Beethoven: 9th Symphony [66:00] SVD 46364 - Region 2
Lella Cuberli, Helga Muller Molinari, Vinson Cole, Franz Grundheber, BPO,
1983
Dvorak: 9th Symphony [43:30] SVD 48421- Region 2
VPO, 1985
New Year's Concert Vienna 1987 [97:55] SVD 45985 - Region 2
Kathleen Battle, VPO, 1987
It's a tricky business, filming orchestral concerts. Live concert relays
usually point the camera at the instruments currently playing, with
occasional longshots of the full orchestra and cutaways to a grimacing
conductor. Nigel Kennedy mimed the Brahms Violin Concerto alongside
screens of landscape panoramas. The VPO's New Year concert relays insert
ballet sequences. A BBC TV pilot installed miniature cameras across the
platform in a CBSO concert, catching every spontaneous glance and reaction
from players, singers and Simon Rattle: that could be the way to go.
Then, there's the Karajan method...
Soon after his death in 1989, I saw a transmission of Karajan's early 1970s
Beethoven "Eroica", directed by Hugo Niebeling on 35mm film in a studio. The
orchestral playing was superhuman, the conducting dynamic. However, I was
bemused by the slopes of BPO players fanning upwards from the podium, only
James Galway's Furby face standing out from the clean-cut ranks. The perfect
synchrony of violin bows looked comical from certain camera angles. Timpani
rolls with backlit drumsticks appeared at every opportunity. Karajan always
kept his eyes closed.
Karajan then videoed concert performances in the 1980s. Roger Vaughan's
"Biographical Portrait" of Karajan pictured the conductor in his video
suite, painstakingly editing the concerts for posterity ("Making this
review of my music is like a religion for me"), and justifying their
style. Sony Classical purchased the rights and released them on laserdisc.
Karajan's friend and Sony CEO Norio Ohga admitted (in a Gramophone
interview) that these discs would take a very long time to cover their
costs.
Now, laserdisc is obsolete. The first Karajan concerts have appeared on
Digital Versatile Disc. A DVD can contain over two hours of widescreen
video, over thirty kinds of captions, on-screen text, interactive menus
and up to eight different soundtracks. DVD is to VHS what CD is to audio
cassette. Several movie releases have exploited DVD fully. What do we
get with the Karajan concerts?
On-screen programme notes (with fulsome references to Karajan), remixed
2-channel stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, 4:3 screen size (as
opposed to 16:9 widescreen), no booklets, and English, French and German
subtitles for "Ode To Joy". So far, so good. Then I returned to the
timings.. Remember the early days of CD, when 35-minute discs appeared
on the market, oblivious to their 80-minute capacity?
I am astonished that Sony now dares to release a 44-minute DVD (Dvorak's
9th Symphony). Even the original DG *compact disc* contained more music
(Smetana's Moldau)! Despite its musical merits, the Dvorak DVD does not
deserve to sell. I will pass over the 46-minute DVD of Vivaldi's "Four
Seasons" with Anne-Sophie Mutter.. I hope Sony classical will fill more
of DVD's two-hours-plus capacity in future.
BEETHOVEN 9
The Beethoven 9 DVD starts with an image of Karajan on the podium, his
baton at the ready, his face grim, his eyes open, his hair snow-white
with careful backlighting. The Dolby Digital Surround Sound is impressive,
adding ambience and some audience rustles to the rear speakers. Karajan's
interpretation is consistent with his recordings since the 1960s:
purposeful, singleminded. But does the video enhance the music?
The full orchestra never appears - Karajan avoids the mismatch of a
big orchestral sound and a small image of the full band. The backlit
drumsticks are back again. Sections of the orchestra are often aligned in
profile, the camera's low depth of field focusing on the nearmost player,
dissolving the profiles of those further away. I suspect those parts were
filmed separately, the players miming to the soundtrack, restraining their
movements to preserve the visual composition.
The BPO in real life is an active orchestra, its players swaying and
lunging to the music. On the DVD, it's thrilling to watch the BPO strings
so intensely involved. However, the windplayers are often rigid, showing
little of the physical effort of playing. Everyone is limned with silver
light, edging them with chrome. During the Finale, the choir and soloists
sometimes show little physical effort as they "sing" their fervent words.
In a touchingly naive effect, stars appear over Karajan's shoulder as the
choir sing "Uber sternen muss er wohnen"... On-screen, titchy tenor Vinson
Cole has risen to the same height as the taller soloists - is he standing
on a box? A familiar bemusement overcame me - is this live or mimed or
what?
According to Edward A Cowan in rec.music.classical.recordings last January,
'The Sonys are "edited" by HvK and represent synchronized performances
(that is, the videos are not of the orchestra actually playing but miming
in front of a *painted* "audience" -- I have that directly from someone
who played in them!)' The audience in Beethoven 9 is definitely live and
unpainted. At first, Karajan's Beethoven video concept distracted me from
the music and his interpretation, and embalmed them. On further viewing,
I could accept his visual artifice and the mimed inserts as easily as a pop
video's.
DVORAK 9
The Vienna Musikvereinsaal's golden fixtures bring more warmth to the
Dvorak DVD, which otherwise shares the same visual characteristics as
the Beethoven 9. Artfully framed orchestra sections are inserted into
what is basically a live concert film, and the slow movement's cor anglais
player appears alone in profile, a spotlight throbbing erratically on the
Musikvereinsaal pillar behind him. I see less of a live audience, and
the surround sound reveals no coughs or rattling jewellry. Karajan's
interpretation is weighty and well-upholstered, the sound less clotted than
on the original DG CD, and he moves straight from the 3rd movement to the
Finale. Our old friends the backlit drumsticks have countless cameos,
surrounded by motes of timpani head fluff. But only 44 minutes of music?
Give it a miss.
NEW YEAR'S CONCERT 1987
Humphrey Burton, an experienced director of concert relays, directs the
1987 New Year's Concert. His relays suffer only from overbright lighting,
so that players sometimes expire in rivulets of sweat under the hot TV
lamps. Karajan's way with Strauss dances is stately, and while I've since
done a reverse turn to the sprightlier steps of Kleiber and Horenstein, I
retain much affection for Herbie's renditions.
From the first shot, I sense life and energy in this event: the whole
orchestra animated, Karajan obviously moved by the violins' first entry
in "Spharenklange", a trickle of sweat down an oboist's temple, Karajan
flinching as if shot by the toy cannon at the end of "Unter Donner Und
Blitz", Karajan ogling soprano Kathleen Battle's cleavage before her
wonderfully coquettish "Fruhlingstimmen". It's a world away from Karajan's
mummified studio films. The editing is less seamless than in the other
DVDs, the picture framings have more variety and are less contrived.
Burton also features full-orchestra shots, which reveal the energy
radiating through the orchestra from the podium. Ironically, I think
Burton focuses on the conductor even more than Karajan does in his own
videos. The DVD cuts Karajan's speech to the audience, which was
unintentionally funny at the time: for a few seconds, his cordless
microphone wouldn't work!
If you're keen on classical DVD, you can start your collection confidently
with Karajan's New Year Concert and the highly-praised 1990 Three Tenors
concert. Give Sony a hint and refuse to buy its other Karajan DVDs until
they contain at least 90 minutes of video.
James Kearney
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