 |
|
| QUOTE: |
| Herbert von Karajan (Salzburg April 5, 1908 Anif near Salzburg – July 16, 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was one of the most prominent conductors of the postwar period and is widely regarded as the world's most recorded conductor. Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for thirty-five years... Genealogy Herbert von Karajan was the son of an upper-bourgeois Salzburg family of Greek ancestry. His great-great-grandfather, Georg Johannes Karajanis (Greek: Γεώργιος Ιωάννης Καραγιάννης), was born in Kozani, at that time a town in the Ottoman Empire (now in Greek Macedonia) [1], [2] and left for Vienna in 1767, eventually moving to Chemnitz in Saxony. He and his brother participated in the establishment of Saxony's cloth industry, and both were ennobled for their services by Frederick Augustus III on June 1, 1792 (thus adding the "von" to the family name). The Karajanis name became Karajan. Early years Herbert von Karajan was born in Salzburg as Heribert Ritter von Karajan (ref R Osborne's biography mentioned below). From 1916 to 1926, he studied at the Mozarteum Conservatory in Salzburg, where he was encouraged to study conducting... Postwar years In 1946, Karajan gave his first post-war concert, in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, but he was banned from further conducting activities by the Russian occupation authorities because of his Nazi party membership. That summer, he participated anonymously in the Salzburg Festival. The following year, he was allowed to resume conducting. In 1948, Karajan became artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. He also conducted at La Scala in Milan. However, his most prominent activity at this time was making recordings with the newly-formed Philharmonia Orchestra in London. He built the orchestra into one of the world's finest. In 1951 and 1952, he conducted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In 1955, he was appointed music director for life of the Berlin Philharmonic as successor to Wilhelm Furtwangler. From 1957 to 1964, he was artistic director of the Vienna State Opera. He was closely involved with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Festival, where he initiated the Easter Festival, which would remain tied to the Berlin Philharmonic's Music Director after his tenure. He continued to perform, conduct, and record prolifically until his death in 1989. Karajan and the compact disc Karajan played an important role in the development of the original compact disc digital audio format (circa 1980). He championed this new consumer playback technology, lent his prestige to it, and appeared at the first press conference announcing the format. Early CD prototypes had exhibited a playing time limited to a mere sixty minutes. It is often asserted that the decision to extend the maximum playing time of the compact disc to its standard of seventy-four minutes was achieved in order to adequately encompass Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the existing library of Karajan's recordings, and his expressed wishes. However, it is also possible that this story is an urban legend. Politics As was the case with soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Karajan's membership in the Nazi Party and prominent cultural association with Nazism from 1933 to 1945 cast him in an uncomplimentary light after the war. While Karajan's defenders have argued that he joined the Nazis only to advance his own career, his critics have pointed out that other great conductors such as Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini fled from fascist Europe at the time. Additionally, careerism could not have been Karajan's sole motivation, since he first joined the Nazi Party in 1933 in Salzburg, Austria, five years before the Anschluss. In The Cultural Cold War (published in Britain as Who Paid the Piper?), her book on CIA cultural policy in postwar Europe, Frances Stonor Saunders noted that Karajan "had been a party member since 1933, and never hesitated to open his concerts with the Nazi favourite 'Horst Wessel Lied.'" Additionally and in contradistinction to Furtwangler, Karajan had no objections to conducting in occupied Europe. Musicians such as Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman refused to play in concerts with Karajan because of his Nazi past. Some have questioned whether Karajan was committed to the Nazi cause given the fact of his marriage in 1942 to Anita Guetermann, a woman of clear Jewish origin. Karajan's star within the government dimmed from that point. |
