Mahler by Karajan.

[oscar]

Karajan recorded a few Mahler works for DG.  I like most the last recording of the Symphony nr 9.
What is the view of others on these discs ?

regards,

Oscar.

[John Kim]

I have all of Karajan's M4,M5,M6,M9 (twice), and DLVDE and like only the M4th and to a lesser degree, the first M9th. I think Karajan's Mahler is in general ruined by his micromanagement, too much fuss with the scores, too much emphasis on beautifying the music. OTOH, this M4th finds him and the Berlin Orch. in their top form, beautifully played and recorded. The analogue M9th might have been great if the orchestra had not made mistakes in various places and the final climax in I. had been executed with more power and stronger percussion. The M6th is also might have been pretty good if Karajan had not rushed in the coda of I. and had a better coordination in II. (but his Andante and Finale are excellent). I wish Karajan had recorded M3rd which he expressed in recording but was never realized.

John,

[barry guerrero]

The 5th is terrific, capped with one of the strongest finales out there.

The 5th was Karajan's first Mahler recording, and he was extremely enthused about. A tremendous amount of rehearsal time into it. Undoubtedly, Karajan's rehearsal conductors  took many of those rehearsals. But they probably followed Karajan's wishes to a "T". It's truly one of THE great M5's, and DG Originals reissue of it sounds great.

Karajan's 6th has many fans, but I'm not one of them. It's very tall on small details, but I think it's a case of missing for the forest for the trees. The two outer movements are pretty fast, but the slow movement reaches out to almost 18 minutes. In addition, the numerous trio sections of the scherzo are too dragged out. The two hammer strokes are a bit underwhelming as well. However, one great bonus to getting Karajan's M6 on the DG Originals series, is the inclusion of  the "KTL" and the 5 Ruckert songs, sung by Christa Ludwig. Both of those are excellent performances.

Karajan's 4th is very, very beautiful, but it's a tad too soft edged in the scherzo. However, it should be noted that many Mahler 4ths have scherzos that either too soft edged and/or too slow.

Karajan's "DLvdE" is very competitive, with both Ludwig and Kollo captured in good voice.

Both of Karajan's Mahler 9s are very good. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. Conceptually, they're quite similar. Personally, I prefer the live one (Karajan Gold). I like that it has 50 billion separate tracks. Sometimes you just don't have time to listen to the whole thing.

[Polarius T]

If I may be a bit provocative, I'll say this: with Karajan, it's all about the surface gloss, none about the vast content that Mahler's music always has as its very distinguishing character (cf. "Music must contain within itself all human life" or whatever the exact wording by GM was, when admonishing -- as I take it -- Sibelius).

And that gloss is so homogenizing of the texture, sounding very much imposed, kind of straightjacketed, ultimately even superficial. There is no life in Karajan's Mahler, none of that heterogeneity of elements somehow miraculously cohering into a vast and fascinating new universe as in the greatest of Mahler performances. One of the truly most instructive and simply quite astonishing personal experiences for me was when, after having held the Karajan 6th as my reference recording for some years, I played the same work by Abbado and CSO lent to me by a friend. Some sort of scales fell off my eyes... or ears. That was the work, finally, so comprehensible and alive and moving, pulsating there right in front of me! Never before had I heard it come alive like that. After that there was never going back.

So I'd sum up by saying Karajan's Mahler recordings are false originals. Very good job, but counterfeit all the same. Put them next to the real stuff and the spell is gone.

Polarius T

[barry guerrero]

I don't know, Polarius; I think you're harping on some rather over-used cliches about Karajan here. In the context of Karajan's M6, I'm more likely to agree with you. But I think that Karajan's 5th is pretty darn gritty, especially in the 2nd and 5th movements.

I do think that you're "glossy" description could be applied to  Karajan's first recording of M9, as well as much of his M4 (which is truly beautiful, I think). But his famous M9 remake is relatively raw and revealing, I believe. It's certainly more "denuded" than his earlier studio recording. Anyway, I like it.

I know what you mean, but I just don't feel that it's a balanced view that tells the whole story either.

Barry

[sperlsco]

I agree w/ Barry.  The M5 is one of the better ones.  I am also a big fan of the live/digital M9.  It was actually the M9 that made me "see the light" and open my eyes to all of the other M9's out there. 

I also love the DLvdE.  Kollo and Ludwig are two of my favorite Mahler-voices.  I also like Karajan's tempo choices throughout.  There are a few places where the BPO sounds overly homogenized, such that solo instruments do not rise above the ensemble. 

[Polarius T]

...I think you're harping on some rather over-used cliches about Karajan here.... his M4 is truly beautiful, I think. But his famous M9 remake is relatively raw and revealing, I believe. It's certainly more "denuded" than his earlier studio recording. Anyway, I like it.

