Customer Reviews

Boulez In Salzburg [VHS]

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KARAJAN IN SALZBURG, a film directed by Peter Gelb, was my first VHS video, in 1990. Actually, I remember purchasing this video in September, 1990; my TV and VCR came in October. Karajan had passed away the year before, and there was alot of interest in his life and career in the media at the time. I remember watching this with a friend on her TV/VCR (she passed away in 2004), and watching this again brings back memories.

About the VHS itself, there are scenes of Karajan rehearsing for the 1987 production of Mozart's DON GIOVANNI at the Salzburg Festival that summer. Karajan is shown rehearsing with DON GIOVANNI cast singers Samuel Ramey, Kathleen Battle, Alexander Malta, and in private sessions with them, Gosta Winbergh, and Anna Tomowa-Sintow in his studio. Karajan jokes and cajoles them, and seeing his kindly, humorous manner makes it hard to believe he had membership in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and 40s. Karajan is interviewed, and gives advice - in English - to young conductors, and says "the man who swings the stick in front of the orchestra only (the time beater, he means) - he doesn't exist anymore."(Paraphrase) Karajan was referring to how conductors must have a point of view, an interpretation of the works they intend to conduct.

Karajan is shown coaching Sumi Jo in a movement from Bach's B Minor Mass in a private studio, and rehearsing Wagner with Jessye Norman. The TANNHAUSER Overture is shown, plus Karajan conducting the "Liebestod" from TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, which Jessye Norman sings. There are glimpses of Karajan's private life: his purchase of a new Porsche; his wife Eliette; friends and photographers at his country home; and audio productor Michael Glotz speaking about Karajan after his performance of DON GIOVANNI over a meal of pasta and wine in a beautiful and cozy Salzburg (I assume Salzburg) restaurant.

The countryside near Karajan's home in rural Austria is very beautiful and peaceful. The video ends with Jessye Norman singing the final scene, Liebestod, from TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, with Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic before a huge, enthusiastic audience.

Although I am not a huge Karajan fan: my favorite conductors are Karl Bohm, Wilhelm Furtwangler, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein, William Steinberg, and about 50 others (but I am not limited only to them or any one maestro), this is an interesting look at how Karajan worked and rehearsed Mozart and Wagner. Just for the record, I read Karajan's EMI and Decca recordings from the 1950s-70s were often superior to the DG recordings from 1980 on. And, if this comes out on DVD, I recommend it for myself, or anyone who likes Classical music DVDs.

A very well edited and beatiful and moving performance of
Mr. Karajan and Jessie Norman.
Worthwile to have it.

There's not much opportunity to see Boulez conduct, master classes in this realm are almost non-existent. If you are a student of conducting this is unquestionably for you. If you are'nt this is a comprehensive event for modernity and engaged music making. The Song of The Nightingale, forshadowed the massive Rite of Spring, yet here Stravinsky disperses his colours slowly, the winds are prominent with the star role, the flutes at center of the colour. Every ensemble however is visited,terse and compacted events, each allowed to display, to open its feathers like a peacock in a mosaic, strings, then winds then brass punctuated with percussion. Boulez keeps taut control yet doesn't suppress any colour, this is not Tchaikovsky. He always conducts batonless, and yet nothing in rhythmic precision is sacrificed. In the interviews with Jean Vermeil, Boulez had said, that if you explain your expectations to the musicians, the result will be intense, it makes for an engaged music session. Debussy's Nocturnes are here as well, with the women's choir ending the work as the Sirens, seducing the orchestra; colours, stratifying it. Boulez's own Livre pour cordes is a thorny ethereal brilliant work. This is a reworking of the early pointillistic high serial string quartet of the identical title. That work I recall hearing makes the exposed lines, rendered them in sharp raw contrast, with a rich array of extended timbres, as the nasal harmonics,Am steg, Bartok pizz.In contrast, the string orchestra realization is the mature Boulez speaking, more mellow relativily . The monolith string body here traverses over higher roads of density to pencil thin transparency of the barest means.The result is similar to looking at a Surreal image in black and white with simply the abstract designs and configurations in relief for the eys, or here the ear, being that the strings lend a one-dimensional timbral quality. Divisi strings is what makes the proceedings here fascinating, and Boulez has the only impeccable ear left it seems for such microscopic discourse. Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, long a Boulez repertoire staple again has a dramatic control. as if he wrote the cues within the score to follow.The Vienna players here respond to Boulez very well with great care, great disciplined playing.

Very well recorded and edited like any other Karajan
records . Superb performance by Norman , and a touching end.