Mahler Karajan

Die Jahreszeiten, or The Seasons, is not as well loved as Haydn's other late oratorio, The Creation; here Haydn tried to force pastoral imagery – by 1801 a set of ideas that had been musically rehashed for centuries – into his late and in many respects proto-Romantic musical language.

This is the first disc to be made in Budapest’s new National Concert Hall where the orchestra recently staged a Mahler festival in celebration of the composer’s local connections. Notwithstanding the change of venue and the extra forces deployed, it is very much a typical Budapest Festival production, lithe and alert, without necessarily sounding what older hands may think of as Mahlerian…

This is a taut, dense Mahler 6, missing all the angst that one finds in the recordings of Bernstein or Tennstedt. But this "tragic" symphony is much less frantic than his others, and Dohnanyi's interpretation, so similar to Szell's with the Cleveland Orchestra, is the way I feel the symphony ought to be played. This ranks in my top three or four Mahler 6, along with Abbado Berlin, Karajan, and Szell.

Between 1994 and 2011, Pierre Boulez recorded the symphonies and songs of Gustav Mahler for Deutsche Grammophon, and for many listeners these recordings are high points in his catalog, while others regard them as idiosyncratic recordings for specialists. The basis of both views stems from Boulez's meticulous conducting and exacting performance standards, which produce music of extreme lucidity and precision, yet which can also seem overly cerebral and dispassionate. Boulez's approach to Mahler may seem clinical, and this is a reasonable assessment of the way he treats details, textures, timbres, dynamics, and rhythms as indicated in the score, clearly and cleanly, without adding personal touches or interpreting the music through Mahler's biography or his own mythology.

The Decca / Deutsche Grammophon catalogue of Mahler recordings is unsurpassable. Our major contribution to the celebrations this year will be the first-ever Mahler Complete Edition, a combined effort of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon recordings as an 18-CD supe-rbudget box, with the ten symphonies, Das Lied von der Erde, Das klagende Lied, the song cycles, the Knaben Wunderhorn songs and early works - in benchmark recordings by a great assembly of Mahler conductors, singers and orchestras. Each Symphony gets a different conductor, and the list is awesome: Abbado (no. 6), Bernstein (no. 5), Boulez (no. 4), Chailly (no. 10), Giulini (Das Lied), Haitink (no. 3), Karajan (no. 9), Kubelik (no. 1), Mehta (no. 2), Sinopoli (no. 7), Solti (no. 8).

Die Jahreszeiten, or The Seasons, is not as well loved as Haydn's other late oratorio, The Creation; here Haydn tried to force pastoral imagery – by 1801 a set of ideas that had been musically rehashed for centuries – into his late and in many respects proto-Romantic musical language. He resented, he wrote to a correspondent, having to compose "French trash" at one point in the score that called for frog sounds, and the score contains a menagerie of other rustic creatures and sounds – shepherds, shepherdesses, horn calls, birds, trees, bees, herbs, fish, roosters, rifle shots, thunder and lighting, stags, sunrises, and sunsets, among others. Yet the work is a strange mixture of cute and exultant.

Karajan - The Very Best of Adagio
Classical | 2 CDs | MP3 NO BOOKS NO COVER | 244 MB
Deutsche Grammophon 000583002 | Release Date: 2006

Herbert von Karajan (5 April 1908–16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor, one of the most renowned 20th-century conductors. His obituary in The New York Times described him as "probably the world's best-known conductor and one of the most powerful figures in classical music."Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for thirty-five years. He is the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, with record sales estimated at 200 million.

The Grosses Festpielhaus in Salzburg has been the scene of countless memorable musical events - operas, concerts and recitals - for 50 years. Here is a unique chance to celebrate the glories of this distinguished era. In an exceptional collaboration with the Salzburg Festival, we have prepared a 25-CD box set - 5 complete operas, 10 concerts and 2 recitals - featuring many of the world's greatest artists, in recordings with classical status and others that are appearing on CD for the first time. Concerts (five out of ten are first-time releases): with Abbado, Bernstein, B hm, Boulez, Karajan, Levine, Mehta, Muti, Solti.