Karajan Resigns Berlin Philharmonic Post : The Last of the Old-School European Supermen of Music : ANALYSIS

Herbert von Karajan, whose reign as “lifelong music director” of the Berlin Philharmonic limped to a close on Monday, was much more than a conductor.

He was a shameless, egomaniacal and often inspired autocrat. He was a symbolic and vaguely mystical public figure of vast influence, a sociopolitical force with a somewhat shady past, a one-man commercial enterprise that could rival pop stars and outshine sports heroes.

He was a carefully cultivated legend, the object of adulation from the masses. His every action was manipulated by a gargantuan hype apparatus and checked by a wide-reaching network of managerial giants. There was no one quite like him.

In his prime, he probably was the most powerful musician in the world. He made and broke careers. For a long time, he ruled the musical life of Vienna as well as Berlin single-handed. He virtually ran the ultra-prestigious Salzburg Festival. What Karajan wanted, Karajan got.

He toured extensively--always under his own lofty conditions and preferably with his own orchestra. Although no one regarded him as a particularly imaginative or stylish regisseur, he usually staged the festive operas he conducted. Artistic collaboration was not his forte.

By the time he retired, he made sure that every sigh and hiccup he mustered would be preserved for a presumably grateful posterity, on videotape as well as on recordings.

He liked pretending to be inscrutable. That was part of his painstakingly fabricated elusive image. He talked to the press only when he pleased, only about what he pleased. He produced his own selective interviews in self-promoting films and features that masqueraded as documentaries.

He enjoyed fast cars and beautiful women. He liked seeing his photos in prominent advertisements. He liked seeing himself in chic surroundings. He piloted his own plane and savored the extra-aeronautical publicity that this pastime automatically stimulated.

He created his own empire. He was, perhaps, the last of the old-school European supermen of music.

Luckily, he also was something of a genius on the podium. Even those who could not forgive, much less forget, his cooperation with the Nazis had to admit that he was a great conductor.

He commanded a baton technique of extraordinary flair and virtuosic clarity. He was an intellectual with a penchant for analytical interpretation. Some found him cool, but none found him uninteresting.

He could bring chamber-music transparency to the thickest Wagnerian textures. He could impart supreme sensuality and profound warmth to a simple Strauss waltz. He could conduct Puccini with a semblance of sentimental Italianate passion, and he could impart noble urgency to the arching cantilena of Verdi.

When he didn’t get too fussy or too tired, he defined Mozartean lyricism with elegance that never precluded pathos. He took the bombast--if not the grandeur--out of Beethoven

Most singers loved working with him. He sang with them, breathed with them. Perhaps most important, he made the orchestra accommodate their frailties.

He was ultra demanding. It is said that he could be cruel to those colleagues he did not respect, and he could be spiteful to those who fell from official grace, whatever the reason. He cultivated a feared coterie of fawning aides de camp, some of whom abused their hand-me-down power. But anyone who enjoyed his favor was fiercely devoted to him.

His increasingly frail health took a heavy toll on his vanity as well as on his physical prowess. At the first “Don Giovanni” of the Salzburg Festival last summer, he had to be assisted to the podium. It was a slow and painful process. When the performance finally began, the tempi dragged rather dismally. When it came time for a final bow, the maestro choreographed stationary curtain calls at the side of the stage and wore a specially designed coat to disguise his infirmity. The instant ovations were, of course, deafening.

He canceled subsequent performances and gave up leadership of the festival shortly thereafter. His admirers were saddened but not surprised.

He will, no doubt, continue to conduct, sporadically and under special conditions. We have not seen or heard the last of him. Still, the czar has stepped down.

Who will step up? That is the question.

The long-popular guessing games regarding Karajan’s successor will now flourish anew, on an international level. Reasonable rumor mills suggest that the anointed one will be James Levine. He remains heavily committed to the Metropolitan Opera, however, and it may not be an advantage that he happens to be Jewish.

Other conductors commonly suggested are Zubin Mehta, who is about to become conveniently free of his duties in New York, and Seiji Ozawa, controversial music director of the Boston Symphony. Daniel Barenboim may have lost a job in Paris, but he has just found one in Chicago. A dark-horse might be the Soviet emigre Semyon Bychkov, who at one time enjoyed protege status with the master.

Wishful thinkers still talk about the possibility of a takeover by one of Karajan’s two chief rivals: Leonard Bernstein and Georg Solti. But conventional wisdom rules that they are too old, too busy and probably too proud.

Whoever inherits Berlin will inherit a very difficult act. The day of the all-knowing, all-controlling music director is over. For better or worse, the arts have becoming more democratic. The leaders have gotten smaller, the followers bigger.

There simply isn’t another Karajan on the scene. There doesn’t seem to be one on the horizon.

An era has ended.