For the first time; this edition makes available Herbert von Karajan's previously unpublished early live recordings from the Lucerne Music Festival - made in a decade in which Karajan was rebuilding his career. Included are legendary soloists such as Clara Haskil and Géza Anda; Robert Casadesus and Nathan Milstein. The Lucerne International Music Festival (today's Lucerne Festival) was the first organiser outside Austria to engage Herbert von Karajan after his ban from performing and denazification proceedings; thus enabling him to return to the international podiums. "I will never forget that," Karajan later confessed. For almost four decades; from 1948 to 1988; he was to make his mark on Lucerne Festival. His annual guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic (from 1958) enjoyed cult status. But already in the decade before; which this edition documents; Karajan thrilled audiences and critics alike in Lucerne and quickly rose to become the defining artistic personality alongside Wilhelm Furtwängler: with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; but above all on the podium of the Swiss Festival Orchestra; which he held in high esteem and which he conducted in a total of nine concerts.
The preserved Lucerne live recordings range from Bach's C major Concerto for Two Keyboard Instruments BWV 1061 (with Clara Haskil and Géza Anda) to Arthur Honegger's Symphonie liturgique. The exciting; rhythmically tightly formed interpretations show Karajan to be an extremely form-conscious; textually faithful conductor of great expressive power. He spurs his orchestras on to top performances; but also acts as a sensitive and at the same time extremely present accompanist - for example in Brahms' Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein or in Mozart's dramatically pointed C minor Concerto K. 491 with Robert Casadesus. As a digital bonus; the edition includes Bach's Mass in B minor; which Karajan celebrated at the end of the 1951 festival with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; the Vienna Singverein and a top-class quartet of soloists (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf; Elsa Cavelti; Ernst Haefliger and Hans Braun): a stylistically distant; but nevertheless fascinating audio document due to Karajan's very personal approach. The sound of the live recordings on the 3-CD box set has been carefully restored. The 62-page; trilingual booklet contains essays by Wolfgang Rathert and Erich Singer on Karajan's new career start in the post-war years and on his special relationship with Lucerne Festival. It contains numerous previously unpublished photos.
REVIEW:
Included among the contents of this set are quite a few gems. Most unexpected but welcome is Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein. Karajan and his Swiss Festival Orchestra are fully ablaze, Milstein’s tone typically lean and sinewy. Overall, this is an intriguing batch of musically worthwhile live Karajan discoveries, very well transferred from clean analogue sources.
For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903–1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms. Annie Fischer (1914–1995), a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi later went on to make some legendary recordings with Otto Klemperer. Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) polarized the music scene by embracing the parallel worlds of classical music and jazz in equal measure. He was not only one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century with regard to tone and technique, but also one of the wittiest and most musically competent. For decades Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was seen as the leading interpreter of German music from Beethoven and Schubert through Schumann and Liszt to Brahms.
The combination of Herbert von Karajan and the revered Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was an ideal partnership. Karajan had an extraordinary rapport with her, describing her career as ‘a long and often sorrowful march to glory’ due to Haskil’s well documented ill-health. Since she and Karajan were contracted to different companies, they never recorded together which makes this live Salzburg performance to mark Mozart’s bicentenary in 1956 especially valuable. Haskil, notoriously self-critical wrote: “The concert tour with Karajan was unique and unforgettable.” Karajan’s reading of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 is characteristically fleet-footed with great tension, a rare example of a live recording featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra and the conductor in concert together.
One of the highlights of the 1956 Mozart Week was the concert, which brought together Herbert von Karajan, Clara Haskil and the Philharmonia Orchestra London. Karajan knew how to project the qualities of the orchestra using the pieces he selected. The slow introduction of the Symphony No 39 gave him an early opportunity to demonstrate the precision and aural splendor of the orchestra. Those listening to the Piano Concerto No 20 experienced an enchanting hour with Clara Haskil at the piano. On no other occasion did she play the slow movement in such a calm and heartfelt manner so expressively, as on that evening. In the slow movement, above which hung a “frisson of eternal beauty”, the artist managed to excel herself. Now, this historic concert is available on this release.
