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Karajan's (very brief) flirtation with English music

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/13/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Except for Handel, who was British by adoption, Karajan showed scant interest in English music. When he was tempted--or coerced--into conducting it, the results could be interesting as witness his recording of the Walton Sym. #1 to be heard in the Great Conductors of the Century series (EMI). These mono recordings date from the same period in the early Fifties when Karajan was given the Philharmonia Orch. to lead in London. On the whole, they are not competitive with indigenous performances by Boult and Barbirolli.



Best of the lot is Britten's Var. on a Theme by Frank Bridge, which has such vigor and force that it ranks with the composer's own recording. The strings of the Philharmonia display considerable virtuosity and sensitivity. The English like to say that this was the best orchestra in the world under Karajan and later Klemperer. An objective listener wouldn't rank them above Chicago, Vienna, or Berlin, but they are unquestionably fine. Handel's Water Music is precise, alert, and vigorous, but it's in the old style before period specialists revolutionized Baroque performance; of its kind, however, Karajan's reading is quite strong. I presume we are hearing Dennis Brain in the dashing horn parts.



To fill out this less-than-generous disc, we get a rather thin Fantasia on a Them by Thomas Talis, one of Vaughan Williams' most enduring works. Karajan seems not to get the piece; his reading is sober and uninflected. But that's the only miss on the whole CD, and if you are a Karajan completist, the current remastering is fairly good, given the constricted, somewhat boxy sound that EMI gave the orchestra too often in those days.







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