Independent: Norman Lebrecht: The clapped-out legacy of Karajan that impoverished classical music
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classical music
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/norman-lebrecht-the-clappedout-legacy-of-karajan-that-impoverished-classical-music-805141.html?service=Print
The centenary of the conductor's birth is no occasion for genuine
music lovers to celebrate. Hitler's poster boy offered nothing to
art while ruthlessly crushing creativity
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Waking up in the morning to Herbert von Karajan on the radio, I have
to rub my eyes and check the calendar to make sure that Mao Tse-tung
is not alive and the Soviet Union still a world power.
There was a time, defined by dictatorship, to which Karajan provided
the musical backdrop. He was ubiquitous in the 1970s and 1980s, a
commanding cultural presence with admirers in high places. When he
died in July 1989, I found myself on the Today programme popping
balloons of adulation that came from a fawning Edward Heath. Karajan
was everything a fallen politician longed to be: ultra-elegant and
all-powerful.
The centenary of his birth this weekend is being marked by an
outpouring of product from a music industry that he raised to
prosperity and propelled to near-ruin. If the mainstream of
classical recording has shrivelled to a trickle in the past five
years, that is the inevitable aftermath of the Karajan glut. If
classical music itself is widely (if unfairly) considered to be
elitist, staid and retrospective, we have Herbert von Karajan to
thank for making it a safe, corporate entertainment at prohibitively
priced festivals.
These truths are pretty much self-evident, yet there are still
nostalgists to be found in sections of the press defending his
"greatness", a meaningless critical term, and even the once cocky
figure of Simon Rattle, at the rostrum of Karajan's Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra, feels obliged to pay concerts of homage to
the old tyrant in his anniversary year. Who knows, there may be hope
yet for a Brezhnev revival.
Karajan, as music director and profiteer, ruled the summits of
Berlin and Salzburg from the mid-1950s, paying record fees to his
best pals and using rehearsals with his state-salaried orchestra to
double as sessions for commercial recordings. He enriched himself
and his players beyond measure, leaving a tax-sheltered fortune of
$500m and a pile of some 900 recordings. He manipulated the record
industry by divide and rule, always working with two major labels
while courting a third. At one point he accounted for one-third of
the revenues of Deutsche Grammophon (DG), the largest classical
label.
Almost everything Karajan conducted came out super-smooth, like
cotton undershirts from a washing conditioner. Whether it was Bach
or Bruckner, Rigoletto or Rapsodie Espagnole, the music followed a
seamless line of artificial beauty that owed less to the composer's
invention than to the conductor's intent on manufacturing a
recognisable product. And unmistakable it was. I once entered a
Manhattan art bookstore, high-ceilinged and wood-panelled, and asked
the attendant to replace the Tchaikovsky on the sound system. "How
did you know it was Karajan conducting?" he exclaimed. "He makes it
so obvious," I replied.
A DG tribute set by his widow, Eliette, reveals the conductor at
both his worst and his best. The first disc opens with a doubly
pasteurised Beethoven Pastoral, synthetic to a fault, followed by
homogenised Debussy and Ravel and a Mahler Adagietto from which all
pain has been anaesthetised - a travesty of Mahler. The second disc
contains extracts of oratorio and opera, some of them
transcendentally moving - an effulgent "Erbarme mich" from Bach's St
Matthew Passion, a thrilling "Dies Irae" from Verdi's Requiem and
clips from Wagner's Walküre. The bigger the forces, the better
Karajan liked it.
If he had any kind of genius, it was for organisation and
opportunity. Growing up in Salzburg after the First World War, when
a tiny mountain town became the second city of a shrunken Austrian
state, he learned the perils of being powerless. On Hitler's rise in
1933 he joined the Nazi party not once but twice and was rewarded
with a post at Aachen, the youngest music director in the Reich.
Before long he was hailed by the Goebbels-controlled press as "Das
Wunder Karajan" - the Karajan Miracle - in contrast to the
politically unreliable Wilhelm Furtwängler. Karajan learned from
Goebbels how to play one man against another, among other black
political arts. He strutted his stuff in occupied Paris and
Amsterdam, to all effects the Nazi poster boy.
