My listening post this morning is my happy place – the second floor of our local library.
When I die, I want to be buried in a library. Or a coffin shaped like a book.
Books and music are my two biggest passions.
So me being here, with Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, Berliner Philharmoniker, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor in my ears is the next best thing to being in heaven.
I encountered Maestro Karajan’s legendary 1977 cycle right times previously, on…
Day 11. Rating: “Meh!”
Day 29. Rating: “Huzzah!”
Day 47. Rating: “Huzzah!”
Day 65. Rating: Almost “Huzzah!”
Day 83. Rating: “Huzzah!”
Day 101. Rating: “Meh!”
Day 119. Rating: “Meh!”‘
Day 137. Rating: “Meh!”
This is supposed to be a legendary 1977 cycle. Yet, my ratings are three “Huzzah!” (with one of those “Huzzah!” ratings an almost “Huzzah!”), and all the rest (four) are “Meh!” That doesn’t exactly give me confidence in whomever labeled this a legendary cycle.
But who am I in the grand scheme? I’m not a musicologist. Or a music scholar.
I just know what I like…and what I don’t like. Critics be damned.
The real question is this: “What will today’s performance bring?
That question will be settled in about an hour and a half.
Beethoven wrote his symphonies in four parts (except for the Sixth, which is in five). The time breakdown of this particular one (Symphony No. 9 in D minor), from this particular conductor (Karajan, at age 67-69) and this particular orchestra (Berliner Philharmoniker), at this particular time in history (1975-1977) on this particular record label (Deutsche Grammophon) is as follows:
I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso………………….15:21
II. Molto vivace………………………………………..10:04
III. Adagio molto e cantabile……………………………..16:50
IV. Finale (A)……………………………………………..6:27
IV. Finale (B)…………………………………………….17:56
Total running time: 66:38
My Rating:
Recording quality: 4 (noticeable tape hiss, okay but not perfect – or remarkable in any way)
Overall musicianship: 5 (tempo seems a little fast, hurried, the performance is uneven – especial in the choral part)
CD liner notes: 4 (slimmer booklet compared to the 1963 cycle, but no less interesting…a missing, but necessary, piece of information: when, exactly, was this recorded? Which day? Which year? Providing a range of 1975-1977 isn’t sufficient for inquiring minds like mine)
How does this make me feel: 4 (“Meh!”)
This is another miss, albeit near, for Maestro Karajan.
I was all set to dig the hell out of this performance, but the longer I listened, the less I liked it.
That’s because, as I’ve written before (Day 89), there are Three Necessary Elements that must be present to hook me, compel me to listen again, and inspire me to share it with others:
1. The passion and knowledge of the conductor,
2. The skill and knowledge of the orchestra, and
3. The skill and knowledge of the recording engineers
In the case of this performance, I was initially impressed by #3 – the skill and knowledge of the recording engineers. The first two movements had my head bobbing and my toes tapping because I liked the way they were recorded.
On the second listen to the entire performance (I heard it three times today), I started to hear that the tempo seemed a little quick, especially in Movement II. When I compared Maestro Karajan’s performance with Maestro Jochum’s (Day 152), it was like night and day. Maestro Jochum’s tempo was spot on to what I like to hear.
Then I noticed other things in the way it was recorded. For example, the way the timpani sounds toward the end of Movement II. In Maestro Karajan’s interpretation, the sound of the timpani (starting around 8:37) is hollow, distracting, higher pitched. Much more pronounced. In Maestro Jochum’s interpretation (starting around 9:40) the timpani is miked farther back and has a richer, warmer sound; therefore, it doesn’t distract. It enhances the rest of the instruments in the overall sound.
This sharper, brighter timpani sound can be found throughout Movement II. It may be precisely what Beethoven had in mind. But, to my ears, it’s distracting. It sounds different from other recordings.
Speaking of those timpani parts, I noticed that when the timpani ratatats during a particularly quiet passage (1:38 – 1:44, for example) all other instrument stop – just for a split second. During the timpani’s ratatat part, no other instrument is playing. Everything pauses for the one-second duration of the timpani.
I don’t know what Beethoven had in mind for the timpani, why those unsettling ratatats are there. But they jar me every time.
Anyway, so I was initially thinking of rating this a “Huzzah!” because I liked the way it was recorded – at first.
Then, upon re-listening, I realized that the recording quality really isn’t that good. That’s when the rest of the performance started going downhill.
My least favorite movement is Movement IV, which is no surprise. But this time it was especially grating on me. I can’t tell if the reason why are the voices, how they were recorded, or how it was all paced. When it sounds like all hell is breaking loose at the end of Movement IV it doesn’t feel exciting; it feels like my head will explode. It’s sound overload.
Bottom line: I doubt I will ever hear this performance again. And I won’t recommend it to anyone else.
In short, “Meh!”
Someone posted the entire performance of Beethoven’s Ninth (conducted by Herbert von Karajan) on YouTube. If you’ve never seen Maestro Karajan conduct an orchestra, check it out. He’s not as boisterous as Maestro Bernstein. But he’s close.
NOTE: This is not the same performance I heard this today, although it sounds close. And it is the Berlin Philharmonic.
If you want to see what I heard, here it is: