Word: karajans
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...also likes such modernists as Berg and Bartok. "None of the young conductors has a wide repertory, but De Waart is anxious to learn and that separates him from the rest," says Milton Salkind, president of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. De Waart is not worried: "Herbert von Karajan once said it takes ten years to be a conductor and another ten before one is a good conductor. O.K., I've conducted almost twelve now. That makes me a conductor. I'll try to become a good one in San Francisco...
CLASSICAL. Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (RCA, 3 LPs). The Houston Opera production, a hit on Broadway, is now the best Porgy on records. Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon, 8 LPs). Herbert von Karajan, the Berlin Philharmonic and Beethoven, at their best. Schubert: Symphony No. 9 (Philips). Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra produce the finest modern version of this noble epic. Beethoven: "Waldstein" Sonata; "Eroica" Variations (RCA). At 28, Emanuel Ax comes of age as a master of the classical style. Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov (Angel, 4 LPs). Mussorgsky's original version on records for the first time, lovingly...
Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies (Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conductor, Deutsche Grammophon; 8 LPs). His third recording of the Beethoven symphonies reaffirms the impression that Karajan, 69, is a man surcharged with new energy, and ever more confident of his powers. As one would expect from this conductor, there is no arbitrary tampering with tempos, or other excesses marching under the banner of personal insight. Karajan accepts the boundary lines and then plays the game for all he is worth. His Eroica, for example, is a shade faster than before, his Fourth broader, darker, more ruminative. But what really sets...
Orchestra musicians are bewitched as much by his personality as by his musicianship. He insists that his players call him Slava, not maestro. He refuses to place himself on a pedestal higher than the podium. Herbert von Karajan once broke up a rehearsal when he spied a musician chewing gum. Szell was a tyrant. Toscanini's men loved him, yet trembled before his baton-snapping temper. "Sometimes," says Rostropovich in his near-impenetrable English, "conductor says to orchestra, 'You play for me and my ego!' No. Orchestra must not think conductor is god. Some day he is running quick...
...concerts finished, Karajan moved over to New York's Juilliard School to give a three-part master class for aspiring conductors. Pausing during a rapid-fire series of prickly comments ("I am not here to teach you tricks"), he recalled the days when he was a child taking riding lessons. On the night before his first jump he was sleepless with worry. " 'How can I lift this enormous thing up into the air and over the fence?' I thought to myself. Then I realized no one lifts the horse. You set it in the right position...