Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Recorded Sound, Herbert von Karajan :: Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 9

A magnificent live Ninth from 1957

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 09/11/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For some reason there aren't many pirate recordings or radio tapes of Karajan to supplement his vast output of studio recordings. Maybe that vastness discourages them. Those that I have bought over the years had wretched sound, quite an irony given Karajan's obsession with perfect execution and recording. Here we have two Beethoven symphonies, the Eroica from Sept. 1953, and a Ninth from April, 1957. Both are striking accounts in Karajan's best early style -- no complaints about glibness or glossiness emerge. But the two are very different otherwise.



The Eroica comes from Karajan's first postwar concert with the Berliners (I was surprised that it took eight years after the war ended). If you know his EMI recording from this period with the Philharmonia or his 1963 Beethoven cycle from Berlin on DG, you already know this performance in outline. It's propulsive, grand, and decidedly modern, in that it breaks with the Romantic tradition that produced Furtwangler. The shade of Toscanini hovers here, but it doesn't dominate. There's extra excitement added by the occasion -- Karajan didn't always conduct carbon copies of his recordings -- but the bad news is the awful sound, no better than a table-top AM radio. Expect almost no bass, scratchy strings, and general thinness of sound. Worth a listen but only one, I'd say.



The live Ninth is another matter. It, too, celebrates a historic date, the 75th anniversary of the orchestra, so there's every reason for the Berlin Phil. to be at its best. And it is. We get committed, energized playing that perfectly suits Karajan's forward-moving approach. As with Toscanini, all the style and nuance of the interpretation is contained within the demand for the melodic line to move vigorously ahead. As with the Eroica, the overall design isn't new. The Adagio here is ten seconds slower than in the famous 1963 Ninth. The solo quartet is very fine: Elisabeth Grummer, soprano, Marga Hoffgen, mezzo, Ernst Haefliger, tenor, and Gottlob Frick, bass. Before they enter, the long orchestral introduction is played with special care and expressivity. Frick's solo declamation is actually sung, without barking or faking, and the chorus is almost too fervent. The whole finale lights up in a way you don't expect from Karajan. Music never ran away from him, but here it almost does. The good news is that this Ninth is in quite listenable mono without distortion; the solo quartet and chorus are more intelligible in their diction than on Karajan's later stereo accounts.



In sum, it's too bad one has to buy two CDs to get the one that's of greatest interest, but for Karajan collectors this Ninth is very special."