Post by darkehmen on Mar 17, 2008 8:51:58 GMT 1
Film quality 4/5
DVD quality 2/5
I've been slowly going through the various Karajan films that are available from Classical Video Rarities, and I recently experienced a pleasant surprise -- a one-hour documentary called The Karajan Legend.
tinyurl.com/yqsz5y
The quality of Classical Video Rarities discs always depends on the source recording, which, in this case, appears to have been a fuzzy TV broadcast. If you remember what television transmissions looked like back in the days before cable -- the days of TV antennae and aerials and such -- that's what the picture resembles. Very grainy and distorted.
The documentary was originally produced by Deutsche Welle Cologne and distributed in the U.S. by PBS Oregon (who may also have been responsible for the English translation). Although the interview clips all appear to have been filmed at roughly the same time, some of the interviewees speak of Karajan as if he were still alive, others as if he had just passed away, so the documentary seems to have been recorded around the time of Karajan's death.
In many ways, the film is far superior to the three better-known HvK documentaries -- Karajan in Salzburg (with its embarrassingly amateurish camera work), Maestro Maestro (gossipy and trivial), and So kann die Welt Nicht Bleiben (unfocussed). It is less overtly pro-Karajan than those, but paradoxically, it presents HvK in a much better light. The problem with the other bios is that they try to artificially soften his image, showing the maestro as a "nice guy," or even (God help us) someone to pity -- and in the process, they trivialize and diminish both the man and his accomplishments.
This film, on the other hand, reminds me of Hans Conrad Fisher's Beethoven doc, showing us Karajan the man of power, and discussing his musical approach in a more serious way. It comprises a chronological survey of his musical life, punctuated by short interview clips with various conductors (Muti, Mehta, Previn), musicologists, and peers (Csobadi, Schneider-Siemssen). It also features passages from the Telemondial films, as well as an excerpt from his b&w Till Eulenspiegel, and a clip of Karajan leading the Berliners in Beethoven's 7th in China. The Third Reich period is discussed extensively, but without overt judgment.
The chronological approach gives the film structure (Maestro Maestro, and So kann die Welt Nicht Bleiben jump around erratically, often delving into irrelevancies). The narrator (who sounds like Walter Cronkite) delivers his text in a strong, authoritative voice -- a feature that the other bios sorely lack.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the film is a series of interview clips (dated 1983, and apparently licensed from ZDF) with Karajan himself. Also fascinating is a series of tacking shots that display a dramatically-lit bust of Karajan while a voice-over utters several powerful Karajan quotations in a fittingly imposing manner. For example:
"I drive myself harder than anyone else, make enormous demands on myself. Without great effort, you can't achieve anything in music."
and
"Very early, I decided I wasn't going to waste a minute of my life. And I haven't."
The gravelly voice and the chiaroscuro-lit Karajan statue creates a majestic, Beethovenian impression.
The film acknowledges the significance of Karajan's musical career, and particularly the importance of his recorded legacy (an aspect of his music-making which is scanted in other documentaries). The narrator observes:
"He made more recordings, over 800, than any other conductor, preserving his entire repertoire, his own musical museum for future generations."
And that, I think, is a fine way of putting it -- a "museum." As I've written elsewhere, the idea that anyone could use "museum" as a pejorative is ridiculous. Museums are among the greatest achievements of Western civilization. They celebrate the cultural triumphs of nobler ages than our own ("before the fall," as it were). Karajan did create a museum -- the greatest museum of music ever assembled, a definitive performance record of the central works in the Western music canon, an invaluable reference library, for all time.
In one of the film's interviews, Dennis Russel Davies (music director in Bonn) says:
"Karajan took, essentially, a 19th and 18th-century art-form, and partly through his own perseverance, his own will, really, and his own inventiveness, helped rip it into the 20th century"
That at least begins to describe the significance of his career.
Perhaps the most compelling segment in the documentary is the section on Karajan and Wagner, an aspect of Karajan's career that is virtually ignored in other biopics (again, no doubt to soften his image). The film describes how, after the triumph of HvK's 1951 Meistersinger, Karajan spurned the modernist bastardization of Wagner's operas being undertaken in Bayreuth. As the narrator states:
"Karajan's artistic rejection of what was called the 'New Bayreuth Style' became stronger and stronger. He considered himself the guardian of Richard Wagner's legacy. In 1952, he broke with the Wagner brothers. . . . At Easter of 1967, he opened his own Wagner festival -- a kind of anti-Bayreuth -- in his home town of Salzburg."
