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Herbert von Karajan
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Herbert von Karajan |
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Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia:
Herbert von Karajan |
(b Salzburg, 5 April 1908; d there, 16 July 1989). Austrian conductor. After study at the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Vienna Academy he conducted opera at Ulm, 1929-34, gaining a reputation for seeking technical perfection. He became music director at Aachen in 1934. A performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Berlin Staatsoper in 1937 launched an international career. Former Nazi associations caused an interruption in his career but from 1947 his progress as ‘General musikdirektor of Europe’ was unimpeded: he recorded with the Philharmonia, London, and the Vienna PO from 1950, succeeded Furtwängler in 1955 as principal conductor of the Berlin PO and was director of the Vienna Staatsoper, 1957-64 (not without tensions). He was artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, 1956-60, and from 1967 was responsible for productions at the Easter festival there of operas by Wagner, Verdi, Musorgsky and Strauss. He had links with Paris and Milan, but Berlin and Vienna were his chief bases. His Met début was in 1967 with his Salzburg production of Die Walküre . He conducted an orchestral repertory ranging from Bach to Henze, in which Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner were central; his interpretations were noted for their smoothness of line and luxuriance of sound.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Herbert von Karajan |
Over 30 years as its conductor, Herbert von Karajan (1908 - 1989) molded the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra into perhaps the finest of the world's large classical music ensembles. He was a superstar among conductors - his thick, steel-gray hair and authoritative manner was instantly recognizable around the musical world.
Von Karajan had the kind of powerful personality that stirred disagreement - even beyond the controversy generated by his allegiance to German Fascism early in his career. Critics and audiences marveled at the flawless sheen he could elicit from the Berlin Philharmonic and the other ensembles he conducted, but some found his interpretations almost too polished, lacking in soul and drama. Von Karajan was an autocrat on the podium, and his fabled perfectionism resulted in exhilarating orchestral sound but did not encourage fresh thinking. He lived a jet-set lifestyle, seeking and often receiving publicity, and he had a taste for adventure. Some called him egotistical or ruthless, and musicians cracked jokes in which God aspires to reach von Karajan's level. Yet, whatever divergent opinions music lovers might hold, few would disagree that von Karajan loomed large in the musical imagination of the twentieth century.
Studied Piano from Young Age
The son of Salzburg's chief medical officer, von Karajan grew up in that musically rich Austrian city, the hometown of Mozart. He started piano lessons at age three, gave a recital at eight, and generally benefited from his family's support. Von Karajan embarked on piano studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum but temporarily switched to an engineering program at the University of Vienna. When he was 20, he heard an opera performance by the legendary Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, an artist whose single-mindedness and drive von Karajan himself would seek to emulate. "From the first bar it was as if I had been struck a blow," Von Karajan later wrote (as quoted by Martin Kettle in London's Guardian newspaper). "I was completely disconcerted by the perfection which had been achieved."
Soon von Karajan was taking conducting lessons with Franz Schalk and leading a student ensemble. In March of 1929 he made his public debut as a conductor, leading a performance of Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro in Ulm, Germany. He remained on the staff of the Ulm opera house for five years but often returned to Salzburg to conduct orchestral performances there and to appear at the city's annual festival. Word spread about his talents, and critics began to prophesy a great future for the young conductor; one early newspaper review referred to him as Das wunder Karajan.
After Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, von Karajan flirted with fascism as early as 1933. When he was offered a job as music director at the municipal opera house in the German city of Aachen in 1934 or 1935, he agreed to join Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) party as a condition of employment. Details of von Karajan's involvement with the Nazis emerged slowly over the years, troubling many observers, and he never explicitly apologized for his support of Hitler's regime. The general consensus among historians, however, was that von Karajan had little interest in politics and joined the party because that seemed to be a good professional move at the time.
