The Karajan Years: Filling In the Gap

Virtually the whole of the 50-year recording career of Herbert von Karajan, who recently turned 80, is now documented on compact disc. The recent release of a mid-priced Deutsche Grammophon set (423 525, six CDs) has filled what was the most significant gap, material covering the early years, 1938-43.

His first recording (December of 1938), Mozart’s “Zauberflote” Overture, indicates that Karajan was a control conductor--rather than one who simply wound up his orchestra and let it run free; he was able even to make a scruffy band like the Berlin State Orchestra do his bidding with reasonable precision.

Karajan at the time was strongly influenced by the quick, nervy, anti-Romantic style of his avowed idol, Arturo Toscanini. It was Toscanini too who inspired some of the younger man’s repertory choices included here, such as Cherubini’s “Anacreon” Overture--Karajan’s being every bit as terse and spirited as Toscanini’s; the “Traviata” preludes, which Karajan lethally anesthetizes; and Rossini’s “Semiramide” Overture, with the right kind of dash but rendered unlistenable by the ineptitude of the RAI-Turin Orchestra.

The big pieces in the set, all of which he was to record again (and again and again), already display the wide yet subtly applied dynamic variety that marks Karajan’s glory-years output.

There is also tenderness to offset the virility of the 1940 “New World” Symphony (Berlin Philharmonic), which may, however, strike listeners as being too episodic--a failing shared by the other big offerings here: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (Berlin State Orchestra), Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” (Berlin Philharmonic) and Brahms’ First (Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra). Long spans, seeing compositions architecturally and whole, were not yet Karajan preoccupations.

The three Mozart symphonies in the collection--the “Haffner,” the G-minor (K. 550) and “Jupiter”--may be notorious for the scrappy execution of the Turin orchestra, but they are more significant for being so much livelier in temperament and pacing, so much closer to something resembling a Classical style, than Karajan would produce in subsequent DG recordings with the great Berlin Philharmonic.

One feels when turning to later DG material that a distinctive Karajan style--rather than a projection of the composers’ individualities--was being pursued from about 1960, a pursuit inseparable from his developing the Berlin Philharmonic into an incomparably responsive and polished instrument.

DG has facilitated such ponderings with the re-release on 25 individual, mid-priced CDs of “100 Masterpieces” by Karajan and the Berliners dating from the late-1950s through the early ‘70s.

This massive outpouring includes a “New World” Symphony (423 206) more cohesive than the 1943 version but lacking its vigor and warmth; a tubby “Jupiter” Symphony (423 210), and much, much more that is likely to be of interest chiefly to first-time builders of a standard repertory collection.

But there are some spellbinders among the 100 staples, above all a Debussy “La Mer” (413 589) and Prokofiev Fifth Symphony (423 216) that combine rhythmic excitement with rhetorical grandeur; also there is a coupling of Schubert’s “Unfinished” and “Great” C-major symphonies (423 219) that, while perhaps overrefined for some tastes, remains noteworthy for the clarity and balance of Karajan’s interpretations and the sweetness of the Berlin strings.

Although DG gives us a seemingly all-inclusive tribute to the superconductor, Angel/EMI has been more selective in resurrecting its Karajan archive.

Thus, from the 1950s in the mid-priced Studio line one finds a heroic and mobile Brahms Fourth Symphony (with Liszt’s “Les Preludes” on 69228), played by the Philharmonia Orchestra. In addition there is a spectacular coupling (69242) of the Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta--slashing, highstrung--and an expansively lyrical “Mathis der Maler” Symphony of Hindemith. Both are brilliantly played by the Berlin Philharmonic with a degree of panache, a touch of the edginess that would be bred out of the orchestra a decade later.

Then, too, Angel is to be thanked for introducing a new generation to the glories of the 1950s Karajan operatic recordings, produced by the legendary Walter Legge and sumptuously played by the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Two that belong in any collection that takes opera seriously are Verdi’s “Falstaff,” with Gobbi, Schwarzkopf, Panerai and Barbieri (49668, two full-priced CDs) and Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” (69296, two mid-priced CDs), with Schwarzkopf, Seefried and Streich.

Karajan can hardly take sole credit for making these productions classics, but it is his organizational genius and musical insight that are their indispensable ingredients.