Karajan Live

A superb box-set. Karajan set the bar high, paid great care and attention in monitoring the recording process and correcting any "mistakes" that recording engineers or producers might make. Of course, producers and recording engineers would correct Karajan's "corrections"! The recording studio - in which he thrived - and the end product were just as important to Herbert von Karajan as his live concert performances.

A superb box-set. Karajan set the bar high, paid great care and attention in monitoring the recording process and correcting any "mistakes" that recording engineers or producers might make. Of course, producers and recording engineers would correct Karajan's "corrections"! The recording studio - in which he thrived - and the end product were just as important to Herbert von Karajan as his live concert performances.

The core works include Beethoven's 4th piano concerto live with Karajan in 1952, Mozart's Double Piano concerto with Geza Anda, and Mozart's 19th piano concerto with Ferenc Fricsay in 1952, as well as Bach's toccata and Beethoven's 18th sonata, and piano works by Schubert and Mozart included in the 1952 live performance, making this the definitive album of Haskil's art! Above all, the Schumann piano concerto with Carl Schuricht in 1955 is a masterpiece among masterpieces in which everything Haskil has to offer.

The core works include Beethoven's 4th piano concerto live with Karajan in 1952, Mozart's Double Piano concerto with Geza Anda, and Mozart's 19th piano concerto with Ferenc Fricsay in 1952, as well as Bach's toccata and Beethoven's 18th sonata, and piano works by Schubert and Mozart included in the 1952 live performance, making this the definitive album of Haskil's art! Above all, the Schumann piano concerto with Carl Schuricht in 1955 is a masterpiece among masterpieces in which everything Haskil has to offer.

Joseph Haydn - Die Schöpfung / The Creation
Fritz Wunderlich / Hermann Prey / Wiener Singverein / Wiener Philharmoniker / Herbert von Karajan
2xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 278 MB | Full Artwork: 164 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon "Festspiel Dokumente" # 474 955-2 GM2 | Country/Year: Germany 2004, 1965
Genre: Classical | Style: Classical Period, Oratorio, Sacred, Vocal

"Karajan's direction is exactly as in the studio: majestic, broadly paced without being inert, vast in dynamic range, always considerate to his soloists, unerring in its preparation and clinching of climaxes." ~BBC Music Magazine

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 in E flat major (1881, ed. Robert Haas) – Berliner Philharmoniker; Herbert von Karajan
Classical | 1 CD | EAC Rip | 319 MB, 3% recovery | FLAC+LOG+Cue | Full scans | RS links
Publisher: EMI Classics | Recorded: 1970 | Published: 2005

The recording of the Fourth Symphony is one of the finest ever made in Berlin's Jesus-Christus Kirche, the church's clear but spacious acoustic allowing the Berlin playing to be heard in all its multicoloured, multi-dimensional splendour… Richard Osborne; Gramophone

A "triumph of remembrance," wrote Die Welt following this stirring concert given by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Seiji Ozawa and with Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist. It left its audience hovering between hushed reverence and deafening exultation. The Golden Hall of Vienna's Musikverein was the dazzling venue for the live recoding of this concert celebrating the 100th anniversary of Herbert Von Karajan's birth. And Karajan's "Berliners" never sounded better, according to the Frankfuter Allgemeine Zeitung, evoking "a time which self-confidently sought the private and subjective in music, and believed it could find them in the mirror of the works."

Made after his official resignation from the Berlin Phil and six months before his death, this last recording is likely - at least in part - reflective of Karajan's mental tossing and turning before he died. We could gather that he felt quite wronged, and wanted to express forgiveness then to bid the world a farewell.