Herbert von Karajan

I love his interpretations. Listen to his Beethoven's Fifth.

Hitler and v. Karajan had a love-hate relationship. Almost anyone would be better they agreed than Willy Furtwangler and his jerky, marionette movements.

I liked his Mahler 4.

[quote] has been associated with Nazism.

A vague remark.

He used too many notes.

Well, there it is.

Card-carrying Nazi!

His Also Sprach Zarathustra (BPO) is probably the most listened to version. And you know why right as the strings climax in the second movement. The iridescence of the strings is indescribable. Same for his landmark Alpine Symphony. His Tosca with Price is my favorite. And his super popular Butterfly with Freni is probably the best version. And his set of Wagner overtures was the first classical music CD that I ever bought. So there’s nostalgia.

Overall, he was a master of tone quality and phrasing, but not necessarily the most exciting conductor. His Mahler is nice, but I think Abbado is just more even and chose better tempi. I think Solti recorded more exciting versions of Boheme (LPO), the Ring Cycle (VPO) and Mahler 2 (CSO low brass!).

Actually, I’m not sure if he recorded Mahler 2.

Well phrased, R8. Das g'fallt mir.

Was von Karajan disagreeable to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf?

Love his operas-

His Tosca and Carmen with Leontyne Price are excellent as are the Trovatores—a live one with Price and Corelli at Salzburg and one with a late-career Price and Bonisolli.

The orchestra in his Aida with Freni is otherworldly.

I'm glad he got the cold shoulder and protests in the USA. Piece of shit careerist while his country destroyed half the world.

A very great conductor. I have many of his recordings and they are wonderful. I heard him at his last NY concert at Carnegie.

'Piece of shit careerist while his country destroyed half the world.' True. He joined the Nazi party not once but twice. I'm not sure why. And he was married to a woman who was half jewish. A very kind and a very cruel man.

I like his New World Symphony, too

Von Karajan better than Lennie.

Bite your uncircumcised tongue, r16.

Bad politics. Great hair.

It's interesting that Von Karajan, who was open about his Nazi past, had no problem continuing his career while the great conductor Furtwangler, who claimed to never have been part of the Nazis at all, was blacklisted.

Q. How did Herbert von Karjan tie the laces of his shoe-zies?

A. With little knot-zies!

Let's look at wikipedia:

[quote] In the postwar era, Karajan maintained silence about his Nazi Party membership, which gave rise to a number of conflicting stories about it. One version is that because of the changing political climate and the destabilization of his position, Karajan attempted to join the Nazi Party in Salzburg in April 1933, but his membership was later declared invalid because he somehow failed to follow up on the application and that Karajan formally joined the Nazi Party in Aachen in 1935, implying that he was not eager to pursue membership. More recent scholarship clears up this confusion:

[quote] "…the truth is that Karajan actually joined the Nazi Party twice. The first time this happened was on 8 April 1933 in Salzburg. He paid the admission fee, received the membership number 1607525 and moved to Ulm. It is said that this accession was never formally carried out. It is also certain that Karajan rejoined the Nazi Party in Aachen in March 1935, this time receiving the membership number 3430914. After the annexation of Austria, the responsible Reich Treasurer of the Nazi Party discovered Karajan's double membership in Munich and declared the first accession invalid. The second was made retroactive to 1 May 1933."

[quote]During the entire Nazi era he "never hesitated to open his concerts with the Nazi favorite 'Horst-Wessel-Lied',but "always maintained he joined strictly for career reasons." His enemies called him "SS Colonel von Karajan".

Don't be a stupid, be a smartie!

Come and join the Nazi Party!

i think the film "Mephisto" with Klaus Maria Brandauer (of "Out of Africa") was about a conductor similar to von Karajan.

Furtwangler refused to give the salute or play the Nazi anthem but was so revered the Nazis tolerated him. His greatness and playing the classics of the German repertoire was unparalleled. Toscanini who was also as revered refused to play in any fascist or Nazi country and he begged Furtwangler to leave but he refused. He loved his country and its cultural heritage too much and felt he was reminding his country men of its importance. He was considered very naive to feel this way because he knew exactly what was going on and tolerated it. He despised HVK the young upstart.