Barry

Of course you are right, Barry: it's a cliche, but behind every cliche there is a kernel of truth, and it's a cliche only among people like you and I and the rest of us on this board. But elsewhere in the big world they still get their Karajan almost spoon-fed by the big-time marketing machine over at DG*: the sports car, blond model, jet set, and control loving HvK is still the best-selling artist DG has ever had, and his daily sales even as we speak almost certainly eclipse those of all the other conductors working with DG combined. His superiority out there is taken as an axiom, and no others even get a decent listen, ever. With that, a certain model of music making likewise comes to predominate our expectations when listening. (This would be the superbly executed homogenous hard glossy sheen, etc., attributes, which represent the opposite of the kind of organic, developing, sensitive, selfless, collective music making rooted in the physicality of the orchestra as an institution and openly referring to the origin of the sound in the instruments played, as in what we hear from the likes of Abbado first and foremost -- no imposition, no oppression, no mystification, no nothing but free and liberated music making happening there among musicians as peers.)

Anyway. And it's of course not to say HvK didn't make beautiful sounds. Even beautiful music: I still think some of his Strauss and even Schoenberg represent some sort of pinnacles of recorded orchestral music. It's just that, as far as I'm concerned, it's all faux. It's not Mahler, really, it's something else.

I've still to hear that 9th remake of his, unfortunately.

PT

*I'm not among those constantly complaining about this record company at all. They are perhaps the best out there, in pretty much every way. And it's the surefire sellers like HvK and all the Lang Langs of the world out there that make it possible for them to focus on the really meaningful (but unprofitable) artistic projects they basically are known for, so it's of course more than understandable that they keep milking their cash cows as best they can, year in and year out. They are a company operating on a market, after all.

[Polarius T]

I agree w/ Barry.  The M5 is one of the better ones.  I am also a big fan of the live/digital M9.  It was actually the M9 that made me "see the light" and open my eyes to all of the other M9's out there. 

I also love the DLvdE.  Kollo and Ludwig are two of my favorite Mahler-voices.  I also like Karajan's tempo choices throughout.  There are a few places where the BPO sounds overly homogenized, such that solo instruments do not rise above the ensemble. 

Yeah, they are GREAT (Ludwig & Kollo).

And actually, what could be interesting, perhaps even as a gauge of someone's qualities of musicianship or music-making attributes, is to think of a conductor's skills in accompanying other artists -- or, better still, performing with other artists (like in a violin concerto). Here the first thing that comes to mind is Sviatoslav Richter's famously merciless condemnation of his own recordings with Karajan (the Tchaikovsky cto and the LvB triple cto). For him, they were all rubbish, owing to Karajan's inability to listen to anyone else but his own conception of the work.

Compare that with the warmth and love filling any musician's descriptions who discusses her or his experiences from working with, let's say again, Abbado. The list begins with Accardo and Argerich and goes through all the first-desk players and singular stars filling the roster of the Lucerne orchestra, all the way to the now nearly forgotten Lilya Zilberstein.

Just a thought!

PT

[barry guerrero]

Fair enough. See, I'm not so bothered by what Karajan did in front of an orchestra. In fact, I believe that he - along with Szell, Reiner, Stokowski/Ormandy, Munch/BSO, and others - set a certain standard that has seldom been equaled since. What I do think is true about Karajan, is that he really wasn't at his best with most standard Austro/German repertoire. Richard Strauss might be the exception to that. Instead, I think that Karajan was at his best with "imported" music: Prokofiev; Debussy; Puccini; Verdi; Honneger; Holst, etc.

Now that DG is going through all the motions of again honoring Karajan, I think it's unfortunate that they're focusing almost exclusively on the standard Austro/German fare. By and large, I believe that you can find many examples of the Staatskapelle Dresden and Gewandhaus Leipzig - with various different conductors - beating the pants off the Berlin Phil. in much of the Austro/German rep. But where in the Dresden or Leipzig discography are you going to conjure up the same sort of Prokofiev 5th; Honneger "Liturgique"; "The Planets", or "La Mer"? That's what I mean by Karajan setting a certain standard, and not so much what he did or didn't do with the Beethoven 7th.