Indeed, von Karajan ran into trouble with the fascist overlords of German culture during the Nazi period. At first, with his striking good looks and fearsome energy, he created a sensation in German musical circles. In the late 1930s he was the toast of musical Berlin thanks to highly successful stints conducting The Marriage of Figaro and the gigantic Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde at the Berlin State Opera, where he became music director in 1938. He feuded with the other leading German conductor of the time, Wilhelm Furtwängler, who never joined the Nazis but maintained strong control over musical life in Germany. Hitler's deputy, Hermann Goering, admired von Karajan's work, but Hitler himself disliked it. That was a strong sign of trouble for von Karajan, who remained at work in Berlin during the first part of the war, but eventually fled to Italy with his second wife, Anna Maria. She was one-quarter Jewish, which further complicated the couple's status under the German government's system of racial classification.
Underwent American De-Nazification Procedure
After the war, von Karajan returned to Austria and submitted himself to questioning by an American de-Nazification tribunal. At first he was prohibited from performing, but was cleared to conduct a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1946. In the audience was Walter Legge, a top producer and executive with England's EMI record company. Amazed by von Karajan's energy, Legge smoothed the way for von Karajan to record with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, a Vienna music society orchestra, and later to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. Even at this stage the ambitious von Karajan drove a hard bargain; a series of recordings Legge made with von Karajan conducting the Philharmonia took months of negotiation.
In 1947, finally given an unconditional green light by officials of the American occupation, von Karajan began to conduct frequently and resumed much of his former star status. The following year he was hired as conductor at La Scala, the Milan, Italy opera house that stood at the center of Italian operatic tradition. It was a measure of von Karajan's versatility that over much of his career he was considered among the world's top conductors of Italian opera, something uncommon among composers trained in the German-Austrian tradition. Despite his authoritarian streak he was a talented handler of singers with equally strong personalities; African-American soprano Leontyne Price, according to John Rockwell of the New York Times, called von Karajan "one of the kindest men I ever met."
In Germany and Austria, too, von Karajan's mystique grew. Partly because, aside from Furtwängler, he had few competitors at his level in the German-speaking world; many of Germany's top musicians had been Jewish and had fled, if they could, to the United States and other countries. The expansion of classical music as recordings migrated from three-minute 78 rpm discs to LPs, which were much better suited to compositions that might be an hour or more in length, also played a role in his growing success. Von Karajan toured widely with the Philharmonia and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. To relieve the pressure associated with his growing renown, he took up yoga; he later practiced Zen Buddhism.
Finally, in 1955, von Karajan had his chance. Furtwängler, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, died before the orchestra, Germany's most prominent, could undertake an American tour - its first since the war, and a potent symbol of Germany's full restoration to membership in the international cultural community. Von Karajan offered himself as the ideal replacement. The claim was justifiable, but von Karajan, with characteristic calculation, also insisted that he be named the orchestra's conductor for life. The orchestra's administration agreed, and the protests and pickets that met von Karajan in the U.S. were soon silenced by his dynamic presence on the podium.
Made More Than 800 Recordings
Von Karajan's appointment as the Berlin Philharmonic's conductor inaugurated a long reign at the top of the classical music world. The classics were at the top of their postwar popularity, and conductor-stars such as Leonard Bernstein flourished in both the U.S. and Europe. None could rival von Karajan, however, in terms of a reputation for absolute mastery over an orchestra. Signed to West Germany's premier classical label, Deutsche Grammophon, von Karajan recorded Beethoven's cycle of nine symphonies on three separate occasions. He amassed a total of over 800 recordings over his long career. The Berlin Philharmonic was his "instrument," but he was in demand as a guest conductor. An often-told anecdote related how von Karajan got into a taxi at an airport and, when the driver asked him where he wanted to go, he replied that it didn't matter; people wanted him everywhere.