Because he was at the height of his powers in the golden age of classical recordings, Karajan often recorded for DG and EMI works with which I don't think he had a special affinity, ones he rarely or never conducted live. This is the brand-name factor: those record companies wanted Karajan and the Berliners in this or that work for a likely bestseller, and it was in his and the orchestra's financial interests to oblige. Thus, we have an enormous recorded legacy with more than a few so-so recordings, and it's easy for someone to conclude, "Karajan wasn't that great. I played his Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 and it doesn't begin to compare with Charles Munch's." But he was gifted and, at his best, extraordinary, demonstrated by much of his Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, R. Strauss, some Mahler (not the recording of the 5th), some Verdi (that EMI Falstaff!), Puccini, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Honegger. I listen less often to him in music prior to the time of Beethoven and Schubert, but his Mozart has some highlights.

At this remove, I don't care about his politics (I listen to and enjoy dead people against whom a much stronger case for evil can be made), but my reading over the years suggests he was an opportunistic more than anything else.

Short stature compensated by "hype machine" portrayal as racing car-driving, Learjet-piloting, speedboat-captaining "Man of Action." Every aspect of which he dictated.

He looks bizarre in his video performances conducting with his eyes closed.

A Johnny-Cum-Lately to Mahler, only when the composer became a Thing.

Conducted AND directed bloated opera productions: a total control freak.

I love his Shostakovich's 10th and wish he recorded more of his symphonies

R23 Mephisto, a book by Klaus Mann and a film by Istvan Szabo, is based on the life of German actor Gustaf Grundgens.

Yes that Falstaff is pure magic but so is his Trovatore with Callas which was unfortunately recorded in mono. A stupendous double bill on DG is Ein Heldenleben from '59 paired with the Siegfried Idyll from the 70s. And his Alpine Symphony on DG is glorious. His Tchaik ballet suites and Giselle bleeding chunks on Decca are so wonderful you wish he had conducted the entire ballets. I was fascinated to see that the famous Thus Spoke Zarathustra from 2001 was conducted by Bohm and it was The Bue Danube that was conducted by Karajan.

And then there are his Planets on both Decca and DG which are classics of the catalogue. A friend of mine makes fun of me because I love the piece so much. And I make fun of him for some of the operas he loves.

Dave Hurwitz begins reviewing Karajan box sets arranged by decade.

Dave Hurwitz is a bitter pill to swallow.

Szabó made a movie about Wilhelm Furtwängler 20 years after "Mephisto."

HVK is one of the worst offenders for recording the same repertoire over and over and OVER without additional interpretive insight, but his greater sin was the weird, homogenized, strings-and-nothing-else sound he cultivated while directing the Berlin Philharmonic.

HVK and Schwarzkopf were both Nazis.

What's really weird is that Schwarzkopf's father was anti Nazi.

Berlin Philharmonic in the NHK Hall Tokyo back in 1973 recording of the Dvorak 8th dress rehearsal before opening of the Hall.

James Galway principal flute in those days.

The reaction of the concertmaster and the front desk first violins at 20:57 when being aggressively shushed by van Karajan in priceless. They were not happy with that gesture.

His live version of the Mahler 9th is pure heaven. I think his Mahler 4th and 6th are excellent, but I agree his 5th is not as effective IMO as Bernstein's (the 2nd one with the Vienna Philharmonic) or Tennstedt's.

What do folks here think of his Ring Cycle? It obviously doesn't have the force and driving energy of the Solti set, but it's still worth listening to at least two of the operas. I like RHEINGOLD a lot (I think it's my favorite recording of it), and GOTTERDAMERUNG is very good too, even if you don't have Windgassen and Nilsson. The other two have some casting problems: in WALKURE Crespin tries hard as Brunnhilde, but it doesn't work; Janowitz is her usual lovely-but-dull self; Jess Thomas' vocal decline really hurts the SIEGFRIED.

[quote]What do folks here think of his Ring Cycle? It obviously doesn't have the force and driving energy of the Solti set, but it's still worth listening to at least two of the operas.

