Customer Reviews

Dvorák: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 "New World"

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Make no mistake: the remastering has cleaned up these recordings no end. Both of them now sound state of the art.

While few would quarrel with Herbie's take on the New World Symphony, the earlier work is more controversial. Sure, if you like a D8 with plenty of autumnal colours, look elsewhere. But this version offers, in a way, an Ein Heldenleben approach to this sturdy symphony - and when combined with the 'saturated fat' sonorities of the Berlin Phil (then at the zenith of their powers), it works in spades for those with the ears to hear. Who says that the Eighth has to be a valediction?

All in all, this is great fun and a fine investment of your money and time.

For a long time I had no idea how genial, powerful, and convincing Karajan could be with Dvorak, because I started out with this pairing of the 8th and 9th on EMI. Karajan left DG in the Seventies over contract disputes. EMI had been his original home from 1947, when he was discovered surviving without an orchestra in the rubble of postwar Vienna, until he drifted away from the Philharmonia Orch. in the early Sixties. His return to the label brought some great things, particularly in opera, but also some perfunctory, at times coarse orchestral accounts.

This Dvorak 8th is without affection, and the Berlin brass cuts with too much of a serrrated edge. Karajan's lack of feeling shows thoughout, and although the execution is world-class (what else could we expect?), there's something nerve-wracking in the conductor's push to get things over with. You'd never anticipate his loving autumnal reading with the Vienna Phil. that was to come in 1985 (available from DG in their Karajan Forever series). The newly remastered sound has worked out well, but the whole enterprise feels overblown and indifferent at the same time.

The "New World" doesn't miss the spirit of the work by quite so much, and in fact it resembles both of Karajan's other versions, one dating from 1964 in Berlin, the other from 1985 in Vienna (both DG), not touching on a Decca account I haven't heard. His interpretation really didn't alter over the years except by half a minute here or there. I wouldn't downgrade the EMI account if the other two weren't better recorded and played with more real personality. This one is machine made, a straight-ahead performance on a big scale and little more.

I'm glad that I eventually got around to Karajan's other Dvorak. If I had had only this pairing to go on, I would never have known how good he can actually be.

P.S. 2011 I wasn't aware of yet another Dvorak "New World" by Karajan and the Berlinters when I wrote this review. It dates from 1959 on EMI. On a single hearing I wasn't so impressed that I would shift my preference away from the late Vienna account.