ความคิดเห็นที่ 1 The monster and his myth By Norman Lebrecht / January 30, 2008 I t's hard to believe, but the old monster is back. Walk down any Paris boulevard and he looms off billboards in that eyes-shut pose of simulated spirituality that baffled and infuriated so many of his musicians. In your local record store - if you've still got one - he's pushing living maestros out of the racks with major-label box-sets and new releases of his unpublished takes. The world's festivals and orchestras are commemorating the centenary of his birth, starting this month in Salzburg and Lucerne and proceeding via Berlin and Vienna, where his hegemony was unchallenged, to a celebratory London concert by the Philharmonia, which booted him out in the mid-1950s for being too much of a Nazi. 'Remember! Karajan 08' is the slogan that's going up all over Japan. Wherever you look this year, Herbert von Karajan is back on top of the classical agenda and a whole industry is working all hours to keep him there. More than other art forms, classical music is a prisoner of anniversaries, pinning its concert plans to dead composers, Mozart in 2006, Grieg and Elgar last year, Messiaen coming up. But where a composer season can stimulate ideas and new works, raising a conductor from the dead has no creative value, arousing nothing worthier than hero worship. Death is a great leveller except to those who die rich and can buy themselves a shot at immortality. No classical musician, not even Pavarotti, died richer than Herbert von Karajan. At his death in July 1989, Karajan's tax-sheltered fortune exceeded ฃ200 million and the record royalties continue to roll in to this day to his third and last wife, Eliette, a sometime Dior model who has just published her memoirs. Karajan was the most recorded conductor in history, with almost 900 albums to his name, including five sets of Beethoven symphonies in mono, stereo, video, digital and super-video. He yielded one-third of the revenues of the dominant label, Deutsche Grammophon and he used his clout to exclude Bernstein, Solti, Harnoncourt, Barenboim and other perceived rivals from Salzburg and Berlin, twin citadels of an art that he subjugated to rampant commercialism and cultural retrogression. Karajan despised modernism, shunned most living composers and staged opera productions that looked two generations out of date. His values belonged to the Nazi era, combining a passion for new technology with a preference for populist, heroic art. He was, in almost every respect, a child of that time. Raised in Salzburg during and after the First World War, Karajan struggled to make a career until Hitler seized power in Germany. With the eviction of Jewish and leftist musicians, Karajan became, at 27, the youngest music director in the Reich and, in a 1938 Goebbels headline, 'Das Wunder Karajan'. He was just what the Doctor ordered - fair hair, clean-cut features and piercing stare - and he was a poster boy for party culture until he crossed a line by marrying an heiress who was partly Jewish. After the War, he was whisked to London by EMI's Walter Legge to make records with the newly-formed Philharmonia. Meeting British players who had fought on the opposite side, Karajan applied an electrifying charm and skill to forge a world class ensemble and polish up his trademark line of beauty, a style of music making that placed aesthetics above meaning. Some were stunned by the illusion of perfection, but many critics recoiled from the intellectual vacuity of his concerts. By the time London players attacked his 'inexcusable' arrogance, Karajan was on his way to becoming conductor for life at the Berlin Philharmonic and director of both Vienna State Opera and Salzburg Festival. No maestro had ever attained such power and, while he gradually relinquished most posts, Karajan wielded to his death an insidious, reactionary, counter-democratic and entirely unaccountable influence on an art form which depends for its every performance on a flow of public funding. It is that lifetime achievement which is now being 'celebrated' with a flood of soft-focus media programmes and a general blurring of memory. It amazes me to see Karajan's demagogic pose in Paris, where he conducted the Horst Wessel Lied during Hitler's occupation. It astonishes me no less to hear the self-made Valery Gergiev and Simon Rattle claim Karajan as a mentor, as if they secretly covet his power. There are two visible engines behind the anniversary year - the Herbert and Eliette von Karajan Foundation, which is paying for some events, and the once-mighty major labels which aim to shift unsold mountains of Karajan product into new markets, notably China and India. It may well prove to be their swansong. Sampling Decca's box of Vienna Philharmonic recordings, I find myself exhilarated once more by his cosmic energy in Holst's Planets and irritated immediately after by his languid, self-admiring fjord cruise through the highs and lows of Grieg's Peer Gynt. Karajan had a tendency to homogenise music, bending it to his line of beauty, suppressing its diversity of character. Hearing an excess of Karajan is like spending a month at McDonalds, a bloating, desensitising experience. Those who listen to Karajan for the first time this year will, I suspect, be stupefied by the sameness of his brand. Many will wonder why a multinational industry has conspired to resurrect a man who never made an original note of music, bequeathed a transmissible idea or represented any appreciable human value. Herbert von Karajan was a moral and creative nullity. His myth does not survive the test of time. จากคุณ : BlueWhiteRed - [ 2 ก.