Orchestrally, it's often very beautiful and evocative of the settings, maybe more so than anything there had been on record to that point. I like a lot of the casting, including some singers you do not. I don't find Janowitz dull as Sieglinde, although she was wise not to try to sustain that role for the long term. I think Walküre would be my favorite entry of the four, actually. The vocal acting of Crespin and Thomas Stewart in Act III is of a special quality.

It's a Ring that has its eccentricities but, for me, has worn surprisingly well over time. But I've never been as bowled over by Solti's classic of the gramophone as some are. There are so many storied names on paper, but not all of them were in best representative form. Hotter and Flagstad (Fricka in Rheingold) come immediately to mind.

I wish I had been able to see that Karajan Ring in one of the venues that presented it. I know it was notoriously underlit, so I mean "see" as much as one could do so. The radio broadcasts of what he was able to get out of the Met Orchestra of that era are a strong exhibit in the case that his wizardry wasn't all hype. The Met did not have nearly the orchestra in the late '60s that it would have a couple decades later, but he got them to raise their game. I've read that he privately griped about the quality of the group, relative to what he was used to in Vienna and Berlin, but he worked patiently with them to get what he wanted, and got it.

At the Met didn't he only do the first two operas and there was a strike and he never came back to finish the cycle?

That's correct. He conducted broadcasts there only of the first two parts of the Ring. His radio broadcast of Walküre in March '69 would be his last appearance there.

Here's his house in Anif (near Salzburg) where he died. Don't let the rustic look of it fool you - he even had a swimming pool installed in there.

But Anif's main attraction is its water castle, which appears in the opening montage of The Sound of Music.

He entered Valhalla 33 years ago.

For some reason he was terrible with French composers, especially Saint Saens, Debussy and Ravel.

Maybe he wanted to make their music sound bad to his German Nazi friends.

The same qualities that make his conducting of German music so memorable--the passion, the exuberance--just don't work for French music, which is more often so intricate and delicate.

It's sort of like imagining Hildegard Behrens singing Massenet's Manon.

Megalomaniac.

Can you imagine what he would have done with Mahler 7? I bet that would have been interesting.

Also the opening of the finale of Mahler 3--would have been creamy and gorgeous.

That said, I much prefer Lenny and then Abbado. (Just listened to Abbado's Mahler 5 today, in fact.)

Megalomania part 2

R35 HVK has some kind of snarling fit directed at the front desk second violins at 19:50 ... any German lip readers around?

I think the definitive Mahler 5th goes to Claudio Abbado.

[quote] the finale of Mahler 3--would have been creamy and gorgeous

Yes, but parts of his Fifth were deliciously succulent.

I agree that French music wasn't always a strong suit, but as often when tackling such a big topic as Karajan's repertoire, we run up against exceptions: his recording of Debussy's opera with Van Dam and Von Stade is excellent, IMO. It's an unusually pointed account, by both orchestras and singers. One is more aware than is sometimes the case that these are musical lines, not just murmurs within a dreamy fog.

[quote] these are musical lines

I adore Debussy but watching his 'Pelléas' was agonising. I couldn't hear the musical lines at all.

Well his Fille du Regiment with Christ Ludwig is light and witty French fun.

Try seeking out some of his live performances, especially of his Wagner and Mahler and Bruckner and Strauss (a bunch can be found on youtube). The ungimmicky radio broadcast sound often gives a better sense of the sonority and power he could unleash compared to the often manipulated and artificial soundstage he got from Deutsche Grammophon.

His Brahms Symphony No 1 moved me to tears. Just beautiful. This is the 1988 Tokyo performance.

Size meat verificatia?

[quote]The ungimmicky radio broadcast sound often gives a better sense of the sonority and power he could unleash compared to the often manipulated and artificial soundstage he got from Deutsche Grammophon.

From what I understand, that manipulated and artificial soundstage was Karajan's decision.

^ I think the late John Culshaw may be the villain.

Culshaw worked for Decca.

Yes Culshaw did work with Herbie but at Decca. I understand that some recordings have been remixed by labels to get a better balance without HVK's interference.

HvK's conducting is somnolent compared to AOC's.

As HVK got deafer with older age, he could hear less and less of the high frequencies and so he mixed his recordings by ramping up the treble to almost a screeching level.

When he dropped dead, they remixed a lot of his stuff that he tinkered with and made them more tolerable to the ear.

