Oddly enough, considering the number of times our paths crossed in later years, the first time I saw Herbert von Karajan conduct was at BYU, as part of the Vienna Philharmonic's 1959 American tour. I happened to be on the front row that night, about 10 feet away from the podium. So although I never got a balanced aural perspective on the fabled sound of the VPO, I did get a close-up view of the Generalmusikdirektor.
With his aristocratic, high-priestly bearing, he seemed to tower over players and public alike. But in fact he was not tall. He was aloof, conducting mostly with his eyes closed and often in ways one suspected were aimed more at the audience than at the orchestra. For example, from an otherwise motionless stance he signaled the horn call that follows the reflective interlude in Strauss' "Don Juan" simply by cocking his right thumb.Not surprisingly, it is that legendary control that is being recalled in the wake of the Austrian maestro's passing last week at age 81. I once heard tenor Jon Vickers say that one of the reasons he liked working with Karajan was that there were no surprises, that everything was worked out as smoothly and as carefully as possible.
In my experience that sometimes deprived his performances of warmth and humanity, not to mention spontaneity. Yet there is no question that when the machine worked it worked magnificently, combining a Furtwaenglerian breadth with a Toscanini-like precision that could take one's breath away. Coupled with his tremendous energy and organization, it made him the dominant figure on the international music scene following the dark days of World War II.
Indeed for a time in the mid-'50s he was simultaneously director of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival and, for all intents and purposes, the Philharmonia of London. The story, undoubtedly apochryphal, is told of Karajan stepping into a cab one day and upon being asked, "Where to?" responding, "It doesn't matter. Zey need me everywhere."
But just as he dominated the scene, he also tended to dominate the music, so that those years also gave rise to the following, less-well-remembered piece of doggerel:
Higglety-pigglety, Herbert von Karajan
Has to be boss or there's no bloomin' show.
Produce it, direct it, conduct it, record it,
Then film it for poor people not in the know.
That that autocratic impulse was with him right to the end is borne out by his recent threat to quit Salzburg in a repertoire dispute, echoing earlier to-dos in Berlin and Vienna. But it also gave him the power to create an orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, in his own image and preserve its work according to his own artistic vision.
The result was a series of recordings, audio and video, whose standard of discipline may never be surpassed. One thinks particularly of the opera recordings, where a firm hand is a must, and the large-scale symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler.
It is to the opera recordings I would go, moreover, to counter the suggestion that Karajan had no heart. Has any conductor come more overwhelmingly to terms with the human drama of "Butterfly," "Boheme" or "Tosca," for example? (In the last-named I am thinking particularly of the Vienna recording, with Price and Taddei.) And surely there is more than instrumental splendor to be heard in his "Ariadne," "Salome," "Cosi," "Otello," "Falstaff," "Fledermaus," "Pelleas," "Meistersinger" (especially the early-'50s live performance from Bayreuth) and no fewer than three recordings - including the Salzburg Festival film with Schwarzkopf - of "Rosenkavalier."
Similarly his four complete traversals (!) of the nine Beethoven symphonies contain more than a few high points, the 1962 "Eroica" in particular standing out as the finest stereo recording of that symphony I know. And although I never really thought of Karajan as a Sibelius conductor - things tended to be a bit overpolished for that - his mono Sixth and early-stereo-era Fourth will always occupy a place on my short list of great recordings of those pieces.
Nor is there anything wrong with his various discings of the Brahms Requiem, the last in particular marked by a spirituality and involvement rare among Karajan performances. Ditto the second of his two Mahler Ninths.
Other recordings I suspect will stand the test of time include his Schumann cycle for DG, the earlier of his two Haydn "Creations" (the one with Wunderlich), his Honegger pairing on the same label, either of his two Shostakovich 10ths and Tchaikovsky Serenades, the early-'60s "La Mer" and the EMI "Pictures." And although I always felt he rounded off too many corners in "Heldenleben," among his other Strauss performances his "Zarathustra" and "Metamorphosen" could be unforgettable.
"Do you think they'll ever replace him?" a KBYU-FM interviewer asked me last week following news of his death. "I'm not sure they'd want to," I said at the time. For all its luster, Karajan's brand of music making is not the kind orchestras even in Europe take to all that readily these days. Witness his contretemps with the Berlin Philharmonic some years ago over clarinetist Sabine Meyer; clearly the power was beginning to erode even then.
But the fact he held it as long as he did and accomplished so much with it will keep his name alive whoever follows him in Berlin, just as the transcendence of his musicianship has done the same for his predecessor, Wilhelm Furtwaengler. In short, I doubt anyone is going to be forming a Karajan Society right away. But you can bet they will be listening to his recordings, and remembering the man who made them, for a long time to come.