Interview with herbert von karajan

Richard Osborne talks to Herbert von Karajan at his home near Salzburg.

RICHARD OSBORNE: You had already conducted major orches­tras like the Berlin Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw* with great success. How did you tolerate bad orchestras which were obviously not producing what you wanted?

HERBERT VON KARAJAN: I can tell you frankly, I heard in

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my inner ear what I wanted to hear and the rest... well, it went down! But, you know, then comes one moment when your inner ear is astonished what comes out. With a big orchestra after a certain time and if they are used to you and really play as they can, they will sometimes rive you something more beautiful than what you thought you could hear; and then the real work begins to work it up to a higher and higher level, and this surely cannot be done until you have 15 or 20 years working with the one orchestra. This is the reason why I said I will have the orchestra for my lifetime, otherwise I do not sign the contract. And this pays in the results you get after a very long time.

R.O. We have had many proofs of that but I remember espe­cially the performances you gave in 1982 of Mahler's Ninth with the Berlin Philharmonic. You had made a very fine LP set and then you asked for the 1982 live Berlin performance to be issued separately on CD. Why was this?

H.K. We had a feeling that if there was no noise in the hall we could have an even better result. And I know I was madly, madly involved with the symphony to the extent that when it was done -and it is one of the few works I say this of - I would not dare to touch it again.

R.O. You had exhausted the piece.

H.K. Yes, completely.

R.O. Why did you turn to this music at this time in your life?

H.K. This I can answer exactly. I spent three years in Vienna as a student. We heard this music - Mahler, Webern, Schoenberg - a great deal; it was our daily bread. Then the war came and after the war concert managers offered me the chance to do all the Mahler symphonies. I asked them, how much rehearsal do I get? "Two re­hearsals for each concert." I said, "Gentlemen, please forget it." Mahler is very difficult for an orchestra. First, you must, as a painter would say, make your palette. The difficulty is great and the greatest danger is when the music becomes banal. I conduct a lot of light music and it can be very difficult for an orchestra to realize it properly. I once spent a whole rehearsal on the Barcarolle from Les contes d'Hoffmann,* which is to me one of the most tragic things in opera; it is not joyful; a man goes from life to death. And in Mahler there is much of this.

R.O. The Ninth seemed to be a work to which you are musi­cally close.

H.K. It is especially difficult to come to the end of the sym­phony. It is one of the hardest tasks in all conducting.

R.O. I remember an interview you gave to Austrian Television in 1977 in which the interviewer said, "Mr von Karajan, you don't con­duct enough twentieth-century music." But you have conducted an enormous amount of twentieth-century music right up to Ligeti, Pen­derecki: but you don't make a fuss about it?

H.K. Yes, but I can only do it if I am convinced. It is very easy

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sometimes, but with other works it is difficult if you get a score and you don't know what he is thinking.

R.O. One thing I have sensed with the great records you have made of twentieth-century music - the Berg Three Orchestral Pieces, the Prokofiev Fifth, the Honegger Liturgique,* the Shostakovich Tenth - they are works which somehow express the tragedy of our century. You were six years old when the First World War started. Is this something which is in your consciousness, this sense of the tragedy of our times and music's healing capacity?

H.K. Yes, yes, certainly. I had very good relations with Shostakovich. When I was the last time in Moscow I played the Tenth Symphony. He was so nervous and at the same time so im­pressed... he said, I can't speak but... he was a very great composer.

R.O. I heard once that you wanted to conduct his Sixth Sym­phony but you said that Mravinsky had done it so well that you wouldn't touch it.

H.K. Yes, I did.

R.O. You said that?

H.K. That's true.

R.O. He was a great conductor.

H.K. I am a great admirer of him. He was the representative of this older generation in perfection.

R.O. Did you ever conduct the Leningrad orchestra?

H.K. No, but I would gladly if I had the time; but they always say if you come,.bring your own orchestra. (...)

R.O. You have made two memorable recordings of Tosca. It's a thrilling piece, but the characters are not exactly pleasant; Tosca, Scarpia...

H.K. No, not at all pleasant! But Tosca has always fascinated me. Goethe once said "I was able in my life to commit all crimes if I did not have the possibility to express them." Sometimes you must conduct it, otherwise one day you may kill someone! I am fas­cinated by every single bar.

R.O. John Culshaw who produced your RCA recording of Tosca with Leontyne Price* said you were not afraid of the melodrama in Puccini.

H.K. That's true.

R.O. He also told a touching story of your listening to part of the Victor de Sabata* recording and saying this is genius but I can­not do it the way he does. He was a conductor you greatly ad­mired?

H.K. He was probably the only person who never said one word against another conductor. He lived at a very difficult time; they wanted him back at La Scala but there was always the possibility that Toscanini would return. I asked him once, "What do you feel when you conduct?" and he said "I have in my mind a million notes, and every one which is not perfect makes me mad." He suf­fered in conducting. And that, I must say, I have passed.

