{"id":38061,"date":"2016-08-22T10:05:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T14:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=38061"},"modified":"2016-08-22T10:05:08","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T14:05:08","slug":"record-keeping-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/08\/22\/record-keeping-10\/","title":{"rendered":"RECORD KEEPING | Karl B\u00f6hm: Late Recordings (DG)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Karl
Karl B\u00f6hm: Late Recordings. Vienna. London. Dresden. Music by Beethoven, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Schubert, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss and Wagner. DG 479 4371 (23 CDs).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Music-lovers with long memories may recall that, back in the 1960s, Austrian conductor Karl B\u00f6hm (1894-1981) gave several memorable concerts in our fair city. He first appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic in an all-Beethoven program \u2014 the Fourth and Seventh symphonies \u2014 at Massey Hall, then through his friendship with CBC television producer Franz Kraemer, he was persuaded to return for a special program in 1963. Again, the Beethoven Seventh was featured, and B\u00f6hm was shown rehearsing the work and then giving a complete performance of it with the CBC Symphony. At the time, the CBC Symphony was probably Canada\u2019s best orchestra. Two years later B\u00f6hm was back in Toronto, this time with the Toronto Symphony, with Jon Vickers as soloist, in music by Beethoven and Wagner. These were memorable concerts and confirmed for Toronto audiences what Europe and New York knew already, that B\u00f6hm was one of the greatest conductors alive. This new boxed set<\/a> of glorious performances from DG provides even more evidence of that assessment.<\/p>\n

B\u00f6hm studied with Karl Muck, a widely-respected conductor especially in the music of Wagner, and as a young man made his way up the ladder through assistant conductorships in many of the smaller European opera houses. Later, in Hamburg, he encountered Richard Strauss and quickly became one of Strauss\u2019 favourite interpreters, conducting several premieres of Strauss operas. Strauss’ opera Daphne<\/em> is dedicated to him. B\u00f6hm also knew Alban Berg and led some of the first performances of Wozzeck<\/em> and Lulu<\/em>. As an opera conductor, he became a regular at Bayreuth and Vienna, and ultimately became director of the Vienna State Opera. He conducted at the Met for the first time in 1957 and went on to give 262 performances there of no fewer than 16 different operas.<\/p>\n

As a concert conductor B\u00f6hm had a very close association with the Vienna Philharmonic and in most of the performances in this set, he is directing that orchestra. On stage, B\u00f6hm was apt to appear unsmiling and professorial and severely restrained in his movements. In rehearsal too, he was professorial, frequently stopping the orchestra to attend to the most minute details concerning the length of a note, balance or the shape of a phrase. Most orchestras found rehearsals with B\u00f6hm demanding and wearisome, but ultimately satisfying because he knew what he was doing and insisted on perfection or something close to it.<\/p>\n

Although there are no rehearsal excerpts in this set, it helps to keep in mind, as you listen to these recordings, the painstaking preparation that went into them. And while B\u00f6hm might have appeared grumpy on stage, the beauty of expression he and the Vienna Philharmonic found in Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and Wagner when they made music together was almost unique. The recording of Mozart\u2019s Masonic Funeral Music<\/em> is simply sublime.<\/p>\n

B\u00f6hm understood the fearsome power of the Vienna Philharmonic and did not hesitate to unleash it at the appropriate moment. The Act I Prelude to Wagner\u2019s Die Meistersinger<\/em> has rarely sounded as glorious as it does in the 1979 performance that is part of this set; every contrapuntal line given full value and the build-up towards the end is tremendously thrilling and full-throated.<\/p>\n

B\u00f6hm’s recording of the Bruckner Eighth is also notable for rich and expressive string playing and climaxes that are simply overwhelming. Then there is the sheer joy in their 1973 rendition of Johann Strauss\u2019 Roses from<\/em> the South Waltz<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 yet another side of B\u00f6hm\u2019s mastery of the repertoire.<\/p>\n

B\u00f6hm was celebrated for his interpretations of the great Austrian and German classics \u2014 and rightly so \u2014 but he could be exciting in Tchaikovsky too. This set includes passionate and blazing interpretations of Symphonies 4, 5 and 6 with the London Symphony. B\u00f6hm had his own way with this repertoire, adding unwritten, often effective tempo changes, from time to time. The Tchaikovsky Fifth was one of his last recordings, made in London in June, 1980, less than a year before he died.<\/p>\n

B\u00f6hm\u2019s Mozart was much-praised, but I always found it a little slow for my taste. The first movement of the Symphony No. 29 (Allegro con spirito<\/em>) in this set is pretty lugubrious, and although the last movement of the Haffner<\/em> Symphony (Presto<\/em>) is slow enough so that every note can be properly executed, I would suggest that the slow tempo misses the point of this bubbly music.<\/p>\n

Eighty-seven when he died, B\u00f6hm had been frail for several years. Some conductors tend to take slower tempos as they age and this was true to some extent in B\u00f6hm\u2019s case. The Beethoven Ninth \u2014 his very last recording \u2014 is very heavy going, but the Schubert Ninth from the year before features tempos that sound just right. The Ninth, the only live recording in the set, was clearly a special occasion for B\u00f6hm and Staatskapelle Dresden, <\/em>the orchestra with which he had a close association much earlier in his career, and is surely among the greatest recordings of the piece in existence \u2014 Nikolaus Harnoncourt and John Eliot Gardiner notwithstanding. This is Schubert given virtually Brucknerian proportions, with the brass going all out in the climaxes. Karl B\u00f6hm makes a compelling case that in this, his last completed symphony, Schubert was far ahead of his time.<\/p>\n

During his latter years, B\u00f6hm lived in the shadow of his more glamorous Austrian colleague Herbert von Karajan. Both men were major figures in Vienna and Berlin. Both recorded extensively for Deutsche Grammophon. This important new set of recordings reminds us that B\u00f6hm’s recorded legacy is an invaluable documentation of the art of a passionate and masterful conductor.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Want more updates on Toronto-centric classical music news and review\u00a0before anyone else finds out? Get our exclusive newsletter\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>for all the latest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An important new set of recordings reminds us that Karl B\u00f6hm’s recorded legacy is an invaluable documentation of the art of a passionate and masterful conductor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,77,5739,51,52],"tags":[4850,5850],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/08\/71H0B615xuL._SL1500_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-9TT","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38063,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38061\/revisions\/38063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38061"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=38061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}