The missing Telemondial films

[darkehmen]

Everyone has their favourite period of Karajan's work, or aspect of his oeuvre that they prefer. I've often thought it has much to do with how old one is when one first encounters his music.

Amongst his recordings, I generally prefer his digital era (1980-1989), but for me, his most compelling creations have always been his Telemondial films.

It's nice to see that some of the previously-released Telemondial DVDs are being re-released by Sony this year. I'm not fond of the boring new packaging, but at least these films will be be available once again.

But even more intriguing is the forthcoming release of two of his films that, as far as I know, have never been issued for home video before, not even on Laserdisc:

1. Beethoven Missa Solemnis (1985).

2. Beethoven "Coriolan," "Egmont," "Leonore III" overtures, Brahms "Tragic" (1985).

But I wonder if some of the other Telemondial films that have never been released will ever see the light of day? Here are a few that I know of:

3. Vivaldi Four Seasons with Mutter (1984) - yes, there was a later 1987 live film made with the BPO, released by Sony on both LD and DVD, but this one was with the VPO. It was the only Telemondial film I know of for which EMI, not DG, released the soundtrack. The EMI liner notes announce it as a soundtrack "of a forthcoming Telemondial video production," and even include a picture of the salon in which the filming took place. I actually prefer this recording to the BPO version.

4. Brahms 3rd and 4th (1988) - Announced as Telemondial soundtracks on the DG sleeves, but only symphonies 1&2 (recorded a couple of years earlier) were ever released on video in the U.S. Were these ever finished? Released? Anywhere? I believe a later boxed set of the Brahms symphonies amended the Telemondial info to indicate that the "soundtrack" status only applies to symphonies 1&2, which bodes ill.

5. A Salzburg Festspiel concert with Jessye Norman (1987/88), excerpts of which appeared in the film "Karajan in Salzburg."

6. Der fliegende Hollaender (1982/3). I've only heard rumours about this.

7. Beethoven 9th (1983). This is the version with Janet Perry as the soprano that DG released as a "soundtrack of a forthcoming Telemondial video." Of course, the 9th that finally was released was filmed three years later, and I'm perfectly happy with it. It's one of the finest of the Telemondial films, and certainly the best of the Beethoven series. But I still would enjoy seeing this earlier film someday.

The videography in Paul Robinson's book also lists these films as never having been released:

8. Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder, Capriccio: Schlussszene (1985)

9. Mozart: Symphony No. 29 (1987)

10. Ravel: Rhapsodie Espagnol (1987)

and intriguingly, two extra "Impressionist" tracks beyond those that were released in the "La Mer" disc:

11. Ravel: Pavane pour une Infante defunte (12/85)

12. Ravel: Bolero (12/85)

I note the month as well as year on the last two, because Robinson lists these separately from the 1985 New Year's concert, which also included a Bolero performance. This suggests that Karajan filmed a "produced" Bolero as well as a "live" Bolero at about the same time (and I'd love to see the unreleased version, as I enjoy the "produced" films even more than the live films).

I hope we see some of these released in the future. The fact that the Missa Solemnis and Overtures discs are finally seeing the light of day gives me hope . . .

[lee]

Hi Darkehmen. I agree with your sentiments, but fear that if the films you mention don't appear in the Centenary Year then they possibly never will. However, with regards to the rumours of Der Fliegende Hollander being filmed I've always been under the impression that it wasn't. The reason for this is stated quite unequivocally in Roger Vaughen's book on the Maestro, when it was stated that the production was too dark to film and that HvK refused to compromise his artistic ideals by making it brighter. Since Vaughen saw the last production with Ligendza rather than the earlier one with Vejzovic, one can only conclude that nothing was filmed, even if the intention was there.
As to your list, is there not a Vltava with the VPO that was originally released on CD coupled to the Dvorak 9 too ?
Best regards, Lee

[darkehmen]

lee said:

As to your list, is there not a Vltava with the VPO that was originally released on CD coupled to the Dvorak 9 too ?