This recording contains the complete recital given by Clara Haskil at Ludwigsburg Castle in April, 1953. The Debussy works and the encores have never been previously released. The performance is musically outstanding and features engaging repertoire, thus being an impressive record of a legendary musician. The eminent Romanian pianist, Clara Haskil began, her career as a child prodigy and entered at the Bucharest Conservatory when she was 6. At age 7 she was sent to Vienna and profited from the tutelage pf Richard Robert (whose memorable pupils included Rudolf Serkin and George Szell) and briefly with Ferruccio Busoni. She was only 7 (or 10) when she made her public debut there. At 10 she was sent to Paris to continue her training with Morpain, and, at 12, entered the Paris Conservatoire. A celebrated interpreter of classical and early romantic repertoire, many considered Clara the foremost interpreter of W. A. Mozart in her time. She was also widely known for her interpretation of Beethoven and Schumann, both of which can be heard on this recital.
Mozart, Ravel & Tchaikovsky: Orchestral Works / Karajan
ICA Classics
CD
$20.99$26.99Save 20%Oct 20, 2017
Herbert von Karajan and the Philharmonia Orchestra sometimes had a tense working relationship, especially during the period of their US tour in the autumn of 1955 and the beginning of their European one in January 1956. Yet, as these live broadcasts repeatedly demonstrate, that tension resulted in music-making of astonishing power, scorching intensity and unrivalled beauty. The tensions became a trend in Karajan’s later career, too. It happened with the Vienna Philharmonic at Salzburg in the mid-1960s, and it happened again towards the very end of his tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, but rarely were the results as magical as those he achieved in the 1950s with the Philharmonia.
Karajan and Tchaikovsky have never struck me as particularly suited to one another (all of his studio recordings have, in one way or another, left me wondering if he really understood the music). And this really goes to the root of the Karajan problem for many listeners: There are two Karajans, one bound to the precisions of the recording studio, the other completely – and unidiomatically – improvising on the concert platform. I find many live Karajan performances to have such a deep sense of inner conflict it is almost impossible to take any one performance out of the context of what preceded it, and this is certainly true of the 1955 Tchaikovsky Fourth we have here. We do not have the Sibelius Fourth which came before it, but the turbulence, urgency, passion and drama of the Tchaikovsky are uncommonly vivid; it is a performance that is as much about the composer as it is about the conductor.
Karajan struggled with Sibelius’s Fourth throughout his career (indeed, he rarely programmed the symphony), and the only live recording I have ever heard of him doing the work (in January 1978, released on Fachmann or, more readily available, on Palexa) is the most devastating and bleak performance imaginable (not unlike his remarkable Philharmonia studio recording of the work). Karajan drives the Philharmonia in the Tchaikovsky into quite dark territory – climaxes are more like moments of crisis, the instrumental narrative seems closer to a psychological confession, and though there is much beauty to the phrasing and playing, it is so taut and angular as if the music has been stitched together with razor wire. There are eruptions in this performance that are dazzling, and the virtuosity is just on the side of effortless. It is fluid, yet volcanic, without sounding mannered as Karajan sometimes could be under studio conditions. And the improvisation he manages is replicated by players who are given the space to phrase their notes with genuine character, though the interpretation is not for one moment stretched out or slow. One can certainly listen to this Tchaikovsky Fourth on its own terms, though given how radically different it is to any of his studio recordings, how much darker and more tragic it sounds, the bleakness of the unknown Sibelius hangs over Karajan’s performance of it like none other by this conductor, in my view. It is absolutely compelling, and shattering.
The Philharmonia were always exceptional in French music – and the Ravel which completes the first CD is ravishing. It is not just the precision of the playing which is so marvellous, it is the breath-taking quality of their dynamic range. The mezzo forte of the opening Prélude is beyond criticism, as are the gloriously muted strings of the Philharmonia. For a conductor who could sometimes seem passive and ambivalent about rhythm, the flamenco and Habanera are rather sensual, and the Feria is a joy.