I cannot afford any of those monster boxes so I pick and choose. And I sure don't have room for them in any case. Alas a lot of them are oop but you can find them used on ebay. As the huge collectors of cds are dying off more becomes available.

And unlike David(I knew him once. Very opinionated obviously but a very nice person) I often like early music played by earlier generations. There are many times a musicality and love which are not as profound of those in HIP performances. In sacred pieces as one critic put in this music really meant something to those musicians. In the early music of recent times they are more well we really don't believe in this stuff but its good music worth doing anyway. I like very much Karajan's Brandenburgs and his Handel 12 concerti OP 6. And a favorite recording that I play constantly is from many years ago the Berlin Philharmonic's Vivaldi L'Estro Harmonico. No conductor is listed. I don't even remember why I bought it. Maybe I read a review in Fanfare and the critic was bonkers for it so I had to buy it.

You should get this. A classic.

It should have read:

'There are many times a musicality and love which are more profound than those found in HIP performances.'

Not a great fan of his Puccini opera recordings.

They are so meandering and slow that you expect them to almost grind to a complete halt at any moment.

His Turandot is a sonic splendour, I admit, but it is soooo slow that I refer to it as The Slow Boat To China.

I have his recording of Parsifal but he almost places the chorus in the next suburb and you barely hear them at times-especially the end.

I do like his so named 'Chamber Ring' as a contrast with Solti's.

R62, that's the version I bought of Pachelbel's Canon after I saw Ordinary People, only on LP. I remember the record store clerk telling me I'd really like it because it was on Deutsche Grammophon, so it had really good sound. I wasn't that particular about sound at that point, but I sure liked the record.

I wonder which version Buck would have liked best.

I love his Parsifal but you are right about the sound. It definitely needs a remastering since its original release but despite its classic status and all the time that has gone by it has never had one.

Warner did some wonderful things with the Callas EMI legacy. I am amazed by the stereo Norma and Carmen. The Puritani which always sounded flat in terms of dimensionality to it has more life.

I though was disappointed by the Boheme. The men sound great but the women not so much. A critic called it bottom heavy so there you go. A friend who has the original cds says that's not the case at all with the recording.

R64, I agree with you about the slow tempos in his Puccini recordings. You'd think he was conducting Wagner or Bruckner. Plus the TURANDOT has the totally unsuitable Katia Ricciarelli in the title role.

His Turandot sounds great up until Turandot herself opens her mouth.

That said, I do respect him for envision many of these operas with lyric singers. The singer results were mixed but the orchestra always played beautifully.

Was Elisabeth Schwarzkopf disagreeable to von Karajan?

His Four Last Songs with Janowitz is quite lovely, even though Masur and Norman made another great version that’s probably become more popular.

For me, the Puccini recordings Karajan did for Decca - the Boheme and Madama Butterfly - live up to the hype. For one thing, they have Pavarotti in his absolute youthful prime and he is astounding.

I agree, R72. Those two and the Tosca with Leontyne Price (notwithstanding that Di Stefano's Cavaradossi had seen better days) are deserving classics, IMO. I don't find them debilitatingly slow. They are "sumptuous," but their act and cumulative timings aren't really that far out of the mainstream, which they would be if they were extremely lethargic. We're not talking about James Levine's Met Wagner videos here.

His Puccini is like stodgy molasses.

It's like all the characters & Karajan downed a couple of valium each and proceeded to moon on like a bunch of drunks.

Karajan was no card carrying Nazi. His first wife was Jewish. They fled to Italy then were quietly divorced and he went back to Germany to keep his eyes on the prize: the Berlin Philharmonic.

It was the only thing in life Kara8 wanted and he said candidly in later years that he would have done anything to get it. What he did was keep his head down and his mouth shut. He was never a political animal.

Furtwangler hated the little upstart's guts.

I'm not suggesting it was the noblest stance, but a True Believer? No. Karajan's only deeply held belief was in himself and the Berlin.

Certainly if you're talking about artists like Schwarzkopf, I think you are talking about a True Believer. She thought Americans were bstbstians too genetically inferior to understand German music.

Ik not sure about Flagstad, also rumoured in her native Norway to share Aryan views.