There was indeed -- but was it filmed, or simply recorded on audio (no film) to fill the disc? I believe that's what happened with the Don Quixote/Till Eulenspiegel digital pairing from 1986 or so. Both pieces appeared on the same disc, but the Telemondial-soundtrack status was noted as only applying to Quixote.

Such a pity too, because a Till Eulenspiegel Telemondial film would have been incredible to see...

[lee]

That's an interesting point Darkehmen. My source of information for this was from John Hunt's marvellous concert and recording register called "Philharmonic Autocrat", which has already been mentioned elsewhere in the forum. Therein he lists Vltava as being recorded and filmed at Vienna in May1985 and Till at Berlin the following year. Admittedly I'm referring to the first edition of his book thereby overlooking any subsequent corrections, but Mr Hunt is rarely wrong in these matters.
Another film that we have both overlooked is the first Vienna Brahms Requiem with Hendricks... Best regards, Lee

[darkehmen]

lee said:

My source of information for this was from John Hunt's marvellous concert and recording register called "Philharmonic Autocrat", which has already been mentioned elsewhere in the forum. Therein he lists Vltava as being recorded and filmed at Vienna in May1985 and Till at Berlin the following year.

Another film that we have both overlooked is the first Vienna Brahms Requiem with Hendricks... Best regards, Lee

How interesting. I never had the original boxed set of the Requiem with Hendricks (coupled with the Te Deum), so I don't know if it featured the tell-tale Telemondial sountrack logo or not. I see that it's in the videography on this site, but it's not in Robinson's videography. I wonder if it was, in fact, filmed? That would be pretty early for a Telemondial film (he was still working on the Beethoven symphonies), but it's possible. I can't recall if it was listed in the former karajan.org database or not.

And speaking of DG's Te Deum coupling, that's another work that I've always wondered about. I find it hard to believe that the 1985 Te Deum wasn't filmed, since Karajan shot the work before, and the date would make it a likely candidate. But no word of it yet, as far as I know.

Same with Till Eulenspiegel. Since Karajan was systematically shooting the tone poems, it would make sense for it to have been filmed as well, but I don't think it was listed on the karajan.org database, and it's not in Robinson's videography.

It would be nice to see a Vienna Moldau. The BPO live version from the 1983 concert is wonderful, but, as I mentioned before, I enjoy the "productions" even more than the "live" films.

But what a pity that The Flying Dutchman was indeed never filmed. What a loss. There isn't a single decent video of that opera currently available. The Bayreuth version is modernist revisionism at its worst, and the one from Scandanavia was rather...brutal, for lack of a better word. EMI used to have a small-scale but competent video by Sawallisch, but that's never been released on DVD. A traditional, Romantic Dutchman is much needed.

[lee]

Hi Darkehmen - I must confess to not having noticed the absence of the Telemondial logo on the back of the Vienna Brahms Requiem. Once again my source of information is the John Hunt discography.
Completely agree with you about the absence of a decent film of The Flying Dutchman; I really cannot abide the recent fad for "Eurotrash" opera productions.
Best regards, Lee

[hgmarch]

And what about the video recordings of the Ring which were presented at Salzburg Oster Festspiele starting in 1968. Only Rheingold has been published on Video tape and Laserdisc (it is planned on DVD next month). Why none of the other operas have ever been seen on video. I thought these had been broadcasted live on the Austrian TV and, if this was the case, tapes must be available with ORF ?
This would be very valuable because I have not seen (or heard) such a wonderful rendering of all these operas since.
The same could be said with Salzburg productions of Meistesingers, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Boris Godunov ....

Henri Marchand

[darkehmen]

hgmarch said:

And what about the video recordings of the Ring which were presented at Salzburg Oster Festspiele starting in 1968. Only Rheingold has been published on Video tape and Laserdisc (it is planned on DVD next month). Why none of the other operas have ever been seen on video. I thought these had been broadcasted live on the Austrian TV and, if this was the case, tapes must be available with ORF ?
Meistesingers, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Boris Godunov ....