พ. 51 18:33:45 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 2 อย่างที่ทราบกันว่า Norman Lebrecht เขียนวิพากษ์ "คารายาน" ในทางลบมาโดยตลอด ครั้งนี้ก็เช่นเคยครับ :) ไม่ว่าดีหรือไม่ดี คงต้องยอมรับว่าเขาเป็น conductor ที่มีชื่อเสียงโด่งดังมากที่สุดในศตวรรษที่ 20 ดังกว่า "เบิร์นสไตน์" และ "ทอสกานินี่" และอย่างที่ Lebrecht เขียนไว้ "Karajan was the most recorded conductor in history, with almost 900 albums to his name, including five sets of Beethoven symphonies in mono, stereo, video, digital and super-video. He yielded one-third of the revenues of the dominant label, Deutsche Grammophon" จากคุณ : BlueWhiteRed - [ 2 ก.พ. 51 18:41:17 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 3 รายละเอียดการจัดงานครบรอบ 100 ปีในเมืองต่างๆ ที่ญี่ปุ่นมีจัด "Karajan Film Festival" ในเดือนเมษานี้ด้วยครับ http://www.karajan.co.uk/centenary.html EMI Karajan 100th Anniversary http://www.karajan100anniversary.com/ จากคุณ : BlueWhiteRed - [ 2 ก.พ. 51 18:44:31 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 4 สงสัยมานานแล้วว่าทำไมคนไม่ชอบคารายานกันนัก ไม่รู้ว่าแก "ป๊อบ" ไปหรือเปล่า บทความนี่ก็คงต้องเก็บไปแปลหน่อย มีใครช่วยออกความเหนหน่อยสิครับ จากคุณ : RAKANG - [ 3 ก.พ. 51 07:47:13 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 5 นี่เป็นอีกบทความจาก นสพ. The Independent จากอังกฤษ Dominic Lawson: The lesson of Karajan: there is no connection between great art and good character Friday, 1 February 2008 Should we join in the celebrations of the life of an ex-Nazi? One thing is sure, we won't be able to avoid them. As I write these words, shops across the world are preparing to unleash a tidal wave of memorabilia, CDs, and books commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Herbert von Karajan, the most successful 20th-century conductor. As far away as Japan, posters are going up, proclaiming: "Remember! Karajan '08!" What, though, should we be remembering? On Monday, the Berliner Morgenpost criticised the first of many celebratory television documentaries which, it claimed, "wiped off the table" the awkward issue of Karajan's membership of the Nazi Party. The newspaper reminded us that he joined the Salzburg branch of the NSDAP as early as 1933; then, showing a certain determination in the matter, he joined again in Aachen in 1935. After the war, Karajan was restricted in his work by the Allies' "de-Nazification" committees; somewhat paradoxically, he fetched up in London, where he became the principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1948 and rebuilt his career with spectacular effect. Yet there was, in fact, no paradox. Karajan was a supreme opportunist – or careerist, if you prefer. Some have seen his early affiliation to the Nazi Party as an indicator of strong political belief in the doctrines of Adolf Hitler. In fact, Karajan's only faith was in himself and his ambition to become Germany's – and later the world's – dominant interpreter of classical music. There is no evidence that he had any interest in politics, other than the politics of personal achievement in the always brutally competitive world of classical music. In other words, he used the Nazis as much as they used him. Indeed, he once admitted that he "would have sold my grandmother" to get the orchestral appointments that the cultural commissars of the Nazi Party had it in their gift to award him. Norman Lebrecht wrote a characteristically stirring article in the London Evening Standard a couple of days ago, damning the classical music business for launching the celebrations: "It amazes me to see Karajan's demagogic pose in Paris, where he conducted the Horst Wessel Lied during Hitler's occupation. It astonishes me no less to hear the self-made Valery Gergiev and Simon Rattle claim Karajan as a mentor, as if they secretly covet his power." Well, perhaps they do, although no conductor will ever again wield the power that Karajan exercised. Apart from anything else, it is hard to imagine any modern orchestra tolerating the dictatorial behaviour he inflicted wherever and on whomever he conducted. Surely, however, what the likes of Sir Simon Rattle worship is not Karajan's character but his musicianship. Lebrecht describes him as "a moral and creative nullity" but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he believes the first part of that accusation leads inexorably to the second. It doesn't follow. Much as we would like it to be the case, there is no connection between good character and good art – in music as in anything else. Bobby Fischer, who died a fortnight ago, regularly expressed a violent and abusive anti-Semitism which would not have been out of place in Der Stürmer; but Fischer's best chess games have an elegance and creativity which compares with a Mozart symphony. He had, in that sense, a beautiful mind. He was also a hateful