Named the artistic director of the Vienna State Opera in 1956, von Karajan became as famous in opera houses as he was in orchestral concert halls. He conducted Wagner's massive four-opera Ring cycle at the Bayreuth theater in southeastern Germany, where it had been premiered a century before. Von Karajan also assumed the directorship of the Salzburg Festival in his hometown, revitalizing an event that had come to seem a rather lifeless shrine to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his music. Where other German conductors tended to restrict themselves mostly to the classic Austro-German strand of classical music running from Haydn and Mozart through Beethoven and Brahms, von Karajan ranged farther afield, winning special acclaim for his interpretations of the orchestrally lush symphonies of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. He continued to appear frequently in Italy and to conduct the music of Verdi, Puccini, and other Italian operatic composers.
Von Karajan on the podium was an unforgettable figure for those who saw him in concert, and even more so for the players who worked under him. Philharmonia orchestra flutist Gareth Morris (as quoted by Terry Teachout in Commentary) recalled von Karajan's conducting of Ravel's Bolero this way: "With the eyes closed and the hands barely chest high, von Karajan gave us the beat with a single finger, and even that barely moved…. With each slight lift of the hands the tension became even greater. By the end of the piece, the hands were above his head. And that power of that final climax was absolutely colossal." Von Karajan generally conducted with his eyes closed, as if to say that the music existed in an abstract world beyond the conductor and musicians. Indeed, controlling though he may have been, his interpretations did not draw attention to themselves in a radical way; he aimed instead to erase the boundary between music and listener.
French fashion model Eliette Mouret became von Karajan's third wife, and he lived the high life in his spare time, maintaining houses in the Austrian Alps, in the Swiss resort of St. Moritz, and in the glamorous French town of St. Tropez. Von Karajan learned to fly his own plane, at first a two-seater and finally a Lear jet that he shared with an Austrian airline. He was a mountain climbing enthusiast, and he could often be found on Europe's ski slopes. Von Karajan drew photographers and gossip journalists with outlandish statements; he once, for instance, said that he was considering having himself cryogenically frozen so that he could later be thawed and re-record pieces from the standard classical repertory.
The ego revealed by such statements grated on some observers during the last phases of von Karajan's career, and some of the bloom came off his reputation in the late 1970s and 1980s. Reviewers sometimes charged that he was repeating himself as he performed and recorded the same works again and again, and even the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic began to resist his authority; when he tried to add a young protegée, clarinetist Sabine Meyer, to the orchestra, the (all-male) group of musicians, which traditionally held the prerogative to make personnel decisions, rebelled, and von Karajan was forced to give in. Von Karajan did, however, succeed in making an international star of another protegée, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, whose playing had the same steely quality of perfection that von Karajan cultivated as a conductor. In increasingly poor health after a stroke and several other serious medical crises, von Karajan resigned as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in April of 1989. Though he continued to work, he lived only three more months and died at his home in the Austrian Alps on July 16, 1989. Some called him the last great conductor in the German-speaking world's great tradition.
Books
Osborne, Richard, Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music, Chatto & Windus, 1998.
Vaughan, Roger, Herbert von Karajan, Norton, 1986.
Periodicals
Billboard, August 7, 1999.
Commentary, May 2000.
Guardian (London, England), July 17, 1989.
National Review, August 18, 1989.
New York Times, July 17, 1989.
Washington Post, July 17, 1989.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Herbert von Karajan |
Karajan, Herbert von (käräyän'), 1908-89, Austrian conductor. Karajan began his conducting career in 1927. After World War II his reputation spread through Europe to the United States. He toured with various orchestras (notably the Berlin Philharmonic) and participated in many of Europe's music festivals. He was musical director of the Berlin Philharmonic and was artistic director of the Vienna State Opera (1956-64). He was a remarkable conductor, but his dictatorial style made him controversial.