Rheingold was the only opera of the planned Ring tetraoloy that Karajan filmed as a specific production (in the manner of Otello, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, etc.), and that's a Unitel, not a Telemondial film. But were any of his Salzburg stagings ever broadcast, live or from tape, on Austrian television (apart from the four that Sony has released)? That would be extraordinary if they were. I've never heard of the existence of such broadcasts. The videotapes of these stagings would be beyond priceless, if they exist.

[john]

darkehmen

Just to add some more spice to the 'missing films'

The was a Telemondial video of 'out takes' I recall this included rehearsal sequences from the Bruckner 8th, Dvorak 8th, Tschaikowsky 5th and The Verdi Requiem where Karajan was caught in various strange situations such as a phone going of just as he was launching into a big climax.
There is also a magic moment where Karajan is explanning something (in German) to Agnes Baltsa and he starts to make funny faces at her, needless to say the cast and orchestra all break down in fits of laughfter.
I have also seen on what look like Unitel film karajan in rehearsal conducting the BPO in the Tristan liebestod and Dvorak's 8th.
There also exists clips of the final few seconds of the Salzburg Carmen with Baltsa and Carreras and in the Tony Palmer film about the Salzburg festival there is a clip of Mirella Freni in Don Carlos.
I would imagine most of these clips are from film taken at rehearsal for production purposes and are probably in Karajan's private archives along with a host of other treasures.

John

[~Linda~]

A few weeks ago whilst trying to get information together about the new Sony DVD releases I subscribed to the Sony/BMG newsletter naively thinking that I would be notified about their plans. It is the Karajan Centenary year after all!

I thought members would be interested in the email I have just received from Sony/BMG:

Email Subscription Update

You previously subscribed to the following inactive newsletter:
Herbert Von Karajan

Unfortunately, you will not receive any more mailings from Sony BMG on that topic.

[darkehmen]

Hard to know what to make of that. There's nothing under "New Releases" at the SonyBMG site either. However, the Karajan page at Sony Classical Japan indicates that the Missa Solemnis and Overtures films are "now printing," as the ad says:

www.sonymusic.co.jp/Music/International/Arch/SR/HerbertvonKarajan/

So at the very least, they will be coming out in Japan. It would be nice if they reached American shores, but at the very least we'll all have Japan as a source for these films.

I ran the text through a translation service. Mahalo can perhaps give a better rendering of it, but at least I got the sentence "Never before released." So it's true -- these two films were never issued on Laserdisc, even in Japan, and this will be their first home video issue, ever.

[K620]

At least one American mail-order company, CDUniverse, is now officially taking pre-orders for the previously unreleased Telemondial DVDs. Release date is still given as 25 March. But here are the prices:

Overtures: $84-99
Missa solemnis: $102-49
9-DVD set: $323-75

Since the prices tally with one another, they're unlikely to be totally wrong. CDUniverse is generally a middle-of-the-road pricer of DVDs, averaging cheaper than, say, Amazon, though more expensive than, say, DVDPacific. (But every mail-order company has some DVDs that are priced higher than their competitors'.)

If the prices are at all accurate, they suggest that the "USA releases" may be simply Japanese imports. In which case, will the Missa solemnis have subtitles in any language except Japanese? (This, and the pricing, might determine my answer to all the queries I'm currently getting from friends who want to know which Missa solemnis to buy.)

None of this absolutely proves that the aforementioned DVDs will be released in the USA at all. Even a reliable mail-order company like CDUniverse does occasionally take orders for a product that ultimately turns out not to be released. Still, it's stronger evidence than anything we've had to date.

[darkehmen]

k620 said:

At least one American mail-order company, CDUniverse, is now officially taking pre-orders for the previously unreleased Telemondial DVDs. Release date is still given as 25 March. But here are the prices:

Overtures: $84-99
Missa solemnis: $102-49
9-DVD set: $323-75.