After the war, he was suspended from public concerts pending an
investigation of his Nazi past, but an EMI executive, Walter Legge,
brought him to London to record with the Philharmonia Orchestra,
made up of newly demobilised British fighting men. That
relationship, which lasted a decade, gave Karajan training in
adversarial politics and a liking for conflict. After Furtwängler's
death in 1954 he became conductor for life in Berlin, using the
Reich's broken capital as his bridgehead for imperial expansion. His
home town festival in Salzburg was converted into a black-tie
thrice-yearly assembly of industrial plutocrats, masters of the
universe.
No musician in history ever sought the power that Karajan achieved
in his pomp, a power that extended by emulation or submission to
many of the world's concert halls and festivals. Reactionary by
nature, he stuck to the classical and romantic mainstream, excluding
non-tonal music and ulterior styles of performance. Christoph von
Dohnanyi went so far as to accuse him of destroying the German
conducting tradition by imposing his narrow tastes so monumentally
on the art. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who played the cello in Karajan's
Vienna orchestra, was shut out of Salzburg and Berlin once he
started conducting with period instrument ensembles in a manner that
contradicted the Karajan orthodoxy. Every time Karajan recorded a
Beethoven cycle - and he did so five times - meant one fewer chance
for alternative interpretations.
His hegemony was autocratic, brooking no contradiction. When Berlin
players refused in 1983 to accept his introduction of a female
clarinettist, Sabine Meyer, he shifted his activities to the rival
Vienna Philharmonic. Disgruntled with DG, he was plotting at his
death to join Sony. He knew no loyalty except to himself. His love
of music was confined to the way he made it.
His power, unlike Brezhnev's, was founded, however, on a winning
charm. Many, such as Daniel Barenboim whom Karajan had demeaned for
years, found themselves tempted by a flattering late overture. On
the only occasion he asked to meet me, in 1985, I decided to decline
the offer of an interview, preferring to observe him at a distance,
the way most musicians did. He was capable of private kindness to
his players, as well as unwarranted cruelty, cutting a friend dead
for no apparent reason.
Karajan's Nazi past is not incidental, though it was not of the kind
that committed holocausts. There is no suspicion that he committed
race crimes and his Reich career took a dip after 1942, when he
married a wealthy heiress of part-Jewish extraction.
What he adopted from the Nazis was a set of values which he applied
to the innocent and inefficient music industry with unwavering
ruthlessness. If there was one lesson Karajan took from the Nazis,
it was the supremacy of German music and the imperative of world
dominance. He demonstrated that music was mostly a matter of power.
Many were, and remain, impressed. Some, like myself, found his
attitude anti-musical. I have trouble listening to Karajan on the
radio with any kind of equanimity.
The centenary "celebration" of his life is a last-ditch attempt by
the music industry to flog profit from a dead lion. Some of the
commemorations are supported by covert subsidies from a
well-organised, extraordinarily wealthy Karajan estate. It is,
though, more than a little surprising to find the Philhamonia
Orchestra, which gave him no quarter, putting on a Karajan memorial
concert at the Royal Festival Hall this week under Sir Charles
Mackerras.
One aspect of the Karajan debate, raised by Dominic Lawson, is
whether "we should join in the celebrations of the life of an
ex-Nazi" - a man who never recanted his political affiliation.
Lawson broadened the issue to discuss whether a bad man can make
good art, and how we should relate to art from a tainted source.
That question, relevant to Wagner, is incidental to Karajan who
never created an original work.
Whether Herbert von Karajan was a bad man or a good man is
immaterial. He was a brilliant organiser with the gift of tuning an
orchestra to his personal sound, an ability that he exploited to
extreme ends. He inflicted his ego on the world of classical music
in a way that crushed independence and creativity and damaged its
image for future generations. It is not the bad man he was that we
should deplore but the reactionary and exclusivist legacy which is
being "celebrated". For music lovers, there is not much to
celebrate. Once the centenary is over, we will drop the curtain once
and for all on a discreditable life that yielded no fresh thought
and upheld no worthwhile human value. Karajan is dead. Music is much
better off without him.