HVK went on to have a warm relationship with the young Israel Philharmonic and supported the early career of an Israeli soprano. He also forced the (at the time) famously all-male orchestra to accept its first women players.

And, although he married again, he was I am fairly sure, family.

Karajan just doesn't add up as a card-carrying Nazi.

He took the heat after WWII patiently until it died down.

Waiting is something Karajan knew how to do: he waited over a decade to get his hands on the Berlin. His patience outwaited the Nazis and paid off handsomely, rewarding him with a career in music given only to a few.

I heard him and the Berlin at the Edinburgh Festval in August 1967. The sheen and power of the orchestra was unbelievable. I've never forgotten it,

^* . .. were barbarians too genetically inferior . . .

R75, I doubt any of these artists were supportive of Nazi philosophy. They went along mainly to further their careers.

Yet Schwarzkopf sang a number of times in the US and made a lot of money off her record sales here. She was affable enough when she met her fans here. She was not at all condescending at least in her interactions. She and her husband took on a young Asian singer to mentor so they obviously thought she had truly excellent potential. Though that crashed and burned.

[quote]I doubt any of these artists were supportive of Nazi philosophy. They went along mainly to further their careers.

From all reports, Schwarzkopf was a major exception here. She is reported to have made some truly despicable statements.

Karl Bohm was the real dedicated Nazi. And he suffered no consequences.

[quote]His Turandot sounds great up until Turandot herself opens her mouth.

I disagree on both counts. I recently re-listened to this recording, not having heard it for decades, and first of all, Ricciarelli as Turandot sounds far better than I remembered. Not the ideal voice for the role, needless to say, but a solid performance. OF COURSE I realize she could NEVER have sung it live, but with the help of skillful miking and sound engineering, I think she sounds fine.

Unfortunately, I think it's one of von Karajan's worst recordings as far as his conducting. It's not so much that the tempi are too slow -- though some of them really are -- but that, somehow, there seems to be no forward motion to the music or the drama. He was quite old at the time of the recording, so maybe that's at least a partial explanation

[quote]From what I understand, that manipulated and artificial soundstage was Karajan's decision.

And it certainly wasn't limited to the DG recordings. Listen to the AIDA with Tebaldi and the BUTTERFLY with Freni, for example,

Culshaw in one of his books talks about an important popular conductor he worked with at Decca who really was a horrible man. I had always assumed it was Bohm.

There were definitely some true believers in the cause. Even some from later times, like a highly esteemed German bass (not even a legal adult when Hitler fell) who had a swastika on the floor of his swimming pool.

[quote]HVK is one of the worst offenders for recording the same repertoire over and over and OVER without additional interpretive insight, but his greater sin was the weird, homogenized, strings-and-nothing-else sound he cultivated while directing the Berlin Philharmonic.

What do you mean by "strings and nothing else?" I don't hear that at all.

R79 I agree. She made little secret of it even after the war. A friend of mine went to Europe looking toward a career in a mostly German operatic career and gor a couple of coaching with Schwarzkopf. Mind, my friend was statuesque, white as snow, Christian, with a promising voice. She said Schwarzkopf was a abominably rude and talked to her as she would to an inferior.

I'd believe it absolutely about Schwarzkopf.

He's better than that toad-looking Jaap Van Zweden, ugh.

"Strings only sound"?! You must be deaf or confusing it with the Philadelphia.

The glistening power of the brass section of the Berlin that I heard live was staggering.

Listen to his recording of the Brahms second where he brings the brass in soaring over the rest in the first movement as it swells to its peak, although that may have been with the Vienna.

I never heard any evidence that he favoured the strings.

[quote]A Johnny-Cum-Lately to Mahler, only when the composer became a Thing.

I would position his late-in-life interest in Mahler as a positive. He had an enormous repertoire and by all accounts soaked up music like a sponge; even a peer on the level of Solti was impressed by that about him. With plenty of laurels on which to rest, he didn't "need" to add a composer of Mahler's complexity at the age he was in the 1970s, an age in which many conductors are experiencing hardening of the repertoire. But he did it, in the last years before his health started to go. He might have tried the whole cycle if it were not for his physical decline. He apparently was envious of an 8th he heard led by Maazel, and said, "If only I were younger."