person. Unlike Karajan, Fischer really did think "Hitler was right about the Jews". Yet we should still celebrate his artistic achievements at the chessboard. A closer parallel with Karajan is the career of Richard Strauss – whose works he conducted (most commercially, the recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra used by Stanley Kubrick in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey). Josef Goebbels appointed Strauss to the presidency of the Reichs-musikkammer in 1933. In gratitude, Strauss dedicated the song "Das Bachlein" to Goebbels. It ends with the peroration: "He, I believe, will be my leader". The "He" was meant by Strauss to be taken as a reference to Hitler himself (although the song is actually of a poem attributed to Goethe); the words "Mein Führer" are repeated ecstatically. As Michael Kennedy, Strauss's greatest biographer, observes, it is, musically, "a delightful song". It is worth pointing out that Kennedy fought in the Second World War. He has no illusions about what the Nazis wrought. Yet it has not coloured his view of the sheer beauty of Strauss's music and, similarly, he does not believe we should shun commemorations of Karajan's artistic achievements, crassly commercial though much of the packaging might be. In the wider sense, I share some of Lebrecht's misgivings about the classical music industry. The cult of the conductor is often tiresome and meretricious. It isthe composers themselves whom we should always celebrate – that is where greatest gratitude is owed. No one more than Karajan exemplified the cult of the conductor. He had an astonishing personal vanity, which could be seen in such trivia as the immense fastidiousness of his coiffure. The great showman would conduct with his eyes shut in public performances (thus appearing profoundly spiritual), although in rehearsals he would, like anyone else in the business, actually take the trouble to look at the orchestra. Part of his vanity – and his passion for innovation – was that he was the first conductor regularly to film rehearsals. There is one available on YouTube – a somewhat grainy film from the 1960s of a rehearsal with the Berlin Philharmonic of Schumann's 4th Symphony. In many ways, it is completely phoney. The Maestro begins by saying: "Gentlemen, this is the last rehearsal before the recording we are making for Deutsche Grammophon." At this point, it is clear that the film of the rehearsal is purely designed to plug said recording – Karajan was a brilliant salesman, along with his other skills. Yet once you get over that crude hucksterism, there is a marvellous musical education contained in this film alone, available for future generations. Yes, it glorifies Karajan, as he no doubt intended, but it also glorifies the music itself and explains its magic with an extraordinary clarity. In the months leading up to his death in 1989, Karajan was frantically investigating the possibilities of having himself cryogenically frozen, so that at some later date technology would enable his corpse to be brought back to life. Few men have craved immortality as much as did Herbert von Karajan. Yet the immortality he sought was not that of being thought a good man – which was just as well. It was fame he wanted, combined with an absolute identification with the music that he loved and promoted. An unloveable (and more than slightly camp) old rogue he mighthave been – but this form of immortality is his due; and, by God, is he getting it now. d.lawson@independent.co.uk จากคุณ : :-) - [ 3 ก.พ. 51 16:08:37 A:203.155.29.71 X: TicketID:130631 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 6 จากบทความนี้ ผมเห็นด้วยกับข้อความ In the wider sense, I share some of Lebrecht's misgivings about the classical music industry. The cult of the conductor is often tiresome and meretricious. It isthe composers themselves whom we should always celebrate – that is where greatest gratitude is owed. ทำไมในหลายครั้งที่เราชอบการบรรเลงงานในบางแผ่นแล้วเรามักจะชื่นชมวาทยากรเป็นเบื้องแรกเสมอ? ทั้งที่หากเราฟังให้"ลึก"ลงไปอีกหน่อยก็อาจได้พบว่าความชื่นชมนั้นควรมีให้กับวงดนตรีและ recording engineer อย่างเท่าเทียมกันไปด้วย จากคุณ : :-) - [ 3 ก.พ. 51 16:19:44 A:203.155.29.71 X: TicketID:130631 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 7 ใน web classicalnotes.net มีเรื่องราวของ furtwangler ในช่วงสงครามโลก ซึ่งมีกล่าวพาดพิงถึง karajan เยอะทีเดียว อ่านแล้วเห็นภาพความสัมพันธ์ของ สองคนนี้ชัดขึ้น สนุกดี ว่าง ๆ ลองอ่านดูครับ จากคุณ : Mr.Tea - [ 10 ก.พ. 51 06:21:08 A:124.121.16.7 X: TicketID:025103 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 8 ผมสงสัยมานานแล้วว่า Karajan หลับตา Conduct แล้วจะสื่อสารกับนักดนตรีในวงได้อย่างไร มาเข้าใจเมื่อเห็นว่า แกเก็บมาหมดทุกเม็ดตั่งแต่ตอนซ้อมแล้ว ยังสงสัยว่า หากไม่ได้นักดนตรีฝีมือเยียมๆ แบบที่มีอยู่ใน Berliner Phil. แล้ว Karajan จะ Conduct ด้วยที่ทาง "เข้าจิต" แบบที่เห็นๆกันอยู่ได้หรือเปล่านะ แต่อย่างไรก็ต้องยอมรับว่า Karajan ทำให้ผู้คนหันมาสนใจดนตรี Classic มาขึ้นจริงๆครับ จากคุณ : Genzo - [ 12 ก.พ. 51 01:04:14 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 9 หลายคนจะติเรื่องแกหลับตาเสมอนะคะ เรียกว่าเป็นsignature ของKarajan ได้เลยไหม พูดเรื่องKarajan คงไม่พ้นเรื่องของการเมืองและนาซี จากคุณ : kandida - [ 26 ก.พ. 51 10:35:08 ]