Herbert von Karajan leads the Berliner Philharmoniker in a concert program exploring the idea of homeland. Rossini’s William Tell tells the story of the legendary folk hero whose love for his son led him to confront the menacing Hapsburg invaders. The opera’s overture counts among classical music’s greatest hits. Next Smetana’s unforgettable melodies bring the beautiful Bohemian countryside near the banks of the Moldau river to life in his symphonic cycle “My Homeland” (Má vlast). Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Valse triste was originally written as incidental music for his brother-in-law’s play Kuolema (Death). The famed maestro presents an exquisite reading of these works before closing the program with two typically brilliant waltzes by the great Austrian waltz-master Johann Strauss: Delirien and the Overture to Der Zigeunerbaron.
New Year‘s Eve Concert 1984
Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the few baroque composers whose works Herbert von Karajan recorded, with the conductor specializing primarily in Classical and Romantic repertoire. This rare footage of the 1984 New Year’s concert features the Berliner Philharmoniker and Karajan in a two-part program. First they perform Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major with the brilliant Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist. Then they present Bach’s Magnificat in D Major for soloists, choir, and orchestra, a true audience favorite.
New Year’s Eve Concert 1985
Is there such a thing as a Karajan “sound”? Beginning toward the end of his career, Herbert von Karajan began to attract criticism for having pushed his particular obsession clarity of an orchestra’s sound to the extreme. This New Year’s concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker is typical of his later interpretive approach: Karajan draws a particular sound out of the orchestra, but he and his musicians still take care to modulate that sound according to the repertoire they are playing. Their clear and precise performance of Weber’s brilliant Freischütz Overture is followed by their hypnotic string sound in Puccini and Leoncavallo’s two Intermezzi, culminating in the progressive and determined build-up of Ravel’s Boléro.
Also sprach Zarathustra
In 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey’s unforgettable opening scene made Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus spoke Zarathustra”) one of the best-known pieces of classical music ever. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick chose the recording of Karajan with the Wiener Philharmoniker, but this performance from 1987—part of the 750th anniversary celebration of Berlin’s founding—features Karajan’s other preferred artistic partner, the Berliner Philharmoniker. Monumental and lyric, the magnificent symphonic poem pays tribute to Nietzsche’s eponymous work that explores human nature and existence.
Karajan conducts Bruckner 8
Nearly a century after its premiere in Vienna in 1892, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 receives a brilliant interpretation by the great conductor Herbert von Karajan and the Wiener Philharmoniker—the direct orchestral descendant of the ensemble that gave the masterpiece’s very first performance! Encouraged by the triumph of his Seventh Symphony, Bruckner produced his Eighth after three years of intense work, pushed by the implacable conductor Hermann Levi to make so many revisions that it became a “suicidal obsession”. Even with Levi’s demands, the Eighth would prove to be one of the longest symphonies in the history of music!
Karajan conducts Bruckner 9
A passionate enthusiast for new technologies and new concert formats, Herbert von Karajan was a pioneer in the translation of the symphonic concert experience to film. One of the first to grasp the importance of film and CDs, would immortalize numerous works of the classical canon using these two mediums over the course of his career. Never satisfied with confining himself to musical direction, Karajan was heavily involved in the technical side of his recordings, going so far as to to dictate the placement of individual cameras. In this performance of Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9, Karajan’s talents as both music director and filmmaker are palatable: an exceptional testimony to both the maestro and this essential masterpiece of the pivotal transitional period between Romanticism and Modernism.
Don Quixote
Enter the extravagant universe of Cervantes’s Don Quixote in Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, legendary personality of the 20th-century European musical scene. Strauss gives musical life to some of the novel’s most famous episodes, including the battle with the sheep, the windmills, and the encounter with Dulcinea. Having already recorded the work with Pierre Fournier and Rostropovich, in this version Karajan approaches an even greater level of perfection with the young cello virtuoso Antonio Meneses, winner of the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition.
Karajan conducts Dvorak 8
“You advise me to write small pieces but I find this difficult… how can I do this when no theme for a melody or work for piano comes to me? At the moment, my mind is full of great ideas — I will follow the will of God”. These words from Dvorak to his publisher Simrock (who wanted the composer to produce shorter, easier-to-sell works) show his determination regarding the writing of his symphonies. Premiered February 2, 1890 in Prague, the Eighth Symphony, optimistic and inspired by traditional music, was very well received by its audience. The maestro Herbert von Karajan and the Wiener Philharmoniker present a masterful interpretation in this 1985 concert in the Austrian capital.
Karajan conducts Dvorak 9
Invited by the progressive American arts patron Jeannette Thurber to become director of the naissant National Conservatory of Music of America in New York in October of 1892, Dvorak was initially hesitant to cross the ocean to accept her offer. Attached to his native country and boosted by his growing success on the European continent, his financial struggle to support his family of six children led him to say yes. His subsequent voyage would become the point of departure for one of the world’s most beloved symphonic works: his Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”, which combines traditional slavic folk music with the new American musical horizons he encountered. Karajan and the Wiener Philharmoniker honor the Czech composer’s magnificent chef-d’œuvre with this captivating performance.
Ein Heldenleben
“It is entitled ‘A Hero’s Life,’ and while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism. Thanks to the healthy country air, my sketch has progressed well.” With these words Richard Strauss evoked the connections between his symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”. A great connoisseur of Strauss’s oeuvre, Herbert von Karajan tackled the piece in 1985 as part of a series including Don Quixote, Thus spoke Zarathustra, and Death and Transfiguration. The Austrian maestro’s authority and mastery express themselves with éclat in this performance featuring his trusted artistic collaborators, the musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker.