Karajan's Magic and Myth

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

ORCHESTRA BEGINS TO PLAY

ORCHESTRA STOPS

ORCHESTRA RESUMES

Every concert is, for me... maybe I think

it's the last performance I do.

Nein, nein, nein, nein.

HE MIMICS RHYTHM OF MUSIC

ORCHESTRA PLAYS DRAMATIC PIECE

Herbert von Karajan was probably the most successful conductor

the music world has ever known.

The most glamorous and powerful too.

The glitter of his music making sometimes provoked

jealousy and suspicion.

But those who worked with him recognised

a formidable and visionary musician.

Never have I felt such freedom after strenuous periods

of rehearsals than standing next to Karajan.

Because in the concert, he would follow you to the end of the world.

I don't know what it is about Karajan, he had this

sort of magic, or this allure. He had something very special.

He was so devoted to music making that it seemed to

come out of his pores.

You did only one thing that he ask you to do,

and you did it always well - he was so happy.

He will smile for ever.

There are many myths about the man hailed before

the Second World War as "The Karajan Miracle."

A daredevil with 20th century speed in his blood.

Karajan drove Mercedes Cabrio, with these doors going up like wings.

A very good driver.

Ja, really fast. Sometimes too fast.

ENGINE ROARS

He drove like a racer, and one of the orchestra he asked,

"You, coming with me."

And this one, in the evening, he was pale...

when he sat in his place. And the whole orchestra laughed.

And to the one who laughed the most, said,

"You're going with me tomorrow."

So it was fun and it was very familiar,

and at the same time, it was a little bit terror.

Well, strangely enough, I can see him on the rostrum...straightaway.

He dressed well.

He was comparatively young, he was very virile.

Dark hair, grey at the sides.

I suppose, in a way, attractive.

I really felt it would be quite easy to fall in love with him,

let's put it that way.

So slim, so good-looking, so lithe.

Sort of sexy somehow.

And I used to think,

"Karajan's coming again, Karajan's coming again",

not because of Karajan and the fact

that he was a man, but because of his conducting.

Karajan's magnetism didn't fully explain his success.

But it certainly helped.

Through patience, a sharp business sense and sheer artistry,

he scaled the peaks of his profession,

in the opera houses of Vienna and Milan,

and on the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic,

which he made into a Rolls-Royce orchestra.

He was born in 1908, into an aristocratic family,

close to the Austrian Alps in Salzburg.

At the age of 17, after studying science at school,

he was set to become a concert pianist,

until his teacher stepped in.

One day - he knew me very well and followed all my studies -

and said, "You see, your musical mind and your ear

"is made such that you will never be content with two hands.

"You should have ten hands! But better try to conduct."

As a student, he was fascinated to watch Arturo Toscanini conduct,

and went on to learn his craft in the German opera houses of

Ulm and Aachen during the rise of Hitler.

Like thousands of others in Germany keen to further their careers,

he joined the Nazi Party in his mid-twenties -

a move that would dog him for much of his life.

He explained to me, "I want to conduct,

"I want to make a career in that field."

And he could not get a Generalmusikdirektor function

in any of the places without having

a membership, a passive membership of the Party.

Given the fact that he also surrounded himself

with a number of Jews in his professional life,

and the fact that I never in my life

heard a single anti-Semitic remark from him -

and I have Jewish antecedents myself, so I would have been

very sensitive to this -

I absolutely refute that he was a Nazi.

As well as being a party member,

he was sent to occupied countries as an ambassador for German culture.

This first footage of him conducting comes from Paris in 1941 -

the prelude to Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger,

almost an unofficial anthem for the Nazis.

Goebbels or Hitler sent their international grade artists

to everywhere where he had the power to send them,

to show how high cultured Germany is.

This was their duty, they had to do that.

After the war they said they just served their art,

but it was a bit more.

No, I was more or less restricted to six concerts a year.

And any other sort of activities?

-Just simply six concerts and that was it?

-I was frozen up.

HE TRAILS OFF

Karajan was in work more than he perhaps remembered.

Besides his job in Aachen, he conducted in Berlin itself

once a fortnight on average for the first half of the war.

Only in the last two years did the work dry up.

Was he a Nazi? In my opinion, definitely not.

Was he an opportunist? I think he was.

I think he had a single-minded desire to get

to the top of his profession.

After the war, eminent German musicians like Wilhelm Furtwangler

were forbidden to perform in public until they'd been "denazified."

It applied to Karajan too.

But he got round the ban by making records,

thanks to the British EMI producer Walter Legge, who soon brought

Karajan to work with his brand-new Philharmonia Orchestra in London.

This launched his international career,

and also his lifelong addiction to recording.

It's a nice point, that it's the British that got Karajan going

after the war, it was the British, Walter Legge in particular

and his Philharmonia Orchestra, but also Walter Legge

working in Vienna with local orchestras.

They're the people who gave Karajan his start,

so he has Britain, the "enemy", to thank.

Exactly. It was... But, I mean, he was worth it.

And I think he improved the orchestra a lot,

I think we played very well with him.

You didn't just sort of play the instrument,

you really put your heart into it.

The detail's unbelievable.

-PIERRETTE:

-Right from the first note,

you've got to have your wits about you.

It's very fast...very energetic...and very clear.

It's that sort of virtuosity. It sounds so un-British somehow.

It's so unexpected, the quality of that, that...attack.

He certainly introduced something to our orchestral life...

that...

well, it may be not missing, but it hadn't been

discovered with such intensity.

It still comes as a shock to hear that sort of performance.

And I didn't really realise until I sat there.

"Ooph! I don't believe it." You know?

"Is this what it's all about? Conducting, great conductors?

"Oh, how absolutely wonderful,

"I'm going to enjoy this."

The extraordinary voluptuous sound he managed to achieve.

Erm...

The concentration on the lower octave

just gives it that much more...

..I don't know, romantic lush.

It was Karajan's interpretation, nobody else's,

and his clarity was just...oh, unbelievable.

I could feel it then...you know?

I'm sitting there and I'm playing, "Ooh, I've got to give it,

"I've got to give it, I'm not giving enough,

"I'm not giving enough." You know?

You didn't get any reception from him that you were doing it,

he didn't look at you and smile or anything,

it's just that you wanted to do it.

It was the effect he had.

Richard Strauss' tone poem Don Juan featured in his public debut

with the Philharmonia in 1948, as it had in his

very first concert 20 years earlier in Salzburg.

It was a piece with which he could hypnotise and energise his players.

When he came to the stage, really, here,

when we sit on the stage

the heart began to beat - bom-bom-bom-bom-bom, ja?

It was really special and everybody

was "Paaah!", like a racing horse.

After every concert I was sweating, exhausted, and I mean,

normally you would play, as a professional,

you would play everything light and no problem,

but this was like a challenge of playing for your life.

That's the way he took you.

This was almost magic.

He had an absolute unique radiation and nobody knew why.

Somebody who sucks you into his opinion, and you

just follow, you can't avoid to go this way.

It's like such a strong personality,

and this is very emotional, it's not technical.

He interrupted in a rehearsal and then...

HE IMPERSONATES KARAJAN MUTTERING

Nobody understood what he really said, but after the interruption,

everything went in the way he wanted.

I think I have played the Beethoven concerto

about 25 times with him.

Still up to this day, it's difficult for me

to stand next to a conductor who is not Karajan, because the way

he was shaping and the way he made a soloist really fly

and spread the wings was something

which I've never encountered after that.

KARAJAN SPEAKS SOFTLY IN GERMAN

As a young man, Karajan had

patiently courted the Berlin Philharmonic,

much to the annoyance of Furtwangler, its chief conductor.

And when he died in 1954, Karajan stepped neatly into his shoes.

But in the recording studio, he still worked with his old flames

at the Philharmonia in Britain.

-It was a great orchestra, of course.

-Oh, yes, of course.

I remember the first tour in America.

24 concerts in 28 days in 19 cities - the American tour was

an ordeal for conductor and players, not least because of

hostile comments in the press about

his work under the Nazis, and Karajan had warned

the Philharmonia players to be on their guard for trouble.

He gave us a little pep talk, a nice one,

"Be very careful where you walk."

He suddenly seemed like a human being again,

as opposed to a god up there!

"Be careful of the public, they could attack you."

The trouble, when it came on the final morning of the tour,

was from Walter Legge's orchestra itself.

One of the first violins, a former Spitfire pilot

called Peter Gibbs, was outraged at the perfunctory way Karajan

had been acknowledging applause from the audience.

In grand places, Karajan behaved himself perfectly well,

took his bows with the audience,

but in not so important cities he just disappeared,

went back to the hotel or wherever,

and the orchestra was sort of left...

on the stage, not knowing whether to get off, or bow, or what to do.

Peter came back to the hotel and said,

"I'm really going to say something tomorrow morning",

and I said, "My God! What are we in for?"

And so Peter, who had, had this burning resentment -

I suppose, after the war - still in him, thought this would be

one way of relieving his animosity, and so he stood up

at the rehearsal and just said, "I think you owe us an apology."

"Mr von Karajan, I think you should apologise to the orchestra

"for your extremely bad behaviour on this tour."

And von Karajan took no notice whatsoever,

he just went on conducting

and people at the front started to play,

people around started to shuffle their feet

and make sort of agreement noises.

We had shivers down the back of our spines when we heard that!

I don't know how many times Peter said, "I would like an apology",

probably at least three times, I think.

I just thought "Bravo." Until I thought it over,

and then I thought to myself, "That wasn't very diplomatic."

And Karajan said, "I don't want this man at the concert tonight."

But some of the principal players in the orchestra

just had a word with Walter and said, "Look, that's not

"really quite fair, because he was perfectly justified in

"saying what he did. Maybe tactless, but, er, I think he should play."

Anyway, that evening, we started the concert,

got to the interval... and von Karajan didn't come on.

We all sat down ready to play - no sign of Karajan!

And we sat there again, ten minutes? I don't know,

a long time waiting to start the second half.

As would often happen in his career, Karajan had the orchestra

at his mercy, and reappeared only when

the orchestra management had apologised - to him.

People say he never worked with the Philharmonia again.

In fact, he did, for five more years.

By then he was forging his destiny in Europe,

in particular in Berlin, where the Karajan legend would take root.

Until Karajan got the Berlin job, the Philharmonia was in a sense,

Karajan's Orchestra, and would he have got the Berlin job had he not

had all that experience working with the Philharmonia

for the previous five or six years?

It was a long activity with the Philharmonia.

Of course, then when the call to Berlin came,

reluctantly I must say, because I liked them very much,

a great deal of things we had done together,

but you couldn't share those two things.

From the early hour in the morning you could feel vibration,

vibration of expectation, that in the night

will be the Karajan concert.

He took half a minute, three-quarters of a minute

getting himself absolutely ready on his feet.

Getting his balance, getting his relaxation

until he felt absolutely ready to start.

And I thought this was mesmeric, because he did not move

his feet again until he turned to acknowledge the applause at the end.

The power of...any movement,

his closed eyes,

his...kind of the chin, expression, you know?

And the left hand, the left hand just doing anything,

and then...

HE INHALES DEEPLY

Just the energy, the energy with such an authority.

Authority like nobody else can have it.

In order to achieve after a forte a subito piano,

the only thing he did was this.

In the movement of his small finger, an entire orchestra

of 120 players would transform itself

into a carpet of pianissimo where

a singer or a violinist could just kind of soar over.

I said, "Look, you are doing conducting one thing,

"but at the same time you are already doing

"something very different, that's near schizophrenic."

"No, trezophrenic", he said. That's not a word, but he used it.

Yes, "trezophrenic", he said, "Look, I've to give the attack

"and the next moment I have to dampen the too loud horn,

"and while I do that conducting I already have to prepare

"the next tempo change, three measures ahead.

"So you might say the attack is present,

"the horn is already past, and the tempo change is the future."

And he finished by saying, "On this level -

"on these three levels -

"every musician, not only the conductor has to work."

I think one of his great strengths was actually the interpretation,

I mean, he really did interpret the music.

Every active part of this symphony is VERY active,

and with the little bridge passages, sometimes they're soft,

more enchanting, he brings this out.

Listen to this, this G.

That's what I mean about interpretation,

he gives the people time to play this tune.

Just by doing that he sets a tempo and the mood.

This was what I call the real Berlin Philharmonic sound.

Very rich and engaged.

There are no passengers in this orchestra.

He often kept his eyes closed, which staggered other conductors,

but not, apparently, his players.

He created an orchestra that relied on each other,

that listened to each other.

He set them up as a gigantic chamber group.

And it was certainly not as though

the performances were pre-planned

in any way - you could see there was all kinds of room

for things to happen.

When the player tried to ask him for some advice or help,

he went to be furious and told, "Look, play maybe with your knees

"or with your nose, but please, play musically right."

Normally, he didn't give downbeats, when he conducted he just

closed his eyes and his hands turned like this

and formed some, you know, like,

as if music is a modelling thing.

And he did not conduct one, two, three, four.

But I saw him doing this when he had singers,

when he conducted opera or - like it happened once to me -

I fell out of something, suddenly I saw him conducting

like a Kapellmeister, but the moment

it was set again, he came back to just doing that.

His style of conducting, which in a way was rather unprecise,

particularly when it meant to give a real clear beat,

a real clear beginning.

You had no idea where this man was, and what did that lead to?

You would listen to each other.

He just advised, "Listen!"

People thought of Karajan's orchestra as a well-oiled machine.

But this didn't happen by magic.

On one occasion, the pizzicato plucking

of the strings had gone adrift.

The pizzicatos were all over the place.

So, Karajan would, you know, lean back,

and he had this stick in his hand, the baton, and he would say

"Meiner herren" - that was back in the days were there was no girls,

where there were no girls in the orchestra -

"Meiner herren, look at this baton,

"and now imagine a rain drop is slowly gliding down,

"and the moment the rain drop frees itself, that's the pizzicato!"

Back to figure K or whatever - there it was, perfect!

Karajan stopped the whole orchestra and said to my colleague, "Late."

And this guy said, "Well, it's the acoustic in this room."

Karajan cut him off dead and said, "The acoustic in this room?

"You're 25 metres away from me, the speed of light is such

"and such a thing, speed of sound is such and such a speed -

"it can't be late. Besides, Galway's sitting

"right next to you and he's on the beat, so just play on the beat."

Sometimes, the apparent perfectionist

didn't bother with rehearsal at all.

He asked me in. I sat down on the chair of the first oboe,

red light, and we recorded Beethoven Third Piano Concerto

without any break, and a little interruption,

because I made a mistake,

a little baton move he made and I didn't catch it totally,

but it was just a second,

and then everything was gone, you know?

-With no rehearsal?

-With no rehearsal, of course, no rehearsal.

And then later I learned that he didn't rehearse the

main pieces at all, because it was repertoire.

But with young players,

standard repertoire was worked on as if it were brand-new.

Yep. On the most difficult things,

you always have to look into the music.

Four notes.

HE HUMS TUNE

The seaman said, "One hand for the ship and one hand for yourself."

'So you give me one eye for you, and one eye for the conductor,

'and the music you have in here then!'

He's getting them to not be afraid of being in contact

with him directly.

Now, could you please give me the upbeat, the second note,

with the same intensity as the first note?

The first note is perfect now,

but it must... HE HUMS TUNE

And pianissimo of course.

Expression is wonderful,

if you could give me this with less tone, it would be perfect.

It's a master at work, he's hearing

infinitesimal differences between one note and another.

But no accent!

There was now, there was accent on the new harmony,

which there should certainly not be.

HE HUMS TUNE

He's trying to highlight the incredible unexpected chord.

'..where you come a little earlier.'

The unexpected which comes in here, because normally it would...

HE HUMS TUNE

You stay in your harmony. Instead comes a completely new thing,

and it must be taken with care, then it's unexpected.

How to make the familiar seem fresh.

Ra-ta-ta-ta.

Now, keep it, keep it!

Ah...

I can always see some of you who is out here...

The little technical things like not rushing through the bow

and running out of the bow by the end of the long note.

Organise it that it comes right when we are finished,

and not first give everything. You don't spend the whole cellar

on the first three days, and you starve!

No, you wait.

He knew that young musicians were nervous, he knew how to make us

welcome, he talked very openly. I remember him saying this

wonderful phrase. "Oh Simon, the sound of an orchestra is like

"one of your English gardens,

"you have to take care of it every day.

"Not only do you have to water and encourage it,

"you have to weed it as well."

I didn't know what he meant then either, but I do now!

There was a day when Karajan required a rank-and-file violinist

to stand up in front of the orchestra and play his part solo.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, playing cello in the orchestra, saw it happen.

And this is a thing which every musician in the orchestra

is afraid of, and the man stood up, played the thing,

not very good but very, very courageous, and Karajan asked....

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

"Do you mean that really?"

It was total, totally, er, silence in the whole orchestra.

He liked that silence, and then he said, "Go home"

to the musician. "Go home."

And he had to stand up and go out, and then the director came

and Karajan said, "I don't want to see this man anymore."

I remember when I was filming the Beethoven Ninth Symphony

with him, he spent a whole hour rehearsing just the

opening bars for the double basses of the last movement.

He's indefatigable, he just goes on and on.

Karajan found other ways to assert his dominance.

Each day he kept his game plan to himself.

His players had to be there at his beck and call

without knowing which music he would rehearse.

He liked his race horses champing at the bit.

Danke.

Karajan would never, ever work to a schedule.

For instance, for an opera,

all the artists had to be in hotels

and stay there for ten days or whatever,

and they would be told when to sing at his direction.

But they would never know when they were going to

do their aria or the chorus or whatever.

He had what we call the old intendant virtues.

Of reliability, being punctual,

a yes is a yes and a no is a no.

He decided who played what, last moment,

this was like a kind of slavery situation, you had to be there.

I remember even he called us in 1st of January morning

for a recording session.

He didn't want to have a holiday.

And the orchestra would love to have had a holiday.

So we had to play at ten o'clock in the morning.

Things were different in the old days with

Legge and the Philharmonia, it was all highly organised,

but once he became important enough to be his own producer,

director and everything else, he insisted on no schedule at all.

Even a superstar like the soprano Jessye Norman,

rehearsing the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde,

was surprised to find Karajan calling all the shots.

-KARAJAN: We play and you don't sing.

-OK.

-Just listen.

-OK.

He wanted me to sit and listen to the orchestra to be certain

that I would be comfortable with the rehearsal,

but he didn't tell me that ahead of time, so of course I was there

ahead of time, I'd warmed up and was ready to go

and all the rest of it,

then he said "No, I just want you to sit and listen."

I said, "Well, maestro, I wish you'd told me that,

"I didn't need to warm up to sit and listen."

By the next rehearsal, she realised it had been worth it.

Karajan held the orchestra back so that she could sing softly.

SHE SINGS LIEBESTOD

Good.

-Now we...?

-Now you begin.

I knew that he was listening.

And that's a wonderful thing for a singer,

to work with a conductor who we know is listening to the voice,

and that the clarinet or the whatever,

the French horn or whoever, is coming in with the theme -

that is also very important - that will arise.

He's going to make sure that the voice is heard the whole time,

and that is a wonderful thing for a singer,

just to be able to relax and sing the song.

Karajan was at his greatest in opera.

MEN SING OPERATIC PIECES

Wagner and Richard Strauss, certainly,

but the Italian repertoire too - Verdi and Puccini.

Ja, here, this is the line I like.

Supporting the singer all the time.

That's Pavarotti when he was young.

Karajan said to Pavarotti,

"You're singing fantastic, but is it so necessary that you are so big?"

He was, at this time, he wasn't so big as he was...in the last years!

They collaborated in recording Madam Butterfly,

and Karajan planned to use the soundtrack for a film

by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, with the singers miming their parts.

But Karajan believed in feasting the eyes as well as the ears.

He had no faith in the overweight Pavarotti on screen,

and sent for Placido Domingo instead.

Only two months after the recording, whole chunks had to be redone.

And I remember arriving at 10 o'clock in the morning,

and I also remember I was coming from a vacation,

and I haven't been singing lately, so it's tough to start singing.

But I don't have any chance, he starts with a piece

from the very beginning, and 50 minutes later

we have finished the first act.

HE SINGS IN ITALIAN

The red light went on, and by the time I thought we have

rehearsed, we have recorded already.

So, paradoxically, a conductor who is often criticised for

too great an obsession with clinical excellence was actually

much happier to risk the imperfections

of effectively a live performance.

He hated doing re-takes, and preferred to capture the magic

of the moment, even if his team - led by producer Michel Glotz -

spotted mistakes, as in the recording

of Richard Strauss' Domestic Symphony.

At the top of one page there's about four top Cs in a row

played by the trumpet, and this is while the rest of the

orchestra are racing around, and one of the top Cs was badly fluffed.

I said to Glotz, I said, "You'll have to tell him."

He said, "YOU can tell him!"

So Karajan strode in and Glotz said,

"David here has something to tell you."

And Karajan said, "David, what is it?"

