It is always said that if you enjoy the experience of driving
a car don’t drive a Rolls-Royce. The theory being that the
upholstered cocooned perfection of the vehicle divorces the driver
from the road as you are swept along in sterile magnificence.
I have to say that I have often felt the same way about recordings
by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. No one can
doubt the extraordinary technical brilliance and refined execution
but often I have felt this to be at the expense of spontaneity
and indeed humanity. The glory years of their association produced
literally hundreds of recordings from Deutsche Grammophon, EMI
and others where no doubt as much studio time as the maestro required
was lavished. Not for them the modern realpolitik of “live”
performances recorded for commercial release. So it was with a
degree of almost academic interest that I put on this disc of
live performances from Salzburg to see how they would measure
up. Within seconds of the opening of
Don Quixote I was
completely hooked.
This is why Karajan and his Berlin players
were so great. All my previous caveats and concerns fade away
like so much morning mist.
Don Quixote has always been one of my favourites amongst
the canon of Strauss tone-poems. For sure the full gamut of orchestrational
trickery is covered; from bleating sheep to rides through the
air but running as a spine through the centre of the work is the
character, the humanity indeed, of the eponymous hero. Strauss’s
great genius in this work is to reveal the flaws and foibles of
this character through music. Yes it is one of the great orchestral
showpieces but at the same time it is without doubt one of the
finest portraits in music of the human spirit ever conceived.
Strauss chose to write this portrait as a concertante cello part
- here entrusted to the inimitable Mstislav Rostropovich. This
live recording dates from 1975 - the same year that these exact
artists made a studio recording for EMI which has been released
as part of that label’s “Great Recordings of the Century”
series. I have not heard that performance, much to my shame, but
it has generally been acclaimed as the finest of Karajan’s
three studio recordings of the work. But to focus on this performance
- to my ear the orchestra sounds and feels unleashed and inspired.
What I find thrilling in both of these performances is the exultant
sense of music-making taking wing. Take the very opening of the
work; the woodwind figure is bright-eyed and full of anticipation
with the following string line unfurling and blossoming with the
richness of tone only a great orchestra can muster. Even more
gloriously the solo oboe - I assume the great Lothar Koch - sings,
and I do mean
sings, the main theme in a long winding gently
ecstatic reverie [track 1'-1'30"]. This segues into a distorted
fanfare which, in a few concise musical strokes, conveys the Don’s
nobility and incipient madness. I hear here the brilliance of
execution I expect from the Berliners but now it is allied to
an attention to detail and an attack I didn’t. Listen for
the pointing of the accents on the fourth of each group of semiquavers
- it is perfectly realised. Throughout the brass snarl and menace
magnificently: track 4 1'07" - are they sheep?, is it madness?,
in his madness have the sheep become monstrous? I go into such
detail over the first few minutes simply to illustrate the musical
riches on offer. And this is before Rostropovich has played a
note! It is worth bearing in mind that the mid-1970s were the
period when Rostropovich started moving away from the cello and
began conducting in earnest. Not that his playing betrays anything
but total technical security but added to that is a patrician
wisdom that I find profoundly moving. This is great playing -
not overtly flashy, not perfect for sure, but wise. Jumping ahead
to the final
Death of Don Quixote - always a moving passage
- I don’t think I have ever heard it unfold and swell into
visionary triumph before lapsing back as the Don dies quite so
affectingly. I know that elsewhere Karajan is criticised for his
Strauss lacking passion at the expense of form and symphonic sweep.
That is definitely not the case here. Comparing other recordings
- the famous Kempe/Dresden Staatskapelle on EMI (originally released
on CD as CDC7 47865-2), Järvi/Scottish National Orchestra
on Chandos (originally CHAN8631), Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra
on CBS (re-released as Sony SBK47656) - I am genuinely surprised
to find myself being the most engaged and moved by Karajan and
Rostropovich. Those other three recordings are well regarded,
the Kempe particularly so, but for me Karajan takes the laurels.
All of which has made me muse on the nature of great orchestras
and great conductors. For sure with a great orchestra it is the
ability to expand and encompass. By this I mean tonally - there
seems to be no limit to the depth or volume of sound they can
produce, temporally - they never seem rushed or hurried - lines
(as with the oboe above) simply unwind. Technically, the most
tortuous and complex passages are negotiated with indecent ease.