What a perceptive way of putting it: an "anti-Bayreuth." In our time, we usually think of any "anti-" prefix as being a Leftist label ("anti-establishment," for example, meaning "radical" and "rebellious"). But when the poles are reversed, when the radical position becomes the establishment, and the marginal becomes the mainstream, then the traditional/noble/Romantic approach is transformed into the "anti" position. In such conditions, the so-called "conservative" stance becomes the truly radical and rebellious undertaking, which is exactly what Karajan's Salzburg project was.
Further to this theme, the film includes a quotation from Karajan that I'd never heard before, a particularly fine rebuke of modernist revisionism:
"I once told Wieland Wagner, 'You should write your own music. The music of Richard Wagner, the music we know through various interpretations, and from his own, very clear instructions, is just not suited for what you're trying to do.'"
Exactly so. The modernists and post-modernists should stop defacing the great works of the past, and simply create their own operas, if they wish to impose their twisted visions on the public.
However, postmodernism is so creatively bankrupt that it could never create its own music even if it wished to do so -- not and retain an audience. The modernists known that if they were to write their own works, no one would attend.
The only reason modern concert music is ever given a listen is if it is stapled onto a program with appealing Classical or Romantic works. A program of all modern music would be sparsely attended.
So it is with opera. The modernists exploit the great works of the past as a "hook" to draw in the audience, then rape those works with modernist stagings espousing their own propaganda. It hides their own creative bankruptcy, their inability to create original works that people would wish to hear,
Moreover, defacing the great works of the past is the entire point of what they're trying to do. Doing so suppresses and disfigures the West's legacy, so the public doesn't have a chance to measure the traditional approach against the modern style -- a comparison that would always render a judgment in favour of the former. Thus, the public is "inoculated" against the values of the past (which they would always prefer to those of the present), and is more easily brainwashed by modern ideology.
All in all, The Karajan Legend is a surprisingly good film, easily better than any other Karajan documentary to date (not that it has much competition). Pity about the dreadful quality of the video recording, though.
DVD quality 2/5
I've been slowly going through the various Karajan films that are available from Classical Video Rarities, and I recently experienced a pleasant surprise -- a one-hour documentary called The Karajan Legend.
tinyurl.com/yqsz5y
The quality of Classical Video Rarities discs always depends on the source recording, which, in this case, appears to have been a fuzzy TV broadcast. If you remember what television transmissions looked like back in the days before cable -- the days of TV antennae and aerials and such -- that's what the picture resembles. Very grainy and distorted.
The documentary was originally produced by Deutsche Welle Cologne and distributed in the U.S. by PBS Oregon (who may also have been responsible for the English translation). Although the interview clips all appear to have been filmed at roughly the same time, some of the interviewees speak of Karajan as if he were still alive, others as if he had just passed away, so the documentary seems to have been recorded around the time of Karajan's death.
In many ways, the film is far superior to the three better-known HvK documentaries -- Karajan in Salzburg (with its embarrassingly amateurish camera work), Maestro Maestro (gossipy and trivial), and So kann die Welt Nicht Bleiben (unfocussed). It is less overtly pro-Karajan than those, but paradoxically, it presents HvK in a much better light. The problem with the other bios is that they try to artificially soften his image, showing the maestro as a "nice guy," or even (God help us) someone to pity -- and in the process, they trivialize and diminish both the man and his accomplishments.
This film, on the other hand, reminds me of Hans Conrad Fisher's Beethoven doc, showing us Karajan the man of power, and discussing his musical approach in a more serious way. It comprises a chronological survey of his musical life, punctuated by short interview clips with various conductors (Muti, Mehta, Previn), musicologists, and peers (Csobadi, Schneider-Siemssen). It also features passages from the Telemondial films, as well as an excerpt from his b&w Till Eulenspiegel, and a clip of Karajan leading the Berliners in Beethoven's 7th in China. The Third Reich period is discussed extensively, but without overt judgment.