So, how does that apply to Mahler? If there's more Debussy and Puccini to Karajan's Mahler, than there is, say, Beethoven or Schumann, I  really don't think that that's such a bad thing. I don't see Mahler as being a purely Austro/German composer. Instead, I view him as the world's first, truly cosmopolitan composer. But what I will cop to, is that I prefer the Czech/Concertgebouw approach to Mahler: woodwinds far forward; a huge violin sound not being a big priority; percussion that play up to the level of the brass (as opposed to Chicago, where the percussion nearly always play underneath their famous brass). It's a style of Mahler that displays more the influence of Smetana and late Dvorak, than Wagner or Bruckner (and of course, Mahler was influenced by ALL of these folks). Karajan always made a big violin sound a major priority, and his oboes dominated over the rest of his woodwinds. But then again, a big violin sound was a priority with Stokowski and Ormandy too. What I think what might have been somewhat unusual for an Austro/German of that generation, was that Karajan was fairly well tuned into his percussion as well. In that sense, the Berlin Phil. was ahead of the curve at that time. Karajan was surprisingly sensitive to all of the fussy cymbal parts in Debussy (distinctions of different sizes and types of cymbals), as well as the different gradations of gongs in "Turandot" (not so well sung), for example. 

By the way, I saw Karajan conduct just a knock-out performance of Bruckner 5 in Vienna in 1981. It was far, far better than his Berlin studio recording. This was after he had fallen off a stage in 1978. He was not very limber, but he still conducted Bruckner magnificently.


Barry

[Leo K]

I also think Karajan conducted the 2nd Viennese school with great sensitivity and aggression...those recordings sound like a real labor of love.

--Todd

[Polarius T]

Barry: Very interesting points, thanks for them. And maybe he did really redeem himself in that more extraneous repertory; but I doubt it, if I may (having however really not heard him in it at all, apart from two truly horrendous Stravinsky renditions). The reason why I doubt that, for instance, he would be a fine Debussy conductor is that he totally lacks the ability to diversify the sound he creates (within the orchestral sections and, in the score itself, vertically in note clusters and chords and horizontally in gestures -- even within singular tone values, as sometimes called for but only rarely accomplished in this music). What he does/did is to bring forth extraordinarily unanimous and highly integrated utterances, voices that were as it were chased or embossed into a remarkably well-defined shape, which then could be terribly impressive at best. But wholly and utterly unsuited to the world of most French music, in my opinion.

And for this very reason also wholly and utterly unsuited to the -- as you rightly point out -- magnificent cosmopolitan universe of Mahler, which doesn't lend itself to appropriation by people with iron fists (however thickly covered with velvet) like HvK (for that's what he ultimately remains, if you ask me). THe qualities Mahler requires are largely the opposite of those demonstrated by HvK in his recordings at least.

Re your 1st par: Do orchestras need disciplining, really (if you're not in charge of NYPO )? My view of this kapellmeister virtue has greatly changed after hearing what a pickup band like the Lucerne Festival Orchestra has (gorgeously) done with just a couple of rehearsals under their summer festival guest conductor laureate.

Your words reinforce the appeal that the idea of hearing Czech orchestras in Mahler has for some time already had for me. I"ll have to check some out (no pun intended), starting with...whom? Ancerl, Talich, and then up, or from Neumann & co. down? Yet I'll never be able to listen as analytically as you, to my obvious and great impoverishment.

Todd: What I felt that the recordings I had in my mind excelled in was their forward propulsion, rhythmic snap (in a kind of precise but slightly soft old-world manner), and gorgeous string tone. Where they are left in the dust every time, however, are the playing skills and accrued experience of works in this vein of just about any major orchestra today and, first and foremost, the ability of the good conductors to differentiate the sound world in these works. This latter is of utmost importance given the nature of the compositions and something that I think HvK totally fails in, given his approach. But the beauty of those recordings can be impressive even if one can ask whether that was the main point with them to begin with.

Polarius

[barry guerrero]

"Re your 1st par: Do orchestras need disciplining, really (if you're not in charge of NYPO Smiley)? My view of this kapellmeister virtue has greatly changed after hearing what a pickup band like the Lucerne Festival Orchestra has (gorgeously) done with just a couple of rehearsals under their summer festival guest conductor laureate."

True. But remember, the LFO is really almost the same as the Berlin Phil., except with a few even higher-profile soloists covering some of the first desk positions. The proverbial horse always comes before the cart; so yes, their was a time when the Berlin Phil. might have needed the sort of "discipline" and rounding out that Karajan brought to the table. In that old Furtwaengler vs. Karajan debate, there's no question that Furtwaengler was an excellent conductor, but only superior to Karajan with a much, much narrower range of repertoire. Ever heard Furtwaengler's recording of Hindemieth's "Harmonie der Welt" Symphony? It's a total trainwreck - hardly even recognizable after hearing a truly competent recording of it, such as Blomstedt's (Leipzig).

"Your words reinforce the appeal that the idea of hearing Czech orchestras in Mahler has for some time already had for me. I"ll have to check some out (no pun intended), starting with...whom? Ancerl, Talich, and then up, or from Neumann & co. down?"