AMG AllMovie Guide:
Herbert von Karajan |
Biography
Best known for more than 30 years of conducting with the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, and at such venues as the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and the Salzburg Festival, Herbert Von Karajan has been the subject of documentary films and appeared as himself in three films during the '50s and '60s. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Filmography:
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Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Herbert von Karajan |
Herbert von Karajan (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛɐbɛɐt fɔn ˈkaʁaˌjan]; 5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years. Although his work was not universally admired, he is generally considered to have been one of the greatest conductors of all time, and he was a dominant figure in European classical music from the 1960s until his death.[1] Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.[2]
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Contents
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Biography
Genealogy
The Karajans are said to have originally been Aromanian,[3] from the region of Macedonia.[4][5] His great-great-grandfather, Geòrgios Johannes Karajànnis, was born in Kozani, a town in the Ottoman province of Rumelia (present West Macedonia in today's Greece), leaving for Vienna in 1767, and eventually Chemnitz, Saxony.[6] He and his brother participated in the establishment of Saxony's cloth industry, and both were ennobled for their services by Frederick Augustus III on 1 June 1792, thus the prefix "von" to the family name. The surname Karajànnis became Karajan.[7] Herbert's family from the maternal side, through his grandfather who was born in the village of Mojstrana, Duchy of Carniola (today in Slovenia), had Slovene origins according to a modern genealogical research, thus contrasting with or clarifying the traditional view which expressed a Serbian or simply a Slavic origin of his mother.[8]
Early years
Karajan was born in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary, as Heribert Ritter von Karajan.[9] He was a child prodigy at the piano.[10] From 1916 to 1926, he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where he was encouraged to concentrate on conducting by his teacher, who detected his exceptional promise in that regard.
In 1929, he conducted Salome at the Festspielhaus in Salzburg and from 1929 to 1934 Karajan served as first Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater in Ulm. In 1933 Karajan made his conducting debut at the Salzburg Festival with the Walpurgisnacht Scene in Max Reinhardt's production of Faust. It was also in 1933 that von Karajan became a member of the Nazi party, a fact for which he would later be criticised.[1]
In Salzburg in 1934, Karajan led the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time, and from 1934 to 1941, he was engaged to conduct operatic and symphony-orchestra concerts at the Theater Aachen.
Karajan's career was given a significant boost in 1935 when he was appointed Germany's youngest Generalmusikdirektor and performed as a guest conductor in Bucharest, Brussels, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Paris.[11][12] In 1937 Karajan made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin State Opera, conducting Fidelio. He then enjoyed a major success at the State Opera with Tristan und Isolde. In 1938, his performance there of the opera was hailed by a Berlin critic as Das Wunder Karajan (the Karajan miracle). The critic asserted that Karajan's "success with Wagner's demanding work Tristan und Isolde sets himself alongside Furtwängler and de Sabata, the greatest opera conductors in Germany at the present time".[13] Receiving a contract with Deutsche Grammophon that same year, Karajan made the first of numerous recordings, conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin in the overture to The Magic Flute. On 26 July 1938, he married his first wife, operetta singer Elmy Holgerloef. They divorced in 1942.
On 22 October 1942, at the height of the war, Karajan married his second wife, Anna Maria "Anita" Sauest, born Gütermann. She was the daughter of a well-known manufacturer of yarn for sewing machines. Having had a Jewish grandfather, she was considered a Vierteljüdin (one-quarter Jewish woman). By 1944, Karajan was, according to his own account,[citation needed] losing favor with the Nazi leadership; but he still conducted concerts in wartime Berlin on 18 February 1945. A short time later, in the closing stages of the war, he fled Germany with Anita for Milan, relocating his family to Italy with the assistance of Victor de Sabata.[14][15] Karajan and Anita divorced in 1958.
Karajan was discharged by the Austrian denazification examining board on 18 March 1946, and resumed his conducting career shortly thereafter.[16]
Postwar years
In 1946, Karajan gave his first post-war concert in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, but he was banned from further conducting activities by the Soviet occupation authorities because of his Nazi party membership. That summer he participated anonymously in the Salzburg Festival.
