Herbert Von Karajan (1908 - 1989): A Portrait

Herbert Von Karajan was unquestionably the most hyped conductor on earth. He made more records than any other conductor on earth - 900 over commercial recordings according to James Wierzbicki (St Louis-Post Dispatch) not to mention videos. For core warhorses like Beethoven, he made recordings of his Nine symphonies no less than four times. He is easily comparable to Toscanini due to his MTV cult phenomenon, but Karajan has his advantage over the former due to advantage of digital technology. When he died, he left reputedly half a billion dollars worth in estates and his legacy of recordings.

When it comes to controversy, this man is more synonamous with the word. His Nazi membership debates rages on and some claimed he registered twice. Karajan registered in Salzburg at 8 April 1933 and according to Peter Guttman (classicalnotes.net) he re-enlisted again on May 1, 1933. What saved him from being labelled a total Nazi symphatizer was the fact he married during the war with someone who had a half-Jewish ancestry and Adolf Hitler's apparent dislike of him for conducting without a score. Later on he inherited the Berlin Philharmonic after Wilhelm Furtwängler's demise with addition of title "Conductor for Life". Accusations of his ego and authoritarian approach was plentyful. Musicians and singers complained apparently suffered from his "charisma" so to say. During a rehearsal of the Beethoven Triple Concentro with David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter and Mtislav Rostropovich, Oistrakh asked Karajan if they could go over a passage one more time to which Karajan replied "No now it is time for pictures"1. Kiri Te Kanawa recounted in her biography during a Karajan rehearsal that he didn't even glanced at her once. And who could forget the infamous Sabine Meyer episode which eventually lead to irreconcilable rift between him and the Berliners for which he sought refuge to his "mistress" later, the Vienna Philharmonic until the end of his days.

In the biography, Karajan recounted a surreal experience as a child where when hiking through the mountains with his parents, he spotted a group of fiddlers playing a tune. Later on, a band of village drummers (all of them women) came barging from nowhere and surrounded the fiddlers. The head fiddler scampered away while his comrades stood there helplessly. The young Karajan decided that he would rather be a drummer than a fiddler. Karajan is cited having a background in percussion training which helped him as a conductor. The maestro admired Toscanini very much and he recounted hiding himself behind an organ when he came to rehearse. It doesn't take a fool to notice the "sheen" and showmanship which would be trademark and typical of Karajan that is similar to Toscanini.

The biography itself sets off in a pretentious, pro-Karajanesque tune when it comes to the Nazi episode. The narrator claimed Karajan was "indignant" when asked to conduct Horst Wessel - a Nazi anthem at newly invaded cities. Later on the video, it would touch on Karajan's efforts to help autistic children by bringing them to his reheasals. I could've been mistaken but I heard the narrator claimed some point during a Beethoven's Pastorale segment where Karajan wanted to "erase human suffering" or some sort - by his videos? The pretentious arse-kissing charade led the video being long-winded by second half. Besides video segments from Der Rosenkavalier, Claudio Abbado's rehearsal of a segment from Strauss' Four Last Songs and a showcase between two timpanists called "War off Drummers" which had little relevance to the biography, it is not helped with the narrator spewing philosophical mumbo-jumbo which "speaks" of Karajan's attitude to life. By the time we get to his "downfall", we get one last clip of a scene from Verdi's "Otello" and an abrupt move to a shot of Karajan's grave where the video ends. Most people who don't give a hoot about him would've probably fall asleep by then.

The video will appease Karajan fans and those curious of his life can rent it, I suppose. If you despise Karajan, you might want to stay away or risk gettinga stroke halfway. The video biographies of Toscanini and Solti are much better presented without the air of pretentiousness and such. In fact, I like the "personal" narrative account of Sir Georg Solti's biography. I do hope Richard Osborne's biography is more unbiased and detached.