Norman Lebrecht's history of classical recording, 'Maestros,
Masterpieces and Madness', will appear as a Penguin paperback in
June
O
Premise Checker <che...@panix.com> wrote:
> Norman Lebrecht: The clapped-out legacy of Karajan that impoverished
> classical music
To paraphrase an old playboy joke, "He may have been a Nazi, but he was
OUR Nazi."
-Owen
Akiralx
"Premise Checker" <che...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.NEB.4.64.08...@panix1.panix.com...
Norman Lebrecht: The clapped-out legacy of Karajan that impoverished
classical music
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/norman-lebrecht-the-clappedout-legacy-of-karajan-that-impoverished-classical-music-805141.html?service=Print
This is the guy who not only invented but solemnly critiqued a Karajan
recording of Orff's Carmina Burana...what a cretin.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:fupvsq$aud$1...@newsreader.cw.net:
And a nonexistent "Rigoletto" recording, at that.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
War is Peace. ** Freedom is Slavery. ** It's all Napster's fault!
John Bryant
> "Akiralx" <alex1...@blueyonder.co.uk> appears to have caused the following
>
> > This is the guy who not only invented but solemnly critiqued a Karajan
> > recording of Orff's Carmina Burana...what a cretin.
>
> And a nonexistent "Rigoletto" recording, at that.
Lebrecht is nothing but a silly, sensationalist, doom-and-gloom, the-
end-of-the-world-is-nigh, bastard. It constantly amazes me that anyone
could ever take him seriously. He's been at it for years, but his only
achievement has been to enrich himself by way of this nonsense.
JB.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:28b36bf5-3f56-4104-b1d5-
467967...@l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com:
Hmmm, I wonder if he's single? Bl**r T*nd*ll might be available.
John Bryant
> John Bryant <brit...@googlemail.com> appears to have caused the following
> letters to be typed in news:28b36bf5-3f56-4104-b1d5-
>
> > On Apr 24, 3:38 pm, "Matthew B. Tepper" <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> "Akiralx" <alex1...@blueyonder.co.uk> appears to have caused the
> >> following
>
> >> > This is the guy who not only invented but solemnly critiqued a Karajan
> >> > recording of Orff's Carmina Burana...what a cretin.
>
> >> And a nonexistent "Rigoletto" recording, at that.
>
> > Lebrecht is nothing but a silly, sensationalist, doom-and-gloom, the-
> > end-of-the-world-is-nigh, bastard. It constantly amazes me that anyone
> > could ever take him seriously. He's been at it for years, but his only
> > achievement has been to enrich himself by way of this nonsense.
>
> Hmmm, I wonder if he's single? Bl**r T*nd*ll might be available.
Sorry Matthew, but I'm not quite sure to whom you're alluding. I must
be half asleep again.
JB.
John Bryant
>
> - Show quoted text -
Dammit! I know who you mean now. I doubt even *she* is quite that
desperate!
JB.
Dontait...@aol.com
Agreement here. If there's any problem, it's that Lebrecht has a
gift for writing. He writes beautifully (opinions aside). He has a
breezy, fluent style. The problem is that he writes so attractively,
so seemingly rationally, that his prose could attract the unwary into
the fatal intellectual whirlpool of his silly so-called thinking. I
agree that the guy is a self-enriching verbal corporation.
Don Tait
bl...@stanfordalumni.org
> On Apr 24, 5:29 pm, John Bryant <brit...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 24, 5:13 pm, "Matthew B. Tepper" <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > > John Bryant <brit...@googlemail.com> appears to have caused the following
> > > letters to be typed in news:28b36bf5-3f56-4104-b1d5-
> > > 467967788...@l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com:
>
> > > > On Apr 24, 3:38 pm, "Matthew B. Tepper" <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > >> "Akiralx" <alex1...@blueyonder.co.uk> appears to have caused the
> > > >> following
>
> > > >> > This is the guy who not only invented but solemnly critiqued a Karajan
> > > >> > recording of Orff's Carmina Burana...what a cretin.