On 28 October 1947, Karajan gave his first public concert following the lifting of the conducting ban. With the Vienna Philharmonic and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, he performed Johannes Brahms' A German Requiem for a gramophone production in Vienna.[17]
In 1949, Karajan became artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. He also conducted at La Scala in Milan. His most prominent activity at this time was recording with the newly-formed Philharmonia Orchestra in London, helping to build them into one of the world's finest. Starting from this year, Karajan began his lifelong attendance at the Lucerne Festival.[18]
In 1951 and 1952 he conducted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
In 1955 he was appointed music director for life of the Berlin Philharmonic as successor to Wilhelm Furtwängler. From 1957 to 1964 he was artistic director of the Vienna State Opera. Karajan was closely involved with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Festival, where he initiated the Easter Festival, which would remain tied to the Berlin Philharmonic's Music Director after his tenure.
On 22 October 1958 he married his third wife, French model Eliette Mouret; they became parents of two daughters, Isabel and Arabel.
He continued to perform, conduct and record prolifically until his death in Anif[1] in 1989, mainly with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. In his later years, Karajan suffered from heart and back problems, needing surgery on the latter. He increasingly came into conflict with his orchestra for an all-controlling dictatorial style of conducting that had vanished from use everywhere else, and the accession of the left-wing Green Party in the 1989 elections in Germany virtually sealed his fate.[citation needed] Karajan officially retired from conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, but at his death was conducting a series of rehearsals for the annual Salzburg Music Festival. He died of a heart attack in his home on July 16, 1989 at the age of 81.
A practitioner of Zen Buddhism, Karajan believed strongly in reincarnation and said that he would like to be reborn as an eagle so he could soar over his beloved Alps.[citation needed]
Karajan and the compact disc
Karajan was fascinated by technology and played an important role in the development of the original compact disc digital audio format. He championed this new consumer playback technology, lent his prestige to it and appeared at the first press conference announcing the format. The maximum playing time of CD prototypes was sixty minutes but the final specification enlarged the disc size and extended the capacity to seventy-four minutes. There are various stories regarding this, one of which is that this was due to Karajan's insistence that the format have sufficient capacity to contain Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a single disc.[19] Kees Schouhamer Immink, a Philips research engineer directly involved with the invention of the CD, denies the Beethoven connection.[20][21]
In 1980 von Karajan conducted the first recording ever to be commercially released on CD: Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie (1915), produced by Deutsche Grammophon.
Through the 1980s von Karajan re-recorded many works such as Beethoven's Nine Symphonies with Deutsche Grammophon's CD booklet introduction saying that he wanted to preserve his legacy digitally. He also pioneered the Digital Compact Cassette though that format was not particularly successful.[1] His 2007 "Gold" compilation contains one of the longest known running time discs. Disc two of this collection clocks in at 81:21.
Nazi Party membership
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Karajan joined the Nazi Party in Salzburg on 8 April 1933; his membership number was 1,607,525. In June 1933, the Nazi Party was outlawed by the Austrian government. However, Karajan's membership was valid until 1939. In that year the former Austrian members were verified by the general office of the Nazi Party. Karajan's membership was declared invalid but his accession to the party was retroactively determined to have been on 1 May 1933 in Ulm, with membership number: 3,430,914.[22][23][24]
British musicologist and critic Richard Osborne in his "Conversations with Karajan" (Oxford University Press 1991) states in the preface: "What are the facts? First, though Karajan was nominated for membership in the as yet unbanned Party in Salzburg in April 1933, he did not collect his card, sign it, or pay his dues, though the registration itself (no. 1607525) got on to the files and crops up in many memoranda and enquiries thereafter. Secondly, he did not join the Party on 1 May 1933 despite prima-facie evidence to the contrary. In the first place, the membership number 3430914 is too high to belong to that date. The highest number issued before the freeze on membership, which lasted from May 1933 to March 1937, was 3262698. However, during the freeze, various functionaries, diplomats, and others were issued cards bearing an NG, or Nachgereichte, designation. These cards were, by convention, backdated to the start of the freeze: 1 May 1933. Karajan's Aachen membership was an NG card, and its number accords with batches issued in 1935, the year Karajan had always identified as the one in which he was asked to join the Party."
