Word: berlins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Milton Rauschenberg (he changed his name to Robert as a young man) was born on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a shabby, humid oil-refinery town on the Gulf of Mexico. His father, Ernest Rauschenberg, was the son of an immigrant doctor from Berlin who had drifted to southern Texas and married a Cherokee. Port Arthur was no cultural center. Its symphony orchestra was the jukebox, the comics its museum. The nearest thing to art one could see was the cheap chromo-litho holy cards pinned up in the Rauschenberg living room (the whole family was devoutly active...
Among the three international superstars of conducting, Sir Georg Solti and Leonard Bernstein are almost overly familiar to audiences in the U.S. Herbert von Karajan is a more remote, elusive figure. In 1955 he was appointed conductor for life of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the finest orchestras in the world. In the years since, he has exercised complete control over its rehearsals, working conditions, personnel and guest artists. Today he can say: "I cannot now blame anybody else for not getting the results I want. No excuses. If it's wrong, it's entirely my fault...
...well as skill to prepare. The average orchestra in the U.S. will usually do one such score a year. As the world of music has known for a quarter of a century, there is nothing average about Karajan. For this occasion he brought with him not only the Berlin Philharmonic, but 150 members of the Vienna Singverein, a superbly responsive chorus that at various times in its 118-year history has been led by Berlioz, Liszt and Brahms...
There was a time when life was not so well ordered. In the 1950s Karajan's guiding hand could be found simultaneously at the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, La Scala, London's Philharmonia Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. Says he: "I had to do it because I wanted to see what the limits were, and what was nearest to my heart...
With all his activities, Karajan can still offer the advice, "Keep one thing in life and forget everything else," and mean it. For him it is "that wall to lean my back on," the Berlin Philharmonic. Such is the trust between Karajan and his musicians that he often conducts with his eyes closed. "I can feel the players better," he says. He gives few entry cues and the vaguest of cutoff gestures. Explains Karajan: "Baton technique is what the people see, but it is all nonsense. The hands do their job because they have learned what...