Those prices seem rather steep. By contrast, amazon.co.jp is currently listing the Missa Solemnis at 4,429 yen:

tinyurl.com/ysdjqk

Running that through Yahoo's currency converter, you get $41.22 in U.S. dollars. Would shipping and customs amount to over $60.00 U.S.? I wonder, but I don't remember any previous Sony DVDs I got from amazon.co.jp running higher than about $75, shipping included.

The 9-pc Beethoven boxed set is going for 13,986 yen,

tinyurl.com/28ew9a

which comes out to $130.21 U.S. That's a huge difference.

And the Famous Overtures film is going for 3,652 yen,

tinyurl.com/yss684

which translates to $34.00 U.S.

---

On this side of the pond, Amazon.com is currently listing all three Beethoven DVDs, as well as a number of other Telemondial re-releases, as "Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available." This at least suggests that the items might become available in U.S. editions in the future.

tinyurl.com/33we6h

Note that the 3pc R.Strauss Telemondial re-release is supposed to be available two days from now.

k620 said:

will the Missa solemnis have subtitles in any language except Japanese? (This, and the pricing, might determine my answer to all the queries I'm currently getting from friends who want to know which Missa solemnis to buy.)

You mean, the DG or Sony versions? I can definitely see your friends' point, but for me, there isn't even a question. I deeply love the Telemondial style of filming, and this was, fortunately, a production, not a live film, so the visuals will be in the signature style of the series. I do have the laserdisc of the 1979 Unitel, and it's all right, but I far prefer the performance and recording in the 1985 digital edition. So I'll happily watch it without subtitles, if only the Japanese edition of the Telemondial release is ever made available.

But as the Amazon.com "sign-ups" and the listing of the Strauss DVD suggest, perhaps we'll be seeing these on North American shores soon too.

[K620]

darkehmen said:

k620 said:

At least one American mail-order company, CDUniverse, is now officially taking pre-orders for the previously unreleased Telemondial DVDs. Release date is still given as 25 March. But here are the prices:

Overtures: $84-99
Missa solemnis: $102-49
9-DVD set: $323-75.

Those prices seem rather steep.

Indeed they do. When something is an import rather than a local release, it always seems to cost a LOT more.

For instance, in Australia (to choose a country where the Japanese DVDs are definitely being imported), the pre-order prices advertised at one website (www.bigwentertainment.com) are as follows:

Overtures: AUD $82-31
Missa solemnis: AUD $93-45
9-DVD set: AUD $308-02

Those are a little lower than the US prices (at today's exchange rates, they work out at USD $73-63, $83-59, and $275-52 respectively), but somebody is clearly still making a huge profit somewhere.

The answer, I believe, is that the "somebody" is the government. When a product is imported (as opposed to produced locally), the government tends to slap a huge revenue charge/levy/whatever on it. Where all that extra money ultimately goes, I don't know... and it's probably just as well that I don't!

[darkehmen]

lee said:

My source of information for this was from John Hunt's marvellous concert and recording register called "Philharmonic Autocrat", which has already been mentioned elsewhere in the forum. Therein he lists Vltava as being recorded and filmed at Vienna in May1985 and Till at Berlin the following year. Admittedly I'm referring to the first edition of his book thereby overlooking any subsequent corrections, but Mr Hunt is rarely wrong in these matters.

So I finally received my copy of Philharmonic Autocrat 1, the second edition of the discography, and it answers a few questions about the missing Telemondial films, even as it leaves others wide open.

First of all, there is no record in this book of a film of the Vienna 1985 Moldau. Only the Berlin 1983 video is recorded, and the 1985 is only listed as an audio recording.

The 1985 Missa Solemnis is listed as Sony SLV 53483, but I now feel quite certain that this, the Overtures film, and the Osaka Pines of Rome, were scheduled LD releases that never took place, not even in Japan. I've never seen any evidence of their existence, and the Sony Japan site lists the new DVDs of the Missa and the Overtures as first-ever releases. I think the laserdiscs were planned, but cancelled, as the new DVD format emerged.

