G.P.

The Opera Chick tipped me on this interview where the favorite musical voyeurist of our times, Norman Lebrecht, interviews one of the best conductors of our times, Christoph von Dohnanyi. Surely I am not the only one who started to doubt Lebrecht's judgement after he wrote this and this! Ever since I was waiting for someone to straighten out the facts for him and now maestro Dohnanyi has done not only that, but also given him a lesson in good manners. The whole interview is really worth listening to, but here is what he said about Herbert von Karajan.

De mortuis nisi nihil bene

"You wrote something terrible about him... I mean, I read this, you know, and I don't know how anybody can write, you know, "Karajan is dead and it's better for music" - De mortuis nisi nihil bene!"

"If I could, I did not miss a single rehearsal by Mr. Karajan. He was an amazing rehearser and amazing talent as a conductor, and a very nice man in a sense of listening what are the young people doing for whatsoever reasons."

"Something very special was about Karajan... Bernstein said to me: 'Gustav Mahler is an end, and not a beginning'. Mahler does not lead into the future as much as, for me, even Bruckner. Then I thought about Karajan, and, you know, Karajan was also an end. He was the end of a very strong German tradition."

About the power

"In the earlier days the chief conductor had an amazing power. After the war democracy took over - also in orchestras. So, there was of course the temptation of the people who were brought up in the autocratic tradition like Karajan. 'How can I continue this kind of autocrating governing of an orchestra?' And of course he was very, very talented as a conductor as we all know, and he thought : 'Media, and money'."

"He wanted to develop the power he would have had 80 years ago automatically as a chief conductor. But in those days the orchestras started to be democratic. So he had to be, first of all, a terrific conductor. And second, he had to have some means to govern an orchestra. So he did it by having recordings, and if the Berlin didn't play like he liked it and didn't work for him he said 'I'll do it with Vienna', and vice versa. And if somebody didn't really please him he was not invited to Salzburg, and you know, these things... But that doesn't mean, that he wasn't a genius conductor!"

"So I don't agree with you that it's better for music. I mean, he did terrific performances, let's face it! No, I don't think music is better without him."