The chronological approach gives the film structure (Maestro Maestro, and So kann die Welt Nicht Bleiben jump around erratically, often delving into irrelevancies). The narrator (who sounds like Walter Cronkite) delivers his text in a strong, authoritative voice -- a feature that the other bios sorely lack.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the film is a series of interview clips (dated 1983, and apparently licensed from ZDF) with Karajan himself. Also fascinating is a series of tacking shots that display a dramatically-lit bust of Karajan while a voice-over utters several powerful Karajan quotations in a fittingly imposing manner. For example:
"I drive myself harder than anyone else, make enormous demands on myself. Without great effort, you can't achieve anything in music."
and
"Very early, I decided I wasn't going to waste a minute of my life. And I haven't."
The gravelly voice and the chiaroscuro-lit Karajan statue creates a majestic, Beethovenian impression.
The film acknowledges the significance of Karajan's musical career, and particularly the importance of his recorded legacy (an aspect of his music-making which is scanted in other documentaries). The narrator observes:
"He made more recordings, over 800, than any other conductor, preserving his entire repertoire, his own musical museum for future generations."
And that, I think, is a fine way of putting it -- a "museum." As I've written elsewhere, the idea that anyone could use "museum" as a pejorative is ridiculous. Museums are among the greatest achievements of Western civilization. They celebrate the cultural triumphs of nobler ages than our own ("before the fall," as it were). Karajan did create a museum -- the greatest museum of music ever assembled, a definitive performance record of the central works in the Western music canon, an invaluable reference library, for all time.
In one of the film's interviews, Dennis Russel Davies (music director in Bonn) says:
"Karajan took, essentially, a 19th and 18th-century art-form, and partly through his own perseverance, his own will, really, and his own inventiveness, helped rip it into the 20th century"
That at least begins to describe the significance of his career.
Perhaps the most compelling segment in the documentary is the section on Karajan and Wagner, an aspect of Karajan's career that is virtually ignored in other biopics (again, no doubt to soften his image). The film describes how, after the triumph of HvK's 1951 Meistersinger, Karajan spurned the modernist bastardization of Wagner's operas being undertaken in Bayreuth. As the narrator states:
"Karajan's artistic rejection of what was called the 'New Bayreuth Style' became stronger and stronger. He considered himself the guardian of Richard Wagner's legacy. In 1952, he broke with the Wagner brothers. . . . At Easter of 1967, he opened his own Wagner festival -- a kind of anti-Bayreuth -- in his home town of Salzburg."
What a perceptive way of putting it: an "anti-Bayreuth." In our time, we usually think of any "anti-" prefix as being a Leftist label ("anti-establishment," for example, meaning "radical" and "rebellious"). But when the poles are reversed, when the radical position becomes the establishment, and the marginal becomes the mainstream, then the traditional/noble/Romantic approach is transformed into the "anti" position. In such conditions, the so-called "conservative" stance becomes the truly radical and rebellious undertaking, which is exactly what Karajan's Salzburg project was.
Further to this theme, the film includes a quotation from Karajan that I'd never heard before, a particularly fine rebuke of modernist revisionism:
"I once told Wieland Wagner, 'You should write your own music. The music of Richard Wagner, the music we know through various interpretations, and from his own, very clear instructions, is just not suited for what you're trying to do.'"
Exactly so. The modernists and post-modernists should stop defacing the great works of the past, and simply create their own operas, if they wish to impose their twisted visions on the public.
However, postmodernism is so creatively bankrupt that it could never create its own music even if it wished to do so -- not and retain an audience. The modernists known that if they were to write their own works, no one would attend.
The only reason modern concert music is ever given a listen is if it is stapled onto a program with appealing Classical or Romantic works. A program of all modern music would be sparsely attended.
So it is with opera. The modernists exploit the great works of the past as a "hook" to draw in the audience, then rape those works with modernist stagings espousing their own propaganda. It hides their own creative bankruptcy, their inability to create original works that people would wish to hear,
Moreover, defacing the great works of the past is the entire point of what they're trying to do. Doing so suppresses and disfigures the West's legacy, so the public doesn't have a chance to measure the traditional approach against the modern style -- a comparison that would always render a judgment in favour of the former. Thus, the public is "inoculated" against the values of the past (which they would always prefer to those of the present), and is more easily brainwashed by modern ideology.
All in all, The Karajan Legend is a surprisingly good film, easily better than any other Karajan documentary to date (not that it has much competition). Pity about the dreadful quality of the video recording, though.
