Herbert Von Karajan: A Life in Music

896 Pages·2000·65.88 MB·English

by  Richard Osborne

BELVEDERE TIBURON LIBRARY
01840 7880
■
m
VON
L I PE IN MUSIC
RICHARD OSBOHNE
Herbert von Karajan wa the twentieth
century’s .most prodigiously •forming artists.
Richard Osborne knew h d many con¬
i',
versations with him. Thes( were only the
starting point for a biography that draws on
interviews with those who worked with Karajan
during his sixty-year career, and on a vast array of
primary archival material that has never previously
been examined.
This biography explores Karajan’s life and music
making against the background of European music
and politics in the years 1908—1989. Periods in
Karajan’s life hitherto ignored or believed to have been
in some way “covered up” - his childhood in Austria
during and after the First World War and his early
career as a conductor in Nazi Germany — are frankly
and revealingly explored. ■
The story begins with the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914. Herbert von
Karajan, vacationing with his family on an island off
the Adriatic coast, watched the funeral convoy pass.
“Now there’ll be a war,” muttered his uncle. It was a
defining moment for a young boy whose life and
career would be intimately bound up with subsequent
political events — the collapse of imperial Austro-,
Hungary, the rise of Nazism, the birth of the cult of
“the great conductor,” the Second World War,
postwar tensions over Berlin, the democratization of
Germany and its regeneration as Europe’s most
successful consumer economy, and the continuing
preoccupation in the latter years of the century with
the Nazi period and the problems of guilt and
expiation it involves. ;f
The composer to whom Karajan felt closest was
Shostakovich. If this seems surprising, it is typical of
the paradoxes surrounding a man and a musician
whose image — assiduously cultivated in different ways
by Karajan himself, his admirers, a.ifd his detractors —
was often profoundly at odds with the realities both of
his private life and of his music making.
This is the “jet-set megastar” who was in reality a shy,
music-obsessed, often solitary figure and a poor
communicator in personal matters, yet who was also
the great modern master of the orchestra, a born
teacher, deeply loyal to his closest associates, and often
very funny. It is the man who made and sold more
best-selling EPs and CDs than a^^ltoiconductor in
on back flap)
BEL-TIB 4 BOOKS
764.2092 Karajan 2000
Osborne, Richard, 1943-
Herbert von Karajan : a
life in music
31111018407680
DATE DUE
A
rtu1 i bp 0f% 3a 7a0 n0 n6 a
SEP i ?nnq
}3
Brodart Co. Cat. #55 137 001 Printed in USA

HERBERT VON KARAJAN
Music advisor to Northeastern University Press
GUNTHER SCHULLER
HERBERT KARAJAN
von
A Life in Music
RICHARD OSBORNE
Northeastern University Press
BOSTON
FOR HARRY
Copyright © 1998 Richard Osborne
Published in England in 1998 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of
Random House, London. Published in the United States of America
in 2000 by Northeastern University Press, by arrangement
with Random House UK.
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may
be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage
and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without
written permission of the publisher.
All quotations from the letters and writings of Herbert von Karajan
are copyright. They can be reproduced, distributed and
communicated to the public only with written consent of
the copyright owner, the Karajan Estate.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Osborne, Richard, 1943-
Herbert von Karajan : a life in music / Richard Osborne.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Chatto & Windus, 1998.
Includes indexes.
1-55553-425-2
isbn
1. Karajan, Herbert von. 2. Conductors (Music)—Biography.
1. Title.
ML422.K22 083 2000
784.2'o92-dc2i
[b] 99-059108
MANUFACTURED IN GREAT BRITAIN
04 03 02 OI OO 5432I
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Vlll
Foreword
X
part i: 1908-1945
I An atmosphere of war
3
2 Sunday’s child
7
Teachers’ boy
3 17
4 A Salzburg education 26
Vienna
5 33
6 A leader of suggestive power 40
A young bandmaster from Ulm
7 45
8 Swastikas in the sky 61
9 Nearly in the dust 68
10 ‘Tell me, now: are you happy with me?’ 76
11 Chess moves 83
12 General Music Director, Aachen
9i
1938: The promised land 101
13
1938: Das Wunder Karajan no
Peace and war 126
15
16 ‘More Diogenes than Alexander . . .’
134
17 Down, down I come 150
18 City terrors and mountain vigils 163
Flight to Italy 181
19
PART II: 1945-1956
20 Captain Epstein’s dilemma 189
21 Interrogation 200
22 An Englishman abroad 207
23 A capacity of taking trouble 220
New music: a tantrum and a tiff
2-4 2-34
London
2-5 2*44
26 A tale of two Berlins 251
27 Furtwangler: showdown in Chicago 258
28 Getting and spending 262
29 The hypnotist
2*73
30 Hanging on to Karajan 278
Wiener Symphoniker and return to Germany 282
31
32 Bachfest 290
Milan, Paris, and Bayreuth
33 2*95
Working with the Philharmonia 304
34
On recording 310
35
Crossing the Rhine 318
36
The girl with the flaxen hair 328
37
38 Tristan and Lucia
333
39 Brandy in Les Baux • 356
40 Death and succession 367
American journey
4i 377
42 Trouble at mill 384
A resignation and three recordings 401
43
PART III: 1957-1964
Riding high
44 4i3
Incessant traffic 422
45
46 Three courtships and a marriage
43i
Vienna and London 1959-60 440
47
48 Salzburg shenanigans
453
Controlling interests
49 457
50 Vienna: the phoney war 469
Karajan’s Circus
51 475
52- Berlin Philharmonic 481
A strange marriage
53 493
Pet Savage 504
54
Farewell, Vienna 507
55
PART IV: 1964-1975
56 Fresh woods and pastures new 5I5
Pilgrimage to Jarvenpaa 522
57
58 Towards the Easter Festival 525
59 Henri-Georges Clouzot 535
60 The Easter Festival
545
61 Carmen and Pagliacci
553
62 An urge to educate 562
Mr Andry plays his ace
63 575
64 Brave new worlds
59i
A question of image 601
65
66 Disc trouble 606
PART V: 1976-1989
67 Easter 1976 613
68 Close encounters 618
69 The man with the golden jug 625