A great conductor is able to convince you of the “rightness”
of their vision at that given moment. There can never be a single
way with any piece of music but in that instant, in that place,
you cannot imagine it being done any other way.
Which brings me back very neatly to the sense of occasion that
pervades this disc. Clearly these concerts were special events
for the orchestra. The recordings were made on analogue reel-to-reel
tapes by, I assume, Austrian Radio. Apart from a moderate amount
of tape hiss and something I can only describe as “hall
rumble” they are remarkably fine. A wide dynamic range allied
to a beautifully natural orchestral balance - indeed it bore in
on me whilst listening that this kind of natural perspective is
missing all too often from modern recordings. Both performances
are blighted by severe bronchial outbursts from the audience but
actually this simply underlined the unique live nature of this
performance for me. Ulrich Koch playing the concertante solo viola
part is far more limited technically and expressively than Rostropovich
- indeed that imbalance is the only flaw for me here but not one
that would stop this going straight to the top of my list of preferred
performances.
After the touching humanity of
Don Quixote the pompous
philosophical musings of
Also Sprach Zarathustra can seem
overinflated and self-important. But for UK listeners of a certain
age this work can only really mean one thing - the Apollo Space
Missions of the late 1960s. The sunrise opening in all its awe-inspiring
grandeur is still synonymous to me with Saturn 5 space rockets!
For years the Solti/Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording on Decca
has been a guilty pleasure with its super-charged playing and
recording, but for the first time in forty years I felt that thrill
that took me back to being about 10 years old watching the TV.
This is Strauss as shock and awe. How does Karajan achieve this?
Quite simply in fact: a steady uncontroversial tempo but one that
allows the orchestra to play exactly what is on the page faithfully.
The dotted rhythm of the opening tonic-dominant-tonic fanfare
faithfully observes the semiquaver (16
th note) anacrusis
with the following timpani figure clearly in triplets against
the previous rhythm. The three repetitions build inexorably to
the spine-tingling sunrise crowned by blazing trombones and rock-steady
brass. OK the organ chord wilts but by then I’m already
sold lock, stock and barrel. Again the humanity of the work shines
through - Karajan finds passage after passage where the most loving
of rubati allow the music to breath and smile. A perfect instance
is
Das Tanzlied (track 21) - over pertly alert oboes the
solo violin of Michel Schwalbé finds an almost Kreisleresque
quality - and certainly a Viennese lilt - that I had never imagined
there. I wouldn’t be surprised if the principal trumpet
is still kicking himself for the big split on the infamous passage
3'09" into track 20
The Convalescent but again by
then I really do not care. The power of Karajan’s vision
and the conviction of the Berliner’s performance renders
all such caveats mean-spirited and frankly irrelevant. The broad
sweep of the complete performance renders any such criticisms
worthless.
In returning both of these performances to some kind of general
circulation the company
HDTT
are to be warmly praised. Technically the transfers are beyond
reproach - as fine as any live broadcast tapes from that period
that I have heard. Their presentation is frankly idiosyncratic.
For example
Also is given its opus number the
Don not
- why? Salzburg is spelt as Salzberg! Appallingly badly they have
left less than 1 second from the abruptly cut-off end of
Don
Quixote and the opening of
Also sprach. Given that
these are individually burned CDs perhaps some kind of option
to insert a space was not exercised in error. There has to be
a proper break after a performance of this impact - and I would
have liked to hear the audience response too. Then the disc comes
in a DVD-style case. This is a mistake. Discs of this nature will
be bought by collectors; collectors have collections(!) which
tend to be on shelves, in drawers or in stacks. The old style
jewel-case may be one of designs great triumphs of ineptitude
over functionality but it is the norm (dimensionally at least).
The liner-note is oddly printed on a folded piece of card in fonts
of varying sizes and whilst reasonably interesting about the works
relates nothing about the performance. Again, if you buy this
disc the likelihood is that it was the performance you sought.
I don’t know how widely available this disc will be but
if you have any interest in Strauss’s orchestral works I
would urge you to seek this disc out. It is to be hoped that the
other discs released by this company show similar levels of artistic
judgment in the selection of repertoire and performance as well
as technical excellence in both source tapes and CD transfer.
Powerfully performed testaments to great artists at their peak.
Nick Barnard
Mstislav Rostropovich
(cello); Ulrich Koch (viola) 