Claudio Abbado said that in the mid-1960s, when Abbado was very early in his career, Karajan engaged him to conduct the VPO at Salzburg. Karajan wanted him to conduct a Cherubini mass, and Abbado suggested Mahler's "Resurrection" instead. Karajan thought about it for all of two seconds before pronouncing it an excellent idea. So, I think he knew and respected that music for some time before he took it up personally.

Interesting, if too brief, discussion of this in Tar.

There is a video of Schwarzkopf giving master classes to a small group of young singers. I believe I saw it years ago on PBS. This was not in a school setting with an audience. This might have been in her home but they were private except for the video camera. She was brutal. Doing everything she could to tear them down. Some of them the verge of tears. It was hard to watch. There are also videos of her master classes in a university setting with an audience where she is an exacting but encouraging helpful mentor. Like two completely different people. Why she acted the way she did when there was a video camera in the home I have no idea.

Something I also found strange was when she had that group of private students she had a young male singer she thought was terrific. To me he seemed on the same level and had the same talent as the others. Why wasn't she picking on him? She was nothing but encouraging to him and he was walking on the clouds. And it wasn't like she had a thing for him and he wasn't especially handsome. But for some reason he was the chosen one. Have no idea if he went on to have a successful career. As I said he seemed no more special than the others.

[quote] I disagree on both counts. I recently re-listened to this recording, not having heard it for decades, and first of all, Ricciarelli as Turandot sounds far better than I remembered. Not the ideal voice for the role, needless to say, but a solid performance. OF COURSE I realize she could NEVER have sung it live, but with the help of skillful miking and sound engineering, I think she sounds fine.

Thanks for this. I'll take another listen to the recording. When it came out, opera fans and critics were brutal. It would be interesting to listen to it again now, so far from the criticism.

Price could have sung Turandot on a recording if not in the house. One of the great might have beens would have been a recording of Otello with her and Corelli. He was frightened of the role but there are recordings of him doing parts of it including the Esultate and he sounds great. A recording would have been wonderful. He admitted later in his life he could have done it. Price refused to do Desdemona on the stage but she would have been wonderful as well on a recording.

Apparently, Price was scheduled to sing Desdemona on a recording with Domingo. He used his influence to remove Price from the recording and add Renata Scotto. In that recording unfortunately, Scotto sounds matronly.

If you look at all Price's arias from Otello (Duet, Willow, Ave Maria), she's sublime. I wished she could have done a full recording.

Yes, Price could have sung Turandot and did record the In Questa Reggia, but I find her velvety sound wrong for the role. She is however one of the great Lius.

I think he's tremendous and I, of course, now have his job which I will keep forever. I plan to rotate out many of the oldsters and bring in some luscious new conducting babes.

See you later, suckers!

[quote]In that recording unfortunately, Scotto sounds matronly.

Scotto was in declining voice at that point (a process that would continue), but she brings her customary intensity and feeling to it. I do love her, even when the high notes are shrill enough to shatter glass. I am far gone enough even to enjoy the Musetta on the Met video, from when Zeffirelli's production was new, just because of the spirit and all-in quality she brings to everything she does.

Also, as a corollary to the discussion above of retired singers as teachers, considering how temperamental Scotto could be in her diva prime, I think it surprised a lot of people that she's so lovely and supportive as a teacher. The opposite of a Schwarzkopf.

I agree about Scotto--her dramatic conviction is so strong, even if the voice doesn't give everything, it's a satisfying performance

[quote]One of the great might have beens would have been a recording of Otello with her and Corelli.

I have never been able to figure out why Corelli didn't record the whole opera. Whatever fears he had about the role should have been removed by the safety of the recording studio and the possibility of multiple takes. Maybe London and RCA would have passed on a recording with him, as London had DelMonaco and RCA had Vickers, but if nothing else, Corelli could have been on the Angel recording in place of McCracken.

Scotto's high notes certainly did become very unpleasant, screechy, and wobbly towards the end of her career, but I think she sounds fine on the OTELLO, Less so on the ANDREA CHENIER, and her SUOR ANGELICA and TABARRO both have some high notes so bad that I can't listen to those recordings for that reason.

