This Karajan release from the 1970 Salzburg Festival is a memorable collaboration between the Maestro and his famous principal wind players: Lothar Koch – oboe; Karl Leister – clarinet; Gerd Seifert – horn and Günter Piesk – bassoon.

Although Karajan recorded the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante in E flat with the BPO for EMI, the work was then performed by a different group of soloists from the orchestra.

The fine Zarathustra also included on this CD benefits from a wonderful contribution from the Orchestra’s leader – Michel Schwalbé, who died at the age of 92 on 9 October 2012.

As was so often the case, Herbert von Karajan successfully completed an astonishing workload during August at the 1970 Salzburg Festival: he performed two operas with the Vienna Philharmonic, giving Verdi’s Otello on five occasions and Mozart’s Don Giovanni on three, as well as Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. The Berlin Philharmonic gave two orchestral concerts under his direction. These consisted of Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach, Bach’s Orchestral Suite in B minor and Brahms’s First Symphony on 9 August 1970, as well as the Sinfonia Concertante for winds K.297b by Mozart and Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra on 12 August.

The Berlin Philharmonic’s concert on 12 August 1970 was based on a clever piece of dramaturgy. Two works were performed in which the orchestra appeared as an entity and with soloists drawn from the ranks as the focus of attention. Werner Kobes wrote the following in the Linzer Tagblatt of 14 August 1970: “On the one hand, the filigree silver of Mozart’s Concertante Sinfonia, on the other, the glistening gold of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem. What a fine pair of musical opposites! And a conductor in the midst of it all who has a masterful grasp of how to work with the material supremely well. This festival evening concert will never be forgotten ….”

(extracts from the booklet note)

Sound/Video

Paused

1

Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante: Allegro
2

Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante: Adagio
3

Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante: Andantino con Variazioni
4

Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra: Einleitung
5

Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra: Das Grablied
6

Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra: Das Tanzlied
7

Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra: Nachtwanderlied

Europadisc Review

This is the birthplace of Herbert von Karajan. Oh yes, and Mozart was born here too...’ So ran the old joke in Salzburg, where from the mid-1950s Karajan dominated the annual festival (as well as, from 1967, his ‘own’ Easter festival) until his death in 1989. His performances there led to many famous concert and opera recordings, although some of the officially ‘live’ ones actually tended to be patched and tweaked by the technically savvy conductor and his engineers.

So the series of properly live Karajan/Berlin recordings being issued by Testament is thus all the more valuable for giving us an unvarnished picture of this celebrated partnership as it was in concert. In truth, Karajan ‘live’ was never as unexpectedly exciting and volatile as his older contemporary Karl Böhm could be. Yet this Austrian Radio recording from August 1970 (engineered by Josef Sladko, and supervised by Hans Sachs, no less!) shows that, caught on the wing, Karajan could still on occasion be several degrees more involving in the concert hall than he arguably was in the studio.

Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K297b for wind instruments and orchestra is given an old-style ‘big band’ performance such as one seldom hears nowadays, with a typically Karajanesque accompaniment, all warmth and suaveness. Yet against this rather opulent background the soloists — a vintage set of Berlin Phil names — are a joy, not least Lothar Koch’s rich-toned yet agile oboe-playing and Karl Leister’s deliciously woody clarinet. In the Adagio and the playful set of variations that round the work off, Gerd Seifert on horn and Günter Piesk on bassoon also get their chances to shine, and by the end one fully appreciates that, like the Mannheim orchestra in the late eighteenth century, the Berlin Philharmonic in the second half of the twentieth really was an ‘army of generals’.

That much is also abundantly evident in an engrossing account of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, one of Karajan’s specialities over the years. This performance is inevitably closer to his first DG recording of three years later than it is to his famous (but occasionally erratic) Vienna account of 1959, yet it sounds distinctly more spontaneous, and a good deal less stage-managed, which is all for the better. Although, as often happens in the concert hall, the work takes a while to ‘settle’ (in the notorious opening the cymbals are too loud, the timpani curiously puny), it builds impressively, with exceptionally luxuriant strings in ‘Das Grablied’ and a marvellous sense of abandon in the waltz of ‘Das Tanzlied’. Woodwind and brass are perfectly caught and on marvellous form, as is the solo violin playing of the late Michel Schwalbé, and the tonally ambiguous ending is beautifully poised and transcendent.

There is a moderate level of tape hiss (though no more than one would expect from a good stereo broadcast of the period), the dynamic range is wide, the perspective close but natural, with vivid detail and good overall balance, and the sense of occasion is palpable. This release will delight Karajan’s many admirers, and it may also convert some doubters!