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This was another landmark release in the mid Seventies when Schoenberg and all the New Viennese School began to be accepted by an audience that was increasingly becoming used to strange modernistic effects in classical music. Karajan's recordings of these epic works have often been criticized as too slick and almost too precise to warrant serious consideration but serious consideration of the interpretations reveal a certain beauty and hallowed pathos that goes beyond mere virtuosity. The Webern 'Passacaglia' is particularly dramatic, twelve minutes of grotesque beauty warped into an almost Grosz like canvas. Berg is more susceptible to beauty and drama as the 'Lyric Suite' pieces demonstrate. Karajan paces them with exquisite tenderness and takes loving care over the monstrously complex string parts, this is indeed a true masterpiece. Berg's Op 6 is also fantastically potent with great washes of sound cogently cogitated together forming a bleak and desolate landscape that is almost akin to death. Finally we have the true masterpiece, Arnold Schoenberg's terrifyingly vitriolic 'Variations for Orchestra'. This could be said to be the perfection of atonality, a twenty-minute suite of madness exploring the innermost facets of the orchestra in a grossly perverted way. Under Karajan the whole project oozes class that constantly amazes, a performance of such vivid perfection that one is constantly troubled by the deep inner message of this wonderful music. Star of all this effortless virtuosity is the magnificent Berlin Philharmonic, an instrument of true glory in classical and in depth. Seen in the context of many subsequent recordings, Karajan's ground-breaking records of the New Viennese School still hold the capacity to thrill and the sound, it really takes some whuppin!

Reviewer

Gerald Fenech

Performance:

Sound:

Reviewer

Gerald Fenech

Performance:

Sound:

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