Considered one of Verdi’s most challenging works, Don Carlos gets the royal treatment in this production at the Salzburg Festival directed by Herbert von Karajan. Verdi’s opera demands soloists of incredible technical ability who are also capable of communicating their character’s struggles with exceptional expressiveness. Inspired by Schiller’s eponymous historical tragedy, Don Carlos explores the conflicts between 16th-century European society and the heavy-handed political influence of the Catholic Church, as well as the roles of liberty and religion in the life of modern man.
Beethoven Cycle – Symphony No. 9
Official anthem of the European Union since 1985, the final movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (nicknamed the “Ode to Joy”) has become a symbol of peace and brotherhood. Although the Viennese public failed to appreciate a number of the composer’s later works, the premiere of the Ninth Symphony proved to be an incredible triumph for the ailing Beethoven—suffering by that time from total deafness, but nonetheless well enough to be present in the hall to enjoy his creation’s success. Experience the beloved masterwork in this powerful performance by Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker!
Karajan conducts Brahms 1
Before he became a world-famous conductor, Herbert von Karajan had originally wanted to be a pianist. It was at the age of 20 that he gave up the piano, a choice that would play a determining role in his musical career: by the time he was 21 years old, he had already begun conducting operas! It is easy to imagine that his attachment to the piano gave Karajan a particular affinity for the music of the great late 19th century conductor and concert-pianist Johannes Brahms. Karajan gave Brahms’s First Symphony—composed over the course of 20 years and premiered in 1876 in Karlsruhe— a masterful interpretation in this concert featuring the brilliant Berliner Philharmoniker.
Pictures at an Exhibition
Experience Mussorgsky’s celebrated Pictures at an Exhibition conducted by the exceptional Herbert von Karajan leading the Berliner Philharmoniker. This world-famous work was born of sad circumstances: in 1873, the composer’s friend, the painter Victor Hartmann, died suddenly from an aneurysm at 39 years old. Shocked, Mussorgsky organized an exhibition of Hartmann’s works at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. While the visitors viewed the artwork, the idea came to Mussorgsky to celebrate his friend in music: “sounds and ideas hung in the air, I am gulping and overeating, and can barely manage to scribble them on paper.” Composed in just a few weeks, the piece (originally for piano) would be arranged and transcribed many times before Maurice Ravel’s 1922 orchestration, which is today the most popular.