Well, there isn't any Mahler with Talich that I know of. You'll want to start with Ancerl's M9. Then there are the many Neumann permutations - almost all of them pretty good. I think that all of us feel that the current Czech Phil cycle with Zdenek Macal is really good. However, those are Japanese recordings, and they're very expensive to just buy outright. There's also a superb Czech Mahler 3 with Kobayashi conducting. He's so "into" the performance that - unfortunately - he hums and moans along with much of it. But believe me, it's got plenty of true grit! The Kobayashi/Czech Phil. M1 & M5 are quite good also. 

"Yet I'll never be able to listen as analytically as you, to my obvious and great impoverishment."

Why, what's so special about me? Actually, I really have studied all of the scores plenty, as well as played in amateur/semi-pro performances of pretty much every major work by Mahler. That does give me something of a head-start, I'm sure. I really do need a new hobby, though. But seriously, thanks for the kind words.

Hey, Karajan isn't your cup of tea, and that's OK with me. If you don't know his M5 though, you really ought to check it out sometime; especially the second and fifth movements - pretty hard to beat, I feel. I certainly like the old Barbirolli one too, though.

I think you probably would have been pretty blown about by the Bruckner 5th I saw him do in Vienna in 1981. Old ladies were leaving the Musikverein crying, for all the right reasons. It was quite a show. I've certainly never heard any American orchestra come even  close to that with the Bruckner 5th. I know that the Barenboim/Chicago recording of B5 is pretty impressive though.

Barry

[John Kim]

Speaking of Karajan's Mahler Ninths, anyone who has heard original LPs of Karajan's first Mahler Ninth (analogue studio) would appreciate it more than his later, live digital recording. For reasons hard to speculate, when DG finally reissued it on CD its sound became so unauthentic that I could hardly believe it was the same recording that I knew of. Simply put, DG's remastering emphasized the highs and middles at the expense of the bass, leaving little room for low brass, string, and percussion to breath in. OTOH, on the original LPs the lower instruments come forward with a real presence and power, e.g. the timpani is stronger at the major climax. I expressed the concern to DG and suggest they redo the remastering. They haven't done it yet and I doubt they will ever bother with it in the future. Fortunately, I transferred the LPs to CD-R and have been enjoying the recording immensely.

John,

[Polarius T]

But remember, the LFO is really almost the same as the Berlin Phil., except with a few even higher-profile soloists covering some of the first desk positions.

And most of the Hagen & Alban Berg Quartets plus an assortment of freelancing former Soviets and...

In that old Furtwaengler vs. Karajan debate, there's no question that Furtwaengler was an excellent conductor, but only superior to Karajan with a much, much narrower range of repertoire.

But I think we can also meaningfully distinguish between technical competence (HvK) and mastery of musicianship (WF)...

Well, there isn't any Mahler with Talich that I know of. You'll want to start with Ancerl's M9. Then there are the many Neumann permutations - almost all of them pretty good. I think that all of us feel that the current Czech Phil cycle with Zdenek Macal is really good. However, those are Japanese recordings, and they're very expensive to just buy outright. There's also a superb Czech Mahler 3 with Kobayashi conducting. He's so "into" the performance that - unfortunately - he hums and moans along with much of it. But believe me, it's got plenty of true grit! The Kobayashi/Czech Phil. M1 & M5 are quite good also. 

I'd be really keen to find out whether any records exist of Talich's Mahler. He did, after all, perform a complete cycle together with Zemlinsky just before the war, if memory serves. But I'll also be curious to hear Macal in these works as I've never heard anything by him.

Actually, I really have studied all of the scores plenty...

That's one happy position to be in! My sight reading probably wouldn't let me follow a complex orchestral score fast enough without too much work first.

...as well as played in amateur/semi-pro performances of pretty much every major work by Mahler. That does give me something of a head-start, I'm sure.

It sure does! I must say I'm quite jealous of this. Listening to his works is one thing, but to be able to partake in a living performance would surely be something else.

I really do need a new hobby, though.

With the one you have you seem to put your talents to good enough a use already, I'd say!

Hey, Karajan isn't your cup of tea...

He sure isn't.

I think you probably would have been pretty blown about by the Bruckner 5th I saw him do in Vienna in 1981. Old ladies were leaving the Musikverein crying, for all the right reasons. It was quite a show. I've certainly never heard any American orchestra come even  close to that with the Bruckner 5th. I know that the Barenboim/Chicago recording of B5 is pretty impressive though.

Most tears I've seen shed in a concert (to be sure I could no longer really see very clearly at that point) were my own when Abbado & BPO played the 5th during one of their annual NYC visits. They struck something very deep, and this despite the trumpeter who for starters truly fumbled his very opening notes (in fact twice) (never heard anything like that before, either).

PT