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Herbert von Karajan

Over 30 years as its conductor, Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) molded the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra into perhaps the finest of the world's large classical music ensembles. He was a superstar among conductors—his thick, steel-gray hair and authoritative manner was instantly recognizable around the musical world.

Von Karajan had the kind of powerful personality that stirred disagreement—even beyond the controversy generated by his allegiance to German Fascism early in his career. Critics and audiences marveled at the flawless sheen he could elicit from the Berlin Philharmonic and the other ensembles he conducted, but some found his interpretations almost too polished, lacking in soul and drama. Von Karajan was an autocrat on the podium, and his fabled perfectionism resulted in exhilarating orchestral sound but did not encourage fresh thinking. He lived a jet-set lifestyle, seeking and often receiving publicity, and he had a taste for adventure. Some called him egotistical or ruthless, and musicians cracked jokes in which God aspires to reach von Karajan's level. Yet, whatever divergent opinions music lovers might hold, few would disagree that von Karajan loomed large in the musical imagination of the twentieth century.

Studied Piano from Young Age

The son of Salzburg's chief medical officer, von Karajan grew up in that musically rich Austrian city, the hometown of Mozart. He started piano lessons at age three, gave a recital at eight, and generally benefited from his family's support. Von Karajan embarked on piano studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum but temporarily switched to an engineering program at the University of Vienna. When he was 20, he heard an opera performance by the legendary Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, an artist whose single-mindedness and drive von Karajan himself would seek to emulate. "From the first bar it was as if I had been struck a blow," Von Karajan later wrote (as quoted by Martin Kettle in London's Guardian newspaper). "I was completely disconcerted by the perfection which had been achieved."

Soon von Karajan was taking conducting lessons with Franz Schalk and leading a student ensemble. In March of 1929 he made his public debut as a conductor, leading a performance of Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro in Ulm, Germany. He remained on the staff of the Ulm opera house for five years but often returned to Salzburg to conduct orchestral performances there and to appear at the city's annual festival. Word spread about his talents, and critics began to prophesy a great future for the young conductor; one early newspaper review referred to him as Das wunder Karajan.

After Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, von Karajan flirted with fascism as early as 1933. When he was offered a job as music director at the municipal opera house in the German city of Aachen in 1934 or 1935, he agreed to join Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) party as a condition of employment. Details of von Karajan's involvement with the Nazis emerged slowly over the years, troubling many observers, and he never explicitly apologized for his support of Hitler's regime. The general consensus among historians, however, was that von Karajan had little interest in politics and joined the party because that seemed to be a good professional move at the time.

Indeed, von Karajan ran into trouble with the fascist overlords of German culture during the Nazi period. At first, with his striking good looks and fearsome energy, he created a sensation in German musical circles. In the late 1930s he was the toast of musical Berlin thanks to highly successful stints conducting The Marriage of Figaro and the gigantic Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde at the Berlin State Opera, where he became music director in 1938. He feuded with the other leading German conductor of the time, Wilhelm Furtwängler, who never joined the Nazis but maintained strong control over musical life in Germany. Hitler's deputy, Hermann Goering, admired von Karajan's work, but Hitler himself disliked it. That was a strong sign of trouble for von Karajan, who remained at work in Berlin during the first part of the war, but eventually fled to Italy with his second wife, Anna Maria. She was one-quarter Jewish, which further complicated the couple's status under the German government's system of racial classification.

Underwent American De-Nazification Procedure

After the war, von Karajan returned to Austria and submitted himself to questioning by an American de-Nazification tribunal. At first he was prohibited from performing, but was cleared to conduct a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1946. In the audience was Walter Legge, a top producer and executive with England's EMI record company. Amazed by von Karajan's energy, Legge smoothed the way for von Karajan to record with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, a Vienna music society orchestra, and later to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. Even at this stage the ambitious von Karajan drove a hard bargain; a series of recordings Legge made with von Karajan conducting the Philharmonia took months of negotiation.

In 1947, finally given an unconditional green light by officials of the American occupation, von Karajan began to conduct frequently and resumed much of his former star status. The following year he was hired as conductor at La Scala, the Milan, Italy opera house that stood at the center of Italian operatic tradition. It was a measure of von Karajan's versatility that over much of his career he was considered among the world's top conductors of Italian opera, something uncommon among composers trained in the German-Austrian tradition. Despite his authoritarian streak he was a talented handler of singers with equally strong personalities; African-American soprano Leontyne Price, according to John Rockwell of the New York Times, called von Karajan "one of the kindest men I ever met."

In Germany and Austria, too, von Karajan's mystique grew. Partly because, aside from Furtwängler, he had few competitors at his level in the German-speaking world; many of Germany's top musicians had been Jewish and had fled, if they could, to the United States and other countries. The expansion of classical music as recordings migrated from three-minute 78 rpm discs to LPs, which were much better suited to compositions that might be an hour or more in length, also played a role in his growing success. Von Karajan toured widely with the Philharmonia and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. To relieve the pressure associated with his growing renown, he took up yoga; he later practiced Zen Buddhism.

