The Real Karajan

Saturday Feature  tx 5 July BBC Radio 3

Presented by James Jolly
Produced by Richard Denison

The Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was born 100 years ago. Today, more than a decade after his death, opinion about this iconic figure is sharply divided.

To his many admirers, he was the most recognisable figure in post-war classical music, the great interpreter of the core symphonic and operatic repertoire from Beethoven onwards. To his record producers, he was their golden goose, the man who sold millions of records.

To the orchestral players who worked under him, he was God Almighty, a charismatic conductor of immense power and influence.

But to his detractors, he was vain, arrogant, manipulative, a man who used his power to malign ends, and who glossed over his youthful membership of the Nazi party.  So who was the real Karajan?

James Jolly tries to get under the skin of this controversial musician. To discover the sound Karajan produced from his orchestras, his rehearsal methods, his magnetic personality, the image he projected through the media, and how the Second World War affected his early career, James speaks to orchestral players, including former members of Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic; the conductor Mariss Jansons, who studied with him; Richard Osborne, Karajan’s biographer; the music critic Mike Ashman, and Peter Alward, former head of Karajan’s recording label EMI. And we hear excerpts from some of Karajan’s most famous recordings with the three greatest orchestras he worked with – the Philharmonia, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.