Leontyne Price would indeed have sung a gorgeous Desdemona in her prime, but by the time of the RCA recording of OTELLO with Domingo, I would say her voice had grown a little too matronly sounding. That's how she sounds to me on her recording of the love duet with Domingo, which you can find on a duets album they did together.

In the early to mid-sixties would have been a perfect time for them to do Otello. Now working out a deal between RCA and EMI might have been a challenge but they managed Carmen with HVK conducting.

[quote] That's how she sounds to me on her recording of the love duet with Domingo, which you can find on a duets album they did together.

That duets album has come of the most gorgeous singing ever recorded

Speaking of Culshaw, I saw a BBC documentary from 1965 that covered some of the recording sessions of the Solti GOTTERDAMMERUNG. Culshaw is heavily featured and I got a gay vibe from him and a couple of his co-workers. He never married so I wonder. He was quite attractive in the documentary.

He died in 1980 from a rare form of hepatitis so...

[quote] Culshaw... I got a gay vibe from him

I'm sure I heard some goss years ago but couldn't find it on line this week.

But he was certainly precious pretentious and piss-elegant while being paid by the BBC. He commissioned Benjamin Britten (in his dotage) to write an extremely tedious TV chamber opera called 'Owen Wingrave'.

He wrote one thing called 'Putting the Record Straight' and another one called 'A Harder Thing'.

[quote] He had a strong aversion to Mahler's music, writing that it made him feel sick: "not metaphorically but physically sick. I find his strainings and heavings, juxtaposed with what always sounds (to me) like faux-naif music of the most calculated type, downright repulsive

R100, I don't know what Corelli's contract situation was, but it seems to me that he recorded for EMI/Angel, RCA, and London in the early '60s, so if he did have a contract with one of those -- I'm guessing EMI? -- it seems they didn't mind lending him out if the deal was right.

Culshaw was gay, a fact often mentioned in relation to his great friendship and working relationship with Solti. Who was a total pussyhound.

There is a lot of footage of Culshaw in action as a record producer on various documentary films made about Britten.

Culshaw was definitely a 'mo. The nasty conductor he doesn't name in his book was apparently Josef Krips. But it could well have been applied to Bohm too, who was himself a nasty piece of work (there's plenty of rehearsal footage on youtube to demonstrate this).

Bohm was more of a true believer in the Nazi cause than Karajan or Furtwangler, but I think Schwarzkopf's behavior was the most egregious. She was even, for a time, apparently an informer for the SS.

The famous bass r84 refers to is Karl Ridderbusch who possessed - for a few years - one of the most beautiful German bass voices ever. He was supposed to sing Hans Sachs in the Solti recording of Meistersinger in the 1970s but when Ridderbusch's Nazi sympathies were revealed (not just the swastika in his swimming pool but apparently he had lots of Nazi paraphernalia and fine china), Solti got rid of him.

WAY to self-important. And he made everything sound like Shostakovich, haydn, Mendelssohn, everything sounded desperate and savage

I watched TÁR and there is a scene where Lydia and her mentor are discussing Karajan among others. I still don't know the full history of it but wow 200 million recordings.

Was Corelli great live? On records he comes across sloppy and blustery.

R110 Corelli had a fantastic instrument, but refinement wasn't one of its characteristic. He was a great singer but not a great musician.

Ah, well, that voice and that face . . . Can't have everything.

R11 nails it. Apparently, Corelli's "squillo" in the opera house was absolutely thrilling, and that plus his very good looks and his other pluses were enough to cause audiences to easily overlook whatever negatives there were in his singing, like those sobbing and scooping sounds he often made

R76 has been greyed-out.

Year ago I visited the apartment of a much older man I worked with. It was a fairly old apartment with a number of rooms. He had been an American soldier during WW ll and brought back with him a lot of Nazi paraphernalia. I was shocked because I didn't even know this stuff ever existed. It was like going in a large tourist souvenir shop in DisneyWorld except instead of Disney everything was Nazi. Yes lots of dishes, plates, bowls and with the swastika and Nazi imagery. He seemed delighted to have this stuff and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. He absolutely never expressed any Nazi sympathies as far as I know but if he died suddenly people would have thought when he died he was a card carrying Nazi.