Orch.works: Karajan / Bpo

Performances of the music of Schoenberg and his students Berg and Webern can follow two different paths: emphasizing the music's radical modernism and break with the past, or finding a continuity with the Austro-German tradition out of which it grew. Schoenberg himself often stressed the latter, finding a precedent in Brahms especially for some of his techniques, and it is this approach that Herbert von Karajan found great success with in the recordings from the early 1970s reissued here.
These are lushly romantic readings. Rarely do we hear the nuanced tonal colors and rich timbral shadings of this music realized so effectively. Webern's Passacaglia is an early work with little hint of his mature style, and Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic luxuriates in its chromatic (but still tonal) harmony. In the Berg pieces and the Schoenberg Variations, Karajan pays due attention to clarity and logic but is willing to sweep everything away with a powerful, overwhelming climax. The landler and march citations that fade in and out of Berg's 'Three Pieces, Op. 6' are made to sound, quite correctly, as an extension of Mahler's similar techniques. Karajan places these works firmly within another tradition as well: that of the showpiece for virtuoso orchestra. An excellent introduction to this repertoire, and irresistible too for those who already love it.