of sounds. Me, I prefer fewer perfect notes, perhaps a less polished sound if it means I can have soul, passion and musicality that puts the composer and his music first above all things.
Karajan – Beethoven: Symphony No.9
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