Karajan's prominence increased from 1933 to 1945 which led to speculation that he joined the Nazis purely and only to advance his music career. Critics such as Jim Svejda[citation needed] have pointed out that other prominent conductors, such as Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, and Erich Kleiber, fled from fascist Europe at the time.
There were more who left fascist Europe. One was Fritz Busch, who fled in 1933.
However, British music critic Richard Osborne noted that among the many significant conductors who continued to work in Germany throughout the war years—Wilhelm Furtwängler, Ernest Ansermet, Carl Schuricht, Karl Böhm, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Karl Elmendorff—Karajan was one of the youngest and thus one of the least advanced in his career.[25]
Karajan was allowed to conduct various orchestras and was free to travel, even to the Netherlands to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra and make recordings there in 1942.[citation needed]
Musicianship
There is widespread agreement that Herbert von Karajan had a special gift for extracting beautiful sounds from an orchestra. Opinion varies concerning the greater aesthetic ends to which The Karajan Sound was applied. The American critic Harvey Sachs criticized the Karajan approach as follows:
Karajan seemed to have opted instead for an all-purpose, highly refined, lacquered, calculatedly voluptuous sound that could be applied, with the stylistic modifications he deemed appropriate, to Bach and Puccini, Mozart and Mahler, Beethoven and Wagner, Schumann and Stravinsky ... many of his performances had a prefabricated, artificial quality that those of Toscanini, Furtwängler, and others never had... most of Karajan's records are exaggeratedly polished, a sort of sonic counterpart to the films and photographs of Leni Riefenstahl.[citation needed]
However, it has been argued by commentator Jim Svejda and others that Karajan's pre-1970 manner did not sound polished as it is later alleged to have become.[26]
Two reviews from the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs can be quoted to illustrate the point.
- Concerning a recording of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a canonical Romantic work, the Penguin authors wrote "Karajan's is a sensual performance of Wagner's masterpiece, caressingly beautiful and with superbly refined playing from the Berlin Philharmonic" and it is listed in first place on pages 1586–7 of the 1999 Penguin Guide to Compact Discs; 2005, p. 1477.
- About Karajan's recording of Haydn's "Paris" symphonies, the same authors wrote, "big-band Haydn with a vengeance ... It goes without saying that the quality of the orchestral playing is superb. However, these are heavy-handed accounts, closer to Imperial Berlin than to Paris ... the Minuets are very slow indeed ... These performances are too charmless and wanting in grace to be whole-heartedly recommended."[citation needed][27]
The same Penguin Guide does nevertheless give the highest compliments to Karajan's recordings of the selfsame Haydn's two oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons.[28] Respected Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon wrote the notes for Karajan's recordings of Haydn's 12 London symphonies and states clearly that Karajan's recordings are among the finest he knows.
Regarding twentieth century music, Karajan had a strong preference for conducting and recording pre-1945 works (Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartók, Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Puccini, Pizzetti, Honegger, Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Hindemith, Nielsen and Stravinsky), but he did record Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 (1953) twice and did premiere Carl Orff's De Temporum Fine Comoedia in 1973.
Awards and honours
Karajan was the recipient of multiple honours and awards. In 1977 he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. On 21 June 1978 he received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford University.[29] He was honored by the "Médaille de Vermeil" in Paris, the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, the Olympia Award of the Onassis Foundation in Athens and the UNESCO International Music Prize. He received two Gramophone Awards for recordings of Mahler's Ninth Symphony and the complete Parsifal recordings in 1981. He received the Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor from the German Eduard Rhein Foundation in 1984.[30] In 2002, the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize was founded in his honour; in 2003 Anne-Sophie Mutter, who had made her debut with Karajan in 1977, became the first recipient of this award.[31]
Books
- Kleinert, Annemarie (2009). Music at its Best: The Berlin Philharmonic. From Karajan to Rattle. Norderstedt: BoD. ISBN 9783837063615. http://www.bod.de/index.php?id=296&objk_id=211012#.
- Mischa Aster,"Das Reichsorchester", die Berliner Philharmoniker und der Nationalsozialismus.Siedler Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-88680-876-2.