Now, to the Overtures, Hunt lists the following for each item:
Coriolan: Sony SLV 48314
Egmont: Sony SLV 58314
Fidelio: Sony SLV 48314
Leonore 3: Sony SLV 48314
Tragic: Sony SLV 48314
So a couple of interesting things about that. First, I'm sure that the Egmont number is a typo. See:
58314
48314
Undoubtedly, Egmont was not released on a separate issue from the other overtures, and the 5 was meant to be a 4, which would make it the same as the others
Second, note that Hunt lists the Coriolan as well as the other four. However, when A&E broadcast the Overtures film, Coriolan was missing, and the forthcoming DVD release lacks Coriolan as well.
Coriolan was undoubtedly filmed along with the other three Beethoven Overtures in 1985, but, for whatever reason, it was never included in Telemondial's Overtures film.
And as I stated above, I don't think the above Laserdisc was ever released -- and if it had been, I'll bet it would have lacked Coriolan too.

Of the Vienna 1984 Four Seasons film, Hunt has the following note:

Recording completed in June 1984; Karajan's final recording for EMI; intended as soundtrack for a filmed version which was not completed

That frankly breaks my heart, as I find the 1984 recording far superior to the '69 DG issue and the '87 Berlin issue of the Four Seasons. From the picture with the liner notes, it looks as if it was filmed in a lovely salon as well.

Of the Brahms 3rd & 4th, Hunt simply writes:

Unpublished Telemondial video recording

So who knows? They might still exist, but for whatever reason, Sony doesn't have them.

For the numbers in the Wagner concert that was excerpted in the Karajan in Salzburg film (Siegfried-Idyll, Dresden Tannhauser overture, T&I prelude & liebestod) Hunt writes:

unpublished video recording

On the Karajan in Salzburg LD jacket, there's a note stating that the performers appear courtesy of Telemondial, so one thinks that the concert should exist.

Like Robinson, Hunt lists Tomowa-Sintow's Vier Letzte Lieder, etc. recording as an

unpublished Telemondial video recording

but I have my doubts, as the DG album did not have the characteristic Telemondial logo on it, as the other R.Strauss tie-ins did.

Under the Mozart 29, Hunt writes:

possibly also unpublished Telemondial video recording

Er, "possibly"? If it's only a possibility, I'd say it probably doesn't exist. There was no Telemondial logo on DG's digital album of the Mozart 29 & 39, and it would seem curious that Karajan would only film this one Mozart symphony and no others.

On the other hand, both the Rhapsodie Espagnol and the Till Eulenspiegel Hunt lists as

unpublished Telemondial video recording

but I wonder. The use of the word "possibly" for the above listing leads me to wonder how definitive these entries are. Perhaps it was simply a deduction on Hunt's part based on the fact that both the Rhapsodie and Till appeared on CDs with the Telemondial logo, and perhaps that logo only applied to the other works on those CDs (Bolero, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Don Quixote). It would seem strange for Karajan not to have filmed Till, as he had filmed it twice before, but...for now, who can tell?

Unlike Robinson, Hunt does not list a Ravel Pavane video, so I think it's safe to say that this doesn't exist. He also doesn't list a separate studio Bolero; only the live New Year's Eve 1985 Bolero, so I'd wager that's the only Karajan Bolero on film.

Oh, and Hunt lists the 1983 Beethoven Ninth and the 1983 Ein Deutsches Requiem as "unpublished" (actually, he errs and lists the 1983 Beethoven as the version that's on DVD, when it is of course the 1986), but I have my doubts about those. The 1983 Requiem CD never had a Telemondial logo, and perhaps, like the Vivaldi, Karajan abandoned the film of the 1983 Ninth, and instead re-shot it in 1986.

With all of these qualifications on the rumoured remaining films, I dread that the Missa Solemnis and the Overtures may be the last Telemondials ever published, except maybe the Wagner concert.