琴海音乐世界

Karajan World

Karajan World：

    All over the world, of course, there are quite a lot of Karajan fans who always pursue any of his interpretations. Personally, Karajan open the door much wider for commercial package of classic music which is both his contribution to CM and negative influence on CM. He created the " super-refinement of saturated tone" for all CM which just get rid of the most special and personalised part of CM works, having great impact on tastes of many CM lovers everywhere. But I still think his work on increasing CM status and broadening CM influence to young generation deserve high appreciation although he makes many CM fans lose more chance to enjoy those really excellent and "delicious" music by recognizing and accepting Karajan's refined CM. I seldom listen to him myself because I really realize that how touched and tasteful those CM works are which conducted and interpreted by Berstein, Klempler, Furtwengler, Stokowski (who is my favorite conductor). I compared Karajan's Bach Branderburg Concertos which I bought first and enjoyed very much first with Britten's Brandenburg, finding that Karajan's interpretation sound comfortable and entertaining but you can do anything you want while enjoying it (sure, it made me have quite good mood) but Britten made me stop and concentrated on enjoying the music and he makes the sound not loud but very warm and "delicious", just the exquisite and noble style of Bach in my mind.

    This is only personal experience, I am sure many music fans will have different feeling and experience. But I have decided that Karajan will never be my prior choice in future CM collection and appreciation. Since we can have chance to taste cantonese or French food, why do we have to stick on hanburger?!bluediamond

    Agreed on the point of "super-refinement of saturated tone". For me Karajan was more of a mega-successful businessman than a fabulous musician. He recorded his repertoire over and over again (mono, stereo 1, stereo 2, digital, video, etc.) and while he was more at home with composers like Bruckner, Wagner and Richard Strauss he did applied his smooth, rounded, edgeless "Karajan Sound" to most stuff he conducted. The beauty of tone and the control of the orchestra was absolute as we all can hear from his recordings, but did those do justice to all those great music? In many cases NOT.

    Many years ago I read an interview with James Galway, principal flute of the BPO before he went solo in mid-70s, he revealed many horrifying things about Karajan and claimed that he learned more business than music from Karajan during his days with the orchestra. One shocking example from him was that Karajan made several commercial recordings without any rehearsal!!! When asked about what these were he mentioned that one of the Bruckner symphonies for EMI was rushed this way. I just don't think this is what a great musician would choose to do. It was all about money. HvK's life was all about power and money anyway.

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