Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht

Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht

Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht
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CD Details

Composer: Johannes Brahms
Composer: Arnold Schoenberg
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan
Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 2009-01-13
Music Label: Testament UK
Soundtracks:
  1. Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: 1. Un poco sostenuto
  2. Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: 2. Andante sostenuto
  3. Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: 3. Un poco allegretto e grazioso
  4. Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: 4. Adagio - Allegro non troppo ma con brio

Music reviews of Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht

Music Review: Karajan brings a sweeping magnificence to London
Rating: 5 Stars

This fall (2009) Simon Rattle is touring with the Berlin Phil. in programs that combine Brahms and Schoenberg. They make a bracing contrast, although when Karajan had the same idea on tour to London in October, 1988, his choice of works was rich all through -- more like a double dose of clotted cream. This was a fraught event. A French labor action delayed the arrival of the orchestra's instruments, so the starting time was an hour late. Karajan was old, in severe back pain, and no longer on good terms with his orchestra. He wouldn't live another year, and one might expect a kind of valedictory melancholy -- or at least the frailty of old age -- to imbue the music.

Happily, both interpretations are fully alive and vigorous. I'm fairly amazed that BBC Legends didn't snap up this recording, given its historic significance. Forty years before, in the cold, hungry spring of 1948, Karajan had conducted his first concert in London, a city he conquered with the Philharmonia Orch. far more than the Berliners. Critics tend to view the Philharmonia decade, up to 1960, as Karajan's golden period, before his music-making became slick and glib. You'd never know it here. There's enormous strength in Verklarte Nacht as well as the sweeping magnificence of sound that was the specialty of the Berlin strings. This live concert reading is less studied than Karajan's acclaimed studio account on DG and therefore ranks as one of the greatest ever recorded. Even Karajan's worst enemy must grant it the most sumptuous. The recorded sound from Festival Hall is close and rich, a surprise given that venue's dry, shallow acoustic.

Karajan's Brahms First is a known quantity from his three complete cycles on DG, the last in digital sound recorded not that long before this concert, in 1987. (The digital Third and Fourth were recorded the very month of the concert.) Karajan conceived the work in massive terms, and his interpretation didn't change, even down to the timing of individual movements, once he established it. The BBC actually achieves a clearer, sharper sound image than any of the studio accounts (listen to the sharp timpani strokes in the opening bars compared to the mushy, remote DG recordings), and that factor alone may justify buying this new version.

Did the occasion bring out more intensity. There was hardly more to give, since Karajan was already at his most urgent in the Brahms First, but I'd say yes, definitely. Only occasionally do we find Karajan raising the temperature in various pirate recordings taken from concerts, but if this blazing account is any indication, somebody should be scouring the archives of radio stations who caught the Berliners in modern sound. This is Karajan's most overwhelming account that I know of, not in the profound emotional sense that Furtwangler overwhelms us in the Brahms First but more for its sweeping magnificence, the same as in the Schoenberg.

In sum, you may think this is a superfluous recording from a much-recorded maestro leading two familiar works, but there are unique qualities that make it a must-listen.
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