LONDON THURSDAY 10th APRIL

[lee]

Greetings One and All

On Thursday April 10th at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Sir Charles Mackerras will be performing Don Juan, the Four Last Songs and the Eroica. The concert is billed as being part of the worldwide Karajan Centenary Celebrations, albeit in a rather understated way. That said, I have tickets and would be delighted to meet up with any fellow Karajan forumites who may also be attending the concert for a pre, mid, or post concert drink. I regret to say that since I'll be running the London Marathon the following Sunday, it will be strictly non-alcoholic beverages for me as well as an early curfew, but I hope for a memorable evening nonetheless ! Let me know if you are attending and we'll take it from there.

With best wishes,

Lee

[Rosy]

I'm waiting for your detailed story, Lee!

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Thank you

Rosy

[lee]

I received an email this week from Deutsche Gramophon heralding this concert as a "gala concert". Of course it wasn't that, perhaps it shouldn't have been anyway. But as you entered the auditorium of the Royal Festival Hall you were nonetheless handed a small brochure designed as a tribute to Karajan, which I have hopefully reproduced here for your benefit.

(apologies - I have forwarded the pdf file to Linda in the hope that her computer expertise may achieve this)

The concert featuring Don Juan, the Four Last Songs and the Eroica seemed quite apt though as a tribute to Karajan (I remember the Saturday after his death, BBCTV programming Karajan's 1971 Unitel performance of the Eroica in tribute). I thought the orchestra played very well for Mackerras and if the concert opener Don Juan didn't quite take flight as it can in the finest performances, I thought that the Four Last Songs which followed were very fine, the orchestra glowing in the autumnal colours that only a master conducter can draw from this score. Of course, Sir Charles' chamber-sized Beethoven is a very different beast to the fiery animal that Karajan habitually summond when conducting this composer. As hard as I try to keep an open mind, I'm yet to be convinced that this "historically correct" way of doing Beethoven is indeed just that; correct. To my ears, this pint-sized Beethoven somehow diminishes the grandeur and heroism that most maestros of the past brought to this music. That said, Mackerras paid a touching tribute to Karajan in the main programme:

"A lot of people are really rather scathing about Karajan these days. But I thought that he was a really great conductor. He had that ability to get people to play as he wanted not by talking but by the gestures, by the emanations. He made a real art of emanation, and that's really what conducting is about."

God bless Sir Charles !

[prahcello]

Thanks for your report, Lee.

Just one thing, though. I think you missed something rather important in your review- who SANG the Strauss songs? As wonderfully autumnal as the orchestral scoring for the pieces are, you can't do anything with them without the soprano!

Paul

[stuartg]

Paul

The soprano was billed as Solveig Kringelborn. I wanted to go but couldn't make it in the end.

Stuart

[Rosy]

Thank you Lee for your reportage!

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Maestro Mackerras made a right and necessary observation; It's really time to stop repeating facts, really or imagined, which now are almost the most famous of excellent work of the Maestro Karajan himself.

Even I say:" God bless you, Maestro Mackerras!"

Rosy