>
> > > >> And a nonexistent "Rigoletto" recording, at that.
>
> > > > Lebrecht is nothing but a silly, sensationalist, doom-and-gloom, the-
> > > > end-of-the-world-is-nigh, bastard. It constantly amazes me that anyone
> > > > could ever take him seriously. He's been at it for years, but his only
> > > > achievement has been to enrich himself by way of this nonsense.
Your respectfully as always,
Bl**r T*nd*ll
bl...@stanfordalumni.org
Wiesenthal Center (www.wiesenthal.org) feel about your posting here
during business hours? Don't most non-profit, tax-exempt organizations
thriving on taxpayer dollars like to reserve their computers for
business use?
As always, respectfully yours,
Bl**r T*nd*ll
Matthew B. Tepper
John Bryant
> http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1119071nye1.html
>
Touché !!
Steve de Mena
> Bl**r T*nd*ll
Not cool, posting personal information about someone.
Steve
John Bryant
>
> Mr. Lebrecht has been happily married for some time.
>
> Your respectfully as always,
> Bl**r T*nd*ll
Please forward my sympathies to his unfortunate family.
JB.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:2c71e164-1df0-4d6c-be0a-
f1dddb...@b64g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
And my "joke" was merely the attempt to juxtapose two authors of notorious
books. My apologies to Ms. Tindall, who certainly deserves better.
bl...@stanfordalumni.org
> John Bryant <brit...@googlemail.com> appears to have caused the following
> letters to be typed in news:2c71e164-1df0-4d6c-be0a-
>
> > On Apr 25, 3:24 am, bl...@stanfordalumni.org wrote:
>
> >> Mr. Lebrecht has been happily married for some time.
>
> >> Your respectfully as always,
> >> Bl**r T*nd*ll
>
> > Please forward my sympathies to his unfortunate family.
>
> > JB.
>
> And my "joke" was merely the attempt to juxtapose two authors of notorious
> books. My apologies to Ms. Tindall, who certainly deserves better.
>
> My personal home page --http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
> My main music page ---http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
> To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
> War is Peace. ** Freedom is Slavery. ** It's all Napster's fault!
Yes, Mr. Tepper:
We all saw the Smoking Gun the first 5.8 million times it was
published, back in November.; it's no secret. The legal action you
reference was not granted -- and the entire case was dismissed in
January.
Besides, according to you, Bl**r T*nd*ll is married to Greg Sandow --
information which surely startled his wife Anne Midgette.
Respectfully yours,
Bl**r T*nd*ll
bl...@stanfordalumni.org
I couldn't agree more.
John Bryant
> John Bryant <brit...@googlemail.com> appears to have caused the following
> letters to be typed in news:2c71e164-1df0-4d6c-be0a-
>
> > On Apr 25, 3:24 am, bl...@stanfordalumni.org wrote:
>
> >> Mr. Lebrecht has been happily married for some time.
>
> >> Your respectfully as always,
> >> Bl**r T*nd*ll
>
> > Please forward my sympathies to his unfortunate family.
>
> > JB.
>
> And my "joke" was merely the attempt to juxtapose two authors of notorious
> books. My apologies to Ms. Tindall, who certainly deserves better.
oops! I appear to have missed the joke, so I feel rather guilty now.
I too offer my apologies to Ms. Tindall.
JB.
Matthew B. Tepper
typed in news:3c33c5dd-bcb1-43c8-b817-b7fa3d34ffa9
@t12g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
Dear Ms. Tindall, whom I've probably seen many times and never recognized
at the Ralphs at Ventura and Coldwater Canyon:
If I may amplify my apology: You are already quite aware that I'm not a
fan of your book. But the personal shots I made at the time, and since, we
not called for and unnecessary. Please accept my apology for them.
I hope you'll accept this symbolic olive branch -- or better yet, some nice
tube cane, from which to make reeds. (Good grief, I just checked out the
Wikipedia entry on "Oboe reed making" -- now I know why all my double-reed-
playing friends in school spent so much time carving away with all those
little tools!)
