Post by darkehmen on Jan 28, 2008 22:01:58 GMT 1
I don't know if anyone here has attempted to download any music yet. James Jolly has an interesting article (perhaps the only interesting article) in the Karajan-oriented Jan. issue of Gramophone, in which he opines (correctly, I think) that if there were any great conductor who would have an iPod, if he were alive today, it would be Herbert von Karajan.
Jolly describes finding a number of old mono recordings online, but I either have those already on CD, or am not interested in them. One recording that I have desired, however, is the Beethoven Grosse Fuge, with Karajan conducting the Berlin strings, from 1969.
I only recently discovered the existence of this recording, and it amazes me how rare it is. For a company that generally releases all of its Karajan material, and keeps it in the catalogue (much longer, say, than EMI, which is forever deleting and re-releasing things), this Grosse Fuge was only issued on CD once, it seems, in a hard-to-get Belart album, in an uneasy mating with the Schubert 9th.
This CD is so hard to get, in fact, that I eventually gave up looking for it, and decided to take a chance on downloading the recording as an .mp3 from the DG site. Here's the link:
www2.deutschegrammophon.com/cat/result?SearchString=450+108
The download for the Fuge by itself is 45 Mb (although I gather that one needs to purchase the whole album, rather than the individual track).
I don't know how much, if anything, is lost in audio quality in .mp3 form as compared to a CD issue, but the piece itself is magnificent, and the performance is riveting. This being a '69-vintage issue, the Berlin strings don't quite have the transparent, crystalline clarity that they exhibit in the digital recordings, but the murkier tones suit this stark, sublime work. This is my first encounter with the Grosse Fuge -- very late Beethoven -- and it belongs more to the sound world of Verklaerte Nacht than, say, a Viennese string serenade. I haven't compared this recording to other orchestral performances of the Fuge, but I've listened to a few readings by chamber-music ensembles (this originally being a string-quartet piece, later scored for full strings by Weingartner), and I much prefer the full string setting. Karajan does bring out a certain lyricism in the work that is not present in the string-quartet recordings I've heard, but the advanced qualities of the piece, at times almost desperately intense, are still starkly present.
Perhaps it's the advanced nature of the work that makes it hard to include with other recordings. In terms of Beethoven, it could only be mated to the 9th or the Missa Solemnis, and even there, it wouldn't really "fit."
On the original release on LP (in an album called "Metamorphosen fuer Streicher"), the Fuge was brilliantly coupled with Mozart's Adagio & Fugue and Strauss's Metamorphosen -- all three very complex, sombre string works, with both the Mozart and the Beethoven being quite a departure from Viennese classicism.
At any rate, Karajan aficionados who have long wanted to hear this reading now have a source. As for me, I much prefer CDs to downloads -- I like having the recording as a physical artifact, with a jacket, liner notes, etc. -- but as a practical method of obtaining hard-to-find, deleted recordings, I can see the advantages of online purchases.
Jolly describes finding a number of old mono recordings online, but I either have those already on CD, or am not interested in them. One recording that I have desired, however, is the Beethoven Grosse Fuge, with Karajan conducting the Berlin strings, from 1969.
I only recently discovered the existence of this recording, and it amazes me how rare it is. For a company that generally releases all of its Karajan material, and keeps it in the catalogue (much longer, say, than EMI, which is forever deleting and re-releasing things), this Grosse Fuge was only issued on CD once, it seems, in a hard-to-get Belart album, in an uneasy mating with the Schubert 9th.
This CD is so hard to get, in fact, that I eventually gave up looking for it, and decided to take a chance on downloading the recording as an .mp3 from the DG site. Here's the link:
www2.deutschegrammophon.com/cat/result?SearchString=450+108
The download for the Fuge by itself is 45 Mb (although I gather that one needs to purchase the whole album, rather than the individual track).
I don't know how much, if anything, is lost in audio quality in .mp3 form as compared to a CD issue, but the piece itself is magnificent, and the performance is riveting. This being a '69-vintage issue, the Berlin strings don't quite have the transparent, crystalline clarity that they exhibit in the digital recordings, but the murkier tones suit this stark, sublime work. This is my first encounter with the Grosse Fuge -- very late Beethoven -- and it belongs more to the sound world of Verklaerte Nacht than, say, a Viennese string serenade. I haven't compared this recording to other orchestral performances of the Fuge, but I've listened to a few readings by chamber-music ensembles (this originally being a string-quartet piece, later scored for full strings by Weingartner), and I much prefer the full string setting. Karajan does bring out a certain lyricism in the work that is not present in the string-quartet recordings I've heard, but the advanced qualities of the piece, at times almost desperately intense, are still starkly present.
Perhaps it's the advanced nature of the work that makes it hard to include with other recordings. In terms of Beethoven, it could only be mated to the 9th or the Missa Solemnis, and even there, it wouldn't really "fit."
On the original release on LP (in an album called "Metamorphosen fuer Streicher"), the Fuge was brilliantly coupled with Mozart's Adagio & Fugue and Strauss's Metamorphosen -- all three very complex, sombre string works, with both the Mozart and the Beethoven being quite a departure from Viennese classicism.
At any rate, Karajan aficionados who have long wanted to hear this reading now have a source. As for me, I much prefer CDs to downloads -- I like having the recording as a physical artifact, with a jacket, liner notes, etc. -- but as a practical method of obtaining hard-to-find, deleted recordings, I can see the advantages of online purchases.