- Layton, Robert; Greenfield, Edward; March, Ivan (1996). Penguin Guide to Compact Discs. London; New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0140513671.
- Lebrecht, Norman (2001). The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power. New York: Citadel Press. ISBN 0806520884.
- Lebrecht, Norman (2007). The Life and Death of Classical Music. New York: Anchor Books,. ISBN 9781400096589.
- Monsaingeon, Bruno (2001). Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0571205534.
- Osborne, Richard (1998). Herbert von Karajan. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0701167149.
- Osborne, Richard (2000). Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1555534252.
- Raymond, Holden (2005). The Virtuoso Conductors. New Haven, Connecticut; London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300093268.
- Zignani, Alessandro (2008). Herbert von Karajan. Il Musico perpetuo. Varese: Zecchini Editore,. ISBN 8887203679.
Discography
- Beethoven's Symphony No. 9; recorded 1976–77; Deutsche Grammophon
- Mozart's Requiem; recorded 1994; Deutsche Grammophon
Quotes
- Explaining why he preferred conducting the Berlin Philharmonic to the Vienna Philharmonic: "If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it, but then they ask why."[32]
- "Those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low" http://www.karajan.org
- Isaiah Berlin referred to Karajan as "a genius, with a whiff of sulphur about him".
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d John Rockwell (17 July 1989). "Herbert von Karajan Is Dead; Musical Perfectionist was 81". The New York Times: pp. A1. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE3DD173BF934A25754C0A96F948260.
- ^ The Life and Death of Classical Music by Norman Lebrecht, p. 137.
- ^ Binder, David. "Vlachs, A Peaceful Balkan People" in Mediterranean Quarterly
- ^ Herbert Von Karajan: A Life in Music by Richard Osborne.
- ^ Current Biography Yearbook 1986 by H.W. Wilson Company.
- ^ John Rockwell (22 June 1986). "General Music Director of Europe". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DEFD71E3BF931A15755C0A960948260. Retrieved 15 April 2007.
- ^ "Herbert Von Karajan-Karajan Family". Karajan Family. http://www.karajan.co.uk/family.html. Retrieved 15 April 2007.
- ^ Branka Lapajne (4 April 2008). "The Shared Slovenian Ancestors of Herbert von Karajan and Hugo Wolf". http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2500. Retrieved 5 May 2008.
- ^ Osborne (1987)
- ^ "Encyclopædia Britannica Article for Herbert von Karajan". Britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9044682/Herbert-von-Karajan. Retrieved 2011-08-21.
- ^ (Video) Karajan in Paris in war time. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMwVaDDpIAE
- ^ The woman in the footage is Winifred Wagner.
- ^ Osborne (2000), p. 114
- ^ Osborne (2000)
- ^ Andrews, Deborah (1990). The Annual Obituary, 1989. St James Press. p. 417. ISBN 1558620567.
- ^ Osborne (2000); Karajan's deposition is presented in whole as Appendix C.
- ^ Steinhage, Martin (1986) (in German). Chronik 1947. Dortmund, Germany: Harenberg Kommunikation Verlags- und Medien-GmbH & Co. KG. p. 178. ISBN 3-88379-077-X.
- ^ Lucerne Festival homepage, Karajan Celebration 2008
- ^ "Roll Over, Beethoven". snopes.com. 23 May 2007. http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.asp. Retrieved 30 April 2008.
- ^ Kees A. Schouhamer Immink (1998). "The CD Story". Journal of the AES, vol. 46, pp. 458–465, 1998. http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdstory.htm. Retrieved 19 June 2008.
- ^ Kees A. Schouhamer Immink (1998). "The Compact Disc Story" (PDF). Journal of the Audio Eng. Soc. 46 (5): 458–465 esp. 460. http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdstoryoriginal.pdf. Retrieved 19 June 2008.