That said, I still entertain the hope that your next book will be on a
vastly different subject ... and that it sells better than the last one.
Best,
Matthew B. Tepper
(most of whose friends are writers)
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in
As the chief instigator of this nasty sort of "humor," I feel I have to be
reminded every now and then that our little shots at living people, here in
so public a forum, will occasionally bring the well-deserved response.
I hate to think of what would happen if Norman Lebrecht were to stumble
into this newsgroup. We'd all be doomed!
John Bryant
I wouldn't say it was particularly "nasty" Matthew, and as far as I
can tell, no lasting damage has been done. As I expatiated in my
email, I didn't really understand what you were driving at.(I do now)
I came at it from a different angle, you might say!
As for Lebrecht, I'd have a whale of a time if he made an appearance
here!! Come on Norman, where are you.........?
JB.
bl...@stanfordalumni.org
To all:
As someone who met Mr. Lebrecht once, I would guess that Mr. Lebrecht
knows of all this. People google themselves. People like yourselves,
and like me, put out their opinions. They do not deserve to be defamed
to an extreme degree or even damned with potential death from such, as
I have been.
This appears to be a forum to discuss the wonderful subject of
classical music. How it sank to this level is unfathomable. But now
perhaps it seems to be rising to its original purpose.
Could I please encourage you all to love classical, and all forms, of
music? And also to actually listen to recordings, go to live
performances, and report your own real-life experiences of what you
hear? Every one of you has valuable ears, and an opinion -- every ONE
of you! I am very disturbed by all the reviews of recordings on usenet
groups from people who haven't listened to them. You don't have to be
an "expert" -- and what is that after all -- you just have to tell us
what you think, in the unique voice that is you. No music degree
required.
And I have never been to the Ralph's the Mr. Tepper references. I live
in a different area of the Valley, with a different grocery store. He
doesn't like my book -- great! I love dissonce, provided the person
has read/listened to the work. I'm not convinced he's opened the book.
I wish Mr. Tepper all the best, and to expand and love his musical
life as he already has, and to continue enjoying his wonderful gift of
music.
All best,
Blair Tindall
bl...@stanfordalumni.org
There was never anything approximating a joke here.
John Bryant
>
> There was never anything approximating a joke here.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
That would appear to be the case.
JB.
Neil
> Norman Lebrecht: The clapped-out legacy of Karajan that impoverished
> Karajan liked it.
>
> If he had any kind of genius, it was for organisation and
> opportunity. Growing up in Salzburg after the First World War, when
> a tiny mountain town became the second city of a shrunken Austrian
> state, he learned the perils of being powerless. On Hitler's rise in
> 1933 he joined the Nazi party not once but twice and was rewarded
> with a post at Aachen, the youngest music director in the Reich.
> Before long he was hailed by the Goebbels-controlled press as "Das
> Wunder Karajan" - the Karajan Miracle - in contrast to the
> Goebbels how to play one man against another, among other black
> political arts. He strutted his stuff in occupied Paris and
> Amsterdam, to all effects the Nazi poster boy.
>
> After the war, he was suspended from public concerts pending an
> investigation of his Nazi past, but an EMI executive, Walter Legge,
> brought him to London to record with the Philharmonia Orchestra,
> made up of newly demobilised British fighting men. That
> relationship, which lasted a decade, gave Karajan training in
Karajan wasn't just a great conductor. He was a great musician -- he
"played" the orchestra.
Neil Miller, author of The Piano Lessons Book
Enter in Amazon.com search: Neil Miller Piano Lessons Book
OR http://www.createspace.com/3332371
John Bryant
>
> Karajan wasn't just a great conductor. He was a great musician -- he
> "played" the orchestra.
An opinion with which I wholeheartedly concur.
JB.
Bob Harper
Schumann 4 and Beethoven 5 (VSO and BPO, respectively). So far I've only
made it through about half the Schumann rehearsal, but based on what
I've seen and heard so far, I'd say the above was absolutely correct.
Fascinating to watch.
Bob Harper