Leonard Bernstein conducts “West Side Story” – The Making of a Recording

“West Side Story” is perhaps Leonard Bernstein’s most popular work and contains songs that have achieved enormous popularity throughout the world. The film version won no less than ten Academy Awards. In 1984, 27 years after the premiere, Bernstein finally conducted the work for the first time, with singers of his choice. “The Making of West Side Story” won the Prix Italia and the British Academy’s Robert Flaherty Award in 1985.

Weltliche Musik (Secular Music)

In this program featuring excerpts from secular works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Nikolaus Harnoncourt strives to reveal something of the mystery and fascination of Bach’s compositional art in the domain of non-sacred music. With his Concentus musicus Wien and the vocal soloists Janet Perry and Robert Holl, Harnoncourt interprets passages and movements from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, Bach’s arrangement of Benedetto Marcello’s Oboe Concerto and parts of the “Coffee Cantata”. “In my view, Bach is a total musician. No matter in what musical domain he lands, he immediately deploys his full resources and creates the greatest music that is imaginable in his time in this respective domain. […] I feel that sacred and secular music are of equal value in the lives of all significant composers, because an important composer of that time was a believer, and he didn’t make any distinction between the spiritual and the secular. In his secular life, he is just as pious as in his spiritual one, and when he eats and drinks, when he lives and loves, he is as much of a Christian as when he goes to church to pray on Sunday. He considers life as a whole, and he will write a symphony or a dance for the greater glory of God to the same extent that he would a Passion. […] German musicians… repeatedly attempted to combine the dance-like, short-winded style of French music with the eruptive, spontaneous and passionate, wild style of the Italians. The result was a well-pondered, ‘composed’ music – the Germans of that time called it ‘worked out’ – and when one hears these expressions, and knows who the greatest master of this music was, namely Bach, then one can say: this music is ‘worked out’ music. But in reality it is fulfilled music, music which comes from the innermost and the highest of man.” (Nikolaus Harnoncourt)

Messa da Requiem

Herbert von Karajan recorded Verdi’s Requiem multiple times over the course of his career, such that it became one of the signature works of his repertoire. In this film, he brings together an exceptional group of some of the late 20th century’s greatest singers: Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Agnès Baltsa, José Carreras, and José van Dam. Composed between Aida and Otello, the Messa da Requiem is dedicated to his friend, the poet Alessandro Manzoni, who had participated in the Italian unification movement, the Risorgimento. The technically and artistically challenging work was described by Verdi’s contemporary, the conductor Hans von Bülow, as an “opera in ecclesiastical garb”, an interesting expression of the fascinating tension between the theatrical and the religious in this monumental chef-d’oeuvre.

Karajan conducts Strauss Tone Poems

In 1984, Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker presented an unusual concert program of two contrasting yet complimentary works by Richard Strauss: the early symphonic poem Death and Transfiguration and the mature masterpiece Metamorphoses. Stretching the limits of Romanticism, Death and Transfiguration depicts the final moments of a sick man who reflects back on his life before his death. In the abstract musical exploration Metamorphoses, the composer draws inspiration from previous generations’ compositional approaches to push musical limits, taking counterpoint to new heights with this piece written in 23 independent sections. With their signature sonic intensity, the famed Austrian conductor and the Berliner Philharmoniker give a truly captivating performance.

Karajan conducts Tchaikovsky 4

Tchaikovsky described his Fourth Symphony in a letter to Nadezhda von Meck as “perhaps the best I have written so far”. With allusions to Beethoven’s Fifth and an obsessive exploration of the idea of destiny (introduced the imposing initial fanfare), the symphony took shape at toward the beginning of Tchaikovsky’s platonic relationship with Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy widow who became the composer’s patron, and to whom the work is dedicated. The Symphony’s premiere on February 10, 1878 in Moscow under the baton of Nikolai Rubenstein was met with a lukewarm audience reception, yet despite this difficult start, the work was performed a month later in St. Petersburg to an adoring public who demanded an encore! Herbert von Karajan and the Wiener Philharmoniker perform the work with all the energy, rigor, and subtlety for which they were celebrated.