Finally, in 1955, von Karajan had his chance. Furtwängler, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, died before the orchestra, Germany's most prominent, could undertake an American tour—its first since the war, and a potent symbol of Germany's full restoration to membership in the international cultural community. Von Karajan offered himself as the ideal replacement. The claim was justifiable, but von Karajan, with characteristic calculation, also insisted that he be named the orchestra's conductor for life. The orchestra's administration agreed, and the protests and pickets that met von Karajan in the U.S. were soon silenced by his dynamic presence on the podium.

Made More Than 800 Recordings

Von Karajan's appointment as the Berlin Philharmonic's conductor inaugurated a long reign at the top of the classical music world. The classics were at the top of their postwar popularity, and conductor-stars such as Leonard Bernstein flourished in both the U.S. and Europe. None could rival von Karajan, however, in terms of a reputation for absolute mastery over an orchestra. Signed to West Germany's premier classical label, Deutsche Grammophon, von Karajan recorded Beethoven's cycle of nine symphonies on three separate occasions. He amassed a total of over 800 recordings over his long career. The Berlin Philharmonic was his "instrument," but he was in demand as a guest conductor. An often-told anecdote related how von Karajan got into a taxi at an airport and, when the driver asked him where he wanted to go, he replied that it didn't matter; people wanted him everywhere.

Named the artistic director of the Vienna State Opera in 1956, von Karajan became as famous in opera houses as he was in orchestral concert halls. He conducted Wagner's massive four-opera Ring cycle at the Bayreuth theater in southeastern Germany, where it had been premiered a century before. Von Karajan also assumed the directorship of the Salzburg Festival in his hometown, revitalizing an event that had come to seem a rather lifeless shrine to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his music. Where other German conductors tended to restrict themselves mostly to the classic Austro-German strand of classical music running from Haydn and Mozart through Beethoven and Brahms, von Karajan ranged farther afield, winning special acclaim for his interpretations of the orchestrally lush symphonies of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. He continued to appear frequently in Italy and to conduct the music of Verdi, Puccini, and other Italian operatic composers.

Von Karajan on the podium was an unforgettable figure for those who saw him in concert, and even more so for the players who worked under him. Philharmonia orchestra flutist Gareth Morris (as quoted by Terry Teachout in Commentary) recalled von Karajan's conducting of Ravel's Bolero this way: "With the eyes closed and the hands barely chest high, von Karajan gave us the beat with a single finger, and even that barely moved…. With each slight lift of the hands the tension became even greater. By the end of the piece, the hands were above his head. And that power of that final climax was absolutely colossal." Von Karajan generally conducted with his eyes closed, as if to say that the music existed in an abstract world beyond the conductor and musicians. Indeed, controlling though he may have been, his interpretations did not draw attention to themselves in a radical way; he aimed instead to erase the boundary between music and listener.

French fashion model Eliette Mouret became von Karajan's third wife, and he lived the high life in his spare time, maintaining houses in the Austrian Alps, in the Swiss resort of St. Moritz, and in the glamorous French town of St. Tropez. Von Karajan learned to fly his own plane, at first a two-seater and finally a Lear jet that he shared with an Austrian airline. He was a mountain climbing enthusiast, and he could often be found on Europe's ski slopes. Von Karajan drew photographers and gossip journalists with outlandish statements; he once, for instance, said that he was considering having himself cryogenically frozen so that he could later be thawed and re-record pieces from the standard classical repertory.

The ego revealed by such statements grated on some observers during the last phases of von Karajan's career, and some of the bloom came off his reputation in the late 1970s and 1980s. Reviewers sometimes charged that he was repeating himself as he performed and recorded the same works again and again, and even the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic began to resist his authority; when he tried to add a young protegée, clarinetist Sabine Meyer, to the orchestra, the (all-male) group of musicians, which traditionally held the prerogative to make personnel decisions, rebelled, and von Karajan was forced to give in. Von Karajan did, however, succeed in making an international star of another protegée, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, whose playing had the same steely quality of perfection that von Karajan cultivated as a conductor. In increasingly poor health after a stroke and several other serious medical crises, von Karajan resigned as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in April of 1989. Though he continued to work, he lived only three more months and died at his home in the Austrian Alps on July 16, 1989. Some called him the last great conductor in the German-speaking world's great tradition.

Books

Osborne, Richard, Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music, Chatto & Windus, 1998.

Vaughan, Roger, Herbert von Karajan, Norton, 1986.

Periodicals

Billboard, August 7, 1999.

Commentary, May 2000.

Guardian (London, England), July 17, 1989.

National Review, August 18, 1989.

New York Times, July 17, 1989.

Washington Post, July 17, 1989.