The second CD of this set is given over to a Mozart concert from 6th February 1956, the last concert the Philharmonia gave with Karajan as part of their European Mozart bi-centenary tour. The ‘Haffner’ had opened the huge programme of three symphonies, which included the Tchaikovsky Fourth, back in July 1955, and here we have the work again, coupled with the great Clara Haskil in the K488 and Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’, a symphony which Karajan seemed to have abandoned in the studio during his late August 1953 recording sessions with the orchestra at Kingsway Hall (a Beethoven Fifth suffered a similar fate the same month). Karajan’s Mozart certainly could not be called HIP, though these Philharmonia performances are much less imposing than live recordings from either Berlin or Salzburg. This is not just because the sound of the Philharmonia is so much leaner, and more tensile; Karajan himself is much more flexible than he later became in Mozart. The K488 with Haskil, a pianist of extraordinary sensitivity, which in part was necessitated by her physical frailty, is intensely poetic – very different from the masculine, urbane recording that Karajan and the Philharmonia made with Gieseking in 1951. The two Mozart symphonies are both beautifully played, fleet enough with tempos to just escape sounding heavy.
These are important additions to Karajan’s Philharmonia discography, in more than tolerable sound. One sometimes has to remember that the Philharmonia Orchestra was principally founded to make recordings and concerts came a distant second. Karajan, it seems, only conducted the orchestra about a hundred times in concert (from 1948 to 1960) – less than twenty of those concerts being in London, and six at the Edinburgh Festival. The rest were conducted in Europe and the United States. Whilst a Don Juan, from Turin, and a Tallis Fantasia, from Naples, both from the October 1954 European tour exist, little else does. The Tchaikovsky we have here is stunning, the Haskil Mozart a minor miracle… but I do rather think one would have killed to get hold of a live Philharmonia/Karajan Sibelius Fourth too!
Romanian classical pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was particularly well known for her brilliant interpretations of classical and early romantic repertoire, especially that of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann. Haskil didn’t gain much acclaim until the late 1940s because of a series of physical ailments mixed with crippling stage fright. The songs on this release are all live recordings from Haskil’s concerts, taken between 1947 and 1956, during the peak of her career.
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 19 / Haskil, Schuricht
SWR
CD
$13.99May 13, 2016
When these recordings were taken in 1952 and 1956, Clara Haskil was still climbing to stardom. Her perceptive artistry put her in a class above other pianists, and gave her the ability to interpret Mozart’s music in such an organic, natural way that these performances are definitely timeless. This release feature’s Clara Haskil’s performances of Mozart’s Concertos Nos. 9 and 19. Carl Schuricht conducting the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR is equally perceptive in his interpretation of the score, beautifully complimenting Ms. Haskill.
Clara Haskil - The Salzburg Recital - 8 August 1957
Music and Arts Programs of America
CD
$19.99Jan 28, 2010
Clara Haskil's Salzburg recital from August 8, 1957, is familiar from the pianist's Philips studio versions--but these live traversals are preferable. Haskil's sonority, for one, benefits from a closer mike pickup that conveys the full measure of the Romanian pianist's gutsy, musicianly playing. Her angular passagework in the wonderful Mozart C major Sonata K. 330 is more controlled than in her Philips recording. Likewise, the biting, woodwind-like left hand lines in the Scherzo of Beethoven's E-flat major Sonata Op. 31 No. 3 swagger with more conviction. Oddly, she omits the first movement repeat honored in her two studio versions. There's also a greater degree of risk as well as accuracy in this live Schubert B-flat Sonata--a performance filled to the brim with touching lyricism and tensile strength. A tip of the hat, then, to Music and Arts for making this material available in very good mono broadcast sound. Haskil may have had a saintly reputation, but as a pianist she was one tough cookie! --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
