R.Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Mozart: Divertimento No.17: Karajan / BPO (1969 Moscow)

Karajan in Moscow Vol.3

CD 1
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)
Divertimento No. 17 in D Major, K.334 (1 - 5)
Total playing time: 36.09

BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER
HERBERT VON KARAJAN, conductor

Great Hall of the Moscow conservatory, 30.05.1969
Sound engineer – I. Veprintsev
Re-mastering – M. Pilipov

CD 2
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 (1 - 6)
Total playing time: 47.45

BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER
HERBERT VON KARAJAN, conductor

Great Hall of the Moscow conservatory, 30.05.1969
Sound engineer – I. Veprintsev

Mozart’s Divertimento could be very well characterized by the phrase from one of the responses to Karajan’s concerts – that in his art what must be noticed was “first of all a strict type of academicism, a veneration and meticulous approach to the composer’s text and, at the same time, a sense of the living music”. Indeed, Karajan’s Mozart, especially in a musical theater setting, generates an unforgettable sensation of an almost childlike clarity, lightness and radiance. At the same time one cannot but notice that the nature itself of the genre of the divertimento, moreover, one of the largest and the most pronounced
in Mozart’s heritage, does not presuppose any exceptional type of work on gathering together the movements of such a diverse character, nor to worry about an integrity of a through musical “plot”. This “addition of intrigue” and “enhancement of romantic qualities” of the repertoire from the Classical period was always untypical of Karajan. Thus, just like in the case of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, the performance turned out to be, according to the critics, “formal and not remarkable in any way”.
Even harsher was the critics’ evaluation of the performance of Richard Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben”, likewise written in the form of a peculiar and rather motley divertimento, connected integrally by its single image themes.