Some names in the history of performance, thanks to a great recorded legacy, leave a mark, perceptible even to those who come decades later. The soprano Maria Callas is one. Herbert von Karajan, Austrian principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1956 to 1989, is another. It’s hard to verify whether he sold the 200m records estimated, but his studio recordings, edited to near perfection, were key to his own sense of posterity.
Possessed of an enigmatic personality, from a lifestyle as racy (sailing, skiing, Porsches) as it was wholesome (daily yoga), this controversialist applied his analytical ear to the Berlin Philharmonic, building its famously rich, polished sound. Next week, the orchestra’s own label will release its second extensive historical edition (following a 2022 box set of recordings by Karajan’s predecessor, Wilhelm Furtwängler), with mostly previously unreleased radio recordings, digitised in high resolution.
