TV Review : Slick Surface of Karajan Profile Can’t Hide Its Faults

Herbert von Karajan, who died at 81 last July, was a law unto himself. He was a tyrant, a dictator and, in many eyes, an artistic genius.

The man was an operatic and symphonic megalomaniac nonpareil. At the lofty peak of his career, he ruled much--make that most --of musical Europe from his podium in West Berlin and/or Vienna.

A musician of considerable versatility and unique virtuosity, he also dabbled in stage direction and toyed compulsively with state-of-the-art technology. He probably made more records and musical videotapes than any conductor in history.

That’s not all, folks. Karajan piloted his own planes, loved fast cars and beautiful women, moved conspicuously amid the Beautiful People, and saw no reason to avoid politics if taking a dubious stand might further his endless ambitions.

His life would make a fascinating television documentary. Too bad “The Karajan Legend,” which airs at 7 tonight on Channel 28, isn’t it.

It is a confusing hodgepodge, arbitrarily assembled, clumsily structured and sloppily edited. Originally produced in Cologne, the U.S. version--replete with an anonymous and pompous American narrator who suffers from chronic mispronunciation--comes to us from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The tone of the program is generally reverential, though spurts of iconoclasm do occasionally ruffle the slick surface. At least one Karajan colleague--the conductor Michael Gielen--dares suggest that the emperor wore tarnished clothes. The subject of Karajan’s Nazi past is dutifully mentioned, though not carefully explored.

That’s the problem. Nothing in this hourlong snow job is carefully explored. One can watch it and never guess what made Karajan an important artist, much less what made him an interesting human being. Historical details are smudged, and aesthetic observations are dulled.

One still might forgive all that--well, some of that--if the music making were wonderful. No such luck. The examples of Karajan in action are mere snippets. And the snippets are neither coherent nor even characteristic.

The Karajan estate owns the rights to his own films. We’ll see them later, no doubt, in the context of some glorious, super-duper, officially sanitized memorial tribute. Chances are, the ever-resourceful maestro prepared that documentary himself, long ago.