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R.O. And we have just had reissued by EMI the Madama But­terfly which you recorded with Callas. Do you have any memories of working with her? She must have been a very extraordinary artist.

H.K. If she was rightly handled she was very easy. She was al­ways prepared to the utmost and if she felt she had been given good advice, immediately, she took it. But she could sometimes be the diva. I remember I was once experimenting with a gauze,* it had been in La Scala 100 years and was full of dust and she was very short-sighted and could not see into the hall. She came to the rehearsal and came down to the bridge over the orchestra where I was directing and she said to the manager "If this veil remains, I do not sing." So I let her just pass, and I said "Oh, darling, I am looking for a new 'element' ..." and after half an hour the manager came back to me and says she sits up there, weeping. So I said "Maria, I was experimenting and when I say 'experiment' I mean I want to see how it presents itself. But I don't know if I will take it." Of course, we took it, but then she saw the reason. But I never would wish to upset anyone unless there was some very positive idea: which we must try.

R.O. In her Juilliard classes she advised her pupils to work within the rubato available to the conductor. But she herself had a very remarkable rhythmic sense?

H.K. Incredible. When she had the piece within her I said "Maria, you can turn away from me and sing, I know you will never be one tiny part of a bar out." She heard so well and sang always with the orchestra. I regret deeply, deeply that I could not persuade her to make a film of Tosca. I told her that we already had the tape and she would have nothing to do but be there and

play the role. Onassis invited me - I didn't know him at the time ut later we became great friends - and we talked. But then Maria began to get mad and she insisted on seeing everything before. And he said "Maria, I am not rich enough to pay for all this!" But still I asked her but she was afraid, she was afraid; she had left the thing and felt out of it...

R.O. We are very excited that you are going to conduct and record Un ballo in maschera* soon. Have you conducted it be­fore?

H.K. Yes, 40 years ago! John Schlesinger is going to direct it; he is a very well-known film director and has only directed a few op­eras but I was fascinated by the one I saw, so we got together. When I played Un ballo in maschera it came back to me as things do when you are young: they stay in your mind all the time. So I knew exactly why I wanted to conduct it. It has one special interest for me because - just to take one aspect - it has an enormous num­ber of long ensembles: a bit like Figaro. I said to Schlesinger we must find ways of dealing with this and the complex interplay of the characters.

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R.O. It has a lot of black comedy in it as well as high drama?

H.K. Certainly!

R.O. And which version will you use?

H.K. The Swedish one, of course.

R.O. And your cast is...

H.K. Domingo, and the English girl who sang here in The Black Mask - the Penderecki - Josephine Barstow. I once asked her to sing the aria from Fidelio which I very much wanted to do. She came to sing - she has a wonderful figure, she moves well, and she sings with taste and expression; so when it came to Un ballo in maschera I said...

R.O. She is the one! And your baritone?

H.K. Nucci. So I am very contented to do it. Sometimes things pass by and you don't catch them but here I saw there was a chance to do it with a beautiful cast. (...)

From: Gramophone, 1988. Abridged

Discussion Activities Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion

1. What points are discussed in the Interview with Herbert von Karajan?

2. What do you know about his conducting career? How long did he direct the Berlin Philharmonic? With what other ma­jor orchestras did Karajan work?

3. Give examples of long collaboration between a conductor and an orchestra, e.g. the Berlin Philharmonic (Furtwangler, Karajan), the NBC Symphony Orchestra (Toscanini), the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Koussevitsky).

4. What sort of repertoire did Karajan conduct? What were his tastes in opera? What festival did he found?

5. How did Karajan describe his work with Maria Callas?

6. What were his concepts of musical interpretation?

7. What was his attitude to contemporary music? Which works did he perform?

8. When did Karajan visit the Soviet Union? What concerts did he give?

9. Which of Karajan's recordings have you heard? What do you think of them? In your opinion, what qualities make Karajan an outstanding conductor of our time?

Optional Activity

1. Give your opinion of the following statements:

"There are no bad orchestras; there are only bad conductors"

(Mahler).

"There is no such thing as tradition, only genius and

stupidity" (Mahler).

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"In every performance a work must be reborn" (Mahler). "Conductors are born, not made" (Stokowsky). "Without a magnetic personality no conductor can achieve greatness. Genius has not only the capacity for creating great art; it is often capable of producing great art in others. A minor orchestra will sound likе a major one; and a major or­chestra will outdo itself in the presence of genius" (Eugene Ormandi).

2. Do you agree that a great conductor is a great personality? Explain. Give a talk on your favourite conductor.

3. Do you agree that complicated modern music calls for a con­ductor of the highest skill? Explain.

4. Write a composition of 150-250 words describing your ideal conductor.