Leonore II

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Seems like an object swiped the mic at 10:17 - 10:19 of HvK's Leonore #2. Any insights?

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Hi Alexander,

I was afraid that the extraneous noise was just particular to the CD I own (happened before in other recordings), but this time it sounded like it was part of the recording itself. I must buy the overtures again, then. You got the DG 2-CD set?

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I got another copy of the Overtures and found the same noise.

Hold on to yours - it may be worth more than you think.

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Hello all. Pretty quiet lately.

Speaking of quiet...

So the VPO Planets Neptune is not much better than the Leonore, with foreign object movement noise on 3 occasions and brings right back to earth each time. Still not quite understand p. 468 of "A Life in Music": "the only ballet Karajan conducted in Vienna was Holst's Planets". The noises don't sound like dancers, though.


Prefer the BPO version, part of the trio of great recordings during early 1981 that include other singular composition ventures (Shostakovich re-run and Nielsen - which is probably the shortest Karajan CD but worth every second). Was the organist in Uranus David Bell?

These 3 CDs all have a gray band on the outer edge.

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Thanks. I have minimal training and didn't notice the technical issues, but after reading your suggestions I revisited the BPO and did find at least the 3rd brass note in the beginning different than VPO.

But then, according to Osborne, Karajan did think "The noise of audience chatter will disguise a bad note" (p. 391).

The BPO version has a disadvantage that is quite common - the "return to track 1 noise", something that is a bit distracting in that the end of the CD comes so quickly after the pppp ending. But I guess this can be overcome. When I first heard the VPO version I thought it had the opposite issue - starting track 1 too quickly, supposedly since it needs to have room for the Elgar afterwards. But the BPO version pretty much starts at 0 secs, too.

The more prominent VPO noises in Neptune are at 3:28 (some type of friction noise which similarly appear in other non-Karajan records), 3:45, 3:48, 4:10, 5:22, 5:50, and 6:23.

The noisiest recording I have is probably the Richter/Kondrashin Beethoven Concertos, but the voltage (sorry I'm an engineer) is incredible.

Then again, Lenny had a lot of noisy (studio) recordings. Too bad there was a cough in the final bars of his live BPO recording (apparently wasn't worth a restart as in Alan Gilbert's case), but I actually listen to this and some of his nypo's more often than the Karajan equivalents.

Speaking of the nypo, with the recent Karajan releases with that orch, the Los Angeles Phil, and the You Tube surprises once in a while, there just may be a staged Planets out there. If there ever is a Planets production around here, I'll attend for sure. Hard for me to imagine bodies moving to this music.

The Nielsen CD I have is 38 min. (since then reissued with Tapiola), so does beat the R/J Nutcracker to the finish line. There is actually a shorter one - the 1st disc of his penultimate orchestral record - the VPO Bruckner 8. (Which reminds me of a even shorter one on my stacks - the 1st disc of the Blomstedt Mahler 2, at ~ 20 min).

You can hear the timpani battle seaparately in the left and right speakers - quite rare to have such stereophonic CDs. (The Karajan Bartok Celesta Music is another). This is a work that is good to watch as well as to hear. I remember the first time live for me of the 4th was a free concert by my college's orchestra.

There is a pic of Karajan testing timpanis and I belive it was during the Nielsen session.