- ^ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945 Kiel, 2004, CD-ROM-Lexicon, p. 3545f. The author inspected the files of Karajan (as part of the Reichskulturkammer) at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin (former Berlin Document Center). This background story was first published by Paul Moor in: High Fidelity Vol. 7/10 October 1957, pp. 52-55, 190, 192–194 (The Operator). In addition, Prieberg's opinion about the Karajan biographer Richard Osborne has been stated: "his knowledge of history is sadly very low" (p. 3575)
- ^ Karsten Kammholz (not quite with the accuracy of Prieberg): Der Mann, der zweimal in die NSDAP eintrat; in: Die Welt, 26 January 2008
- ^ Ivan Hewett 12:01AM GMT 13 Mar 2008 Comments (2008-03-13). "The Telegraph". The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3671783/Herbert-von-Karajan-save-us-from-the-resurrection-of-that-old-devil.html. Retrieved 2011-08-21.
- ^ Osborne (2000), p. 85
- ^ Staines, Joe. "The Record Shelf Guide to Classical CDs and Audiocassettes: Fifth Revised and Expanded Edition (Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings) (0086874505919): Jim Svejda: Books". Amazon.com. ASIN 0761505911.
- ^ [these recordings are no longer mentioned in the 1999 edition of the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs.]
- ^ [The Creation is listed first on pp. 656–7 of the 1999 Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, and the comment reads: "Among Versions of The Creation sung in German, Karajan's 1969 set remains unsurpassed, and now reissued as one of DG's 'Originals' at mid-price, is a clear first choice despite two small cuts..."] [The Seasons is, by 1999, listed in the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs in third place on p. 661, and the text states "Karajan's 1973 recording of The Seasons offers a fine, polished performance which is often very dramatic too. The characterization is strong ... the remastered sound is drier than the original but is vividly wide. etc. etc. ..."]
- ^ LAP. "Herbert Von Karajan – Visits to Great Britain". Karajan.co.uk. http://www.karajan.co.uk/britishvisits.html. Retrieved 2011-08-21.
- ^ "The Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor Recipients". Eduard Rhein Foundation. http://www.eduard-rhein-stiftung.de/html/Ehrenring_e.html. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
- ^ Gramophone – News – The world's best classical music magazine[dead link]
- ^ Brian Moynahan, 'Funeral in Berlin', The Sunday Times, 30 January 1983, quoted in Norman Lebrecht, The Book of Musical Anecdotes.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Herbert von Karajan |
- Official Herbert von Karajan website, Vienna
- 1963 Stereo Review interview
- Tribute site to Herbert von Karajan
- Obituary by the New York Times
- A range of opinions from readers of Gramophone magazine
- František Sláma (musician) Archive. More on the history of the Czech Philharmonic between the 1940s and the 1980s: Conductors
- Elaine Madlener Papers: correspondence and notes for an unfinished Karajan biography at Newberry Library
Video
- Karajan conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony, rare old 1966 video
- Karajan conducting Verdi's Requiem: Dies Irae
- Karajan conducting Dvorak's 9th Symphony
| Preceded by Clemens Krauss |
Music Director, Berlin State Opera 1939–1945 |
Succeeded by Joseph Keilberth |
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Mentioned in
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: New Year's Eve Concert 1983 (1983 Music Film)
- Beethoven: Symphonies 1 & 8 (1991 Music Film)
- Beethoven: Symphonies 2 & 3 (1991 Music Film)
- Beethoven: Symphonies 6 & 7 (Music Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan: Early Images, Vol. 2 (1965-1966) (1966 Music Film)
- Opening Concert Berlin: 750 Years (1991 Music Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video (Music TV Series)
- Herbert Von Karajan: All Soul's Day Concert 1983 (1983 Music Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: Dvorak - Symphony No. 9 (1992 Music Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: Don Giovanni (1987 Theater Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: Eine Alpensinfonie - All Souls Day Concert 1983 (1991 Music Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: Don Carlos (1991 Theater Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 5 (1984 Music Film)
- Herbert Von Karajan - His Legacy for Home Video: Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique" (1992 Music Film)
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