Word: karajans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BEETHOVEN: EMPEROR CONCERTO (Odyssey). Walter Gieseking made the recording in London shortly before his death in 1956, and it is a fitting final statement by a major interpreter of Beethoven. Herbert von Karajan conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in a fiery, romantic interpretation of the masterpiece...
...addicted to the stars. A favorite society astrologer is lissome "Cappy" Badrutt, the California-born wife of the proprietor of the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, who has done horoscopes for Rita Hayworth, Paris Vogue Editor-in-Chief François de Langlade, the Aga Khan, Mrs. Herbert von Karajan, and Baroness Thyssen. Cappy says that a growing number of businessmen are also interested in the practice, because "in these times of uncertainty, people are groping for an answer...
BEETHOVEN: MISSA SOLEMNIS (2 LPs; Angel). Otto Klemperer conducts the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus in a surging declaration of faith that should sweep away all earlier versions of the work, including his own. A second new recording, by Herbert von Karajan (on Deutsche Grammophon), approaches the music more humanly and pleadingly -and the effect is surprisingly persuasive. His orchestra is the Berlin Philharmonic and two soloists are especially fine: Gundula Janowitz and Christa Ludwig. For majesty, take Klemperer; for beauty, Von Karajan...
...complaint that Bing has failed to bring along enough first-rate conductors. He contends that "there are few really distinguished conductors around, but the shortage at the Metropolitan is no more severe than anywhere else. After all, nobody knows who conducts in Vienna when it isn't Von Karajan." More to the point, everybody knows that it is Bing who calls the tunes at the Met. Great conductors usually have egos to match, and the inevitable collision between Bing and the baton men caused such autocratic maestros as George Szell and the late Fritz Reiner to boycott the house...
SIBELIUS: SYMPHONY NO. 5 (Columbia). Leonard Bernstein, conducting the New York Philharmonic, is at his best in the expansive, triumphal affirmation of the last movement but, in spite of mighty swells of sound, seems a little somnolent in the andante (where Von Karajan, on Deutsche Grammophon, creates a brooding tension). Bernstein has more overall success in the rich tone poem Pohjola's Daughter, about a maiden who sits high on a rainbow preferring, for some reason, to weave rather than be wooed...