And I said, "There's a very bad trumpet fluff

"at eight bars after K or wherever." And he said,

"Play it to me, play it to me!"

And they ran back the tape, and sure enough, there it was,

and his remark was, "Only a fish would hear that!"

And it's still there in the recording today.

We complained sometimes, and I asked Herr von Karajan

"Could we please repeat this place?

"I think it was not correct

"on this part and I would do it again.

"No, no! Everything is right, I think I know - it's perfect."

-And is it?

-No!

Karajan always liked to be seen to be in control,

even when he wasn't, as in one performance of the Mozart Requiem

when the basset horn came in late.

After two or three bars the harmony became strange, and he recognised

that it's impossible to correct it now.

So what shall he do? I felt with him, what could one do?

Then he made like that, a short gesture, stop playing,

then he made a half turn to the audience,

as if he would say, "I cannot play the Mozart Requiem

"before a loud audience."

He makes like that...

And he shaked, shook his hands so the body shook.

And then the very angry faces, and then he started again

and it was beautiful.

So he gave the guilt to the audience,

and I think this is ingenious, you cannot rehearse that.

He was always ready to fly by the seat of his pants -

in the air as well.

I remember flying with his wonderful wife

and the two lovely daughters, and they didn't seem

to enjoy flying with him so much,

and I just didn't understand, I was all geared up,

and actually I got the jump seat between the two pilots,

it was Karajan on the left and then the co-pilot.

And after the takeoff, he just loved to

get to his proper height as fast as he could,

so then, of course, everybody got sick,

and as I was convinced, you know, I really liked it a lot,

I was sitting there and I must have turned green and whatever,

he had his oxygen mask and he just loved it,

the rest of us half fainted.

And I remember crawling out of the plane, everybody was sick

and I pretended that I just felt fine, and he seemed to be

very proud of me! But I have to confess,

I have tricked him, it was horrible.

Karajan often flew to work in his private jet

from one of his homes - in Mauerbach, near Vienna,

St Moritz, St Tropez, or Anif, just outside Salzburg.

But in Berlin, despite being conductor for life,

he never had a home.

He stayed at the Kempinski Hotel, in suite 429, just as

he'd always used the Savoy in London when he was with the Philharmonia.

It reinforced the aloof image he was so keen to foster.

So do you think he had any friends in the orchestra?

Ah, friends... I don't know.

Not really friends.

No, how can you be friends with Herbert von Karajan?

I mean, it's just impossible.

He always was on this pedestal.

He wanted distance.

For instance, he hated it when people came, bodily, too close to him.

He must have been very lonely.

That's what I also heard from people surrounding him.

Yes, you're quite right,

I know I have difficulties.

My two daughters they meet people with a facility and with a charm,

sometimes I want to learn from them.

But I have never the same feeling when I was making music,

then I know I am open.

He was alone, he had one person in his office in Salzburg that was

Lore Salzburger and that was it.

SHE SPEAKS GERMAN

-'He telephoned a lot, at any time.'

-'Middle of the night?'

'Of course, when he was in Japan'

you think he was thinking

how late it is in Salzburg? No.

But it didn't matter. I mean, I was happy to hear him.

And not that I was in love with him, this is something else. But...

really it was... I was there for him, that's it.

Lore Salzburger organised everything apart from the music.

She was his gate-keeper,

and saw at first-hand the impact of the Karajan myth.

Even really high personalities,

I am telling you they had wet hands

and they sweat before they got to speak with him,

the moment when they waited, you know, in my office.

Incredible, those strong blue eyes.

When they hit you, I'm telling you, you would sweat also.

That was a barrier of himself which he made.

He wanted to appear as this untouchable

and this perfect and this statue

and that's, from my side,

what I do not understand.

During his 34-year reign in Berlin,

this "untouchable" image was a great success commercially.

For some, it was a problem artistically.

But others watched and listened in awe.

He was no longer quite so ready,

as he had been in America in the '50s,

to head off home before the applause had died down.

Now it was the other way round.

The orchestra left before he did.

There used to be someone to give him a brush, to brush his hair back

and there was someone with the overcoat

and I think there was someone else with a handkerchief as well.

He was ready to sign autographs as well.

But when the applause began to subside,

he quickly went back on stage.

There was a set routine.

He'd come on again...

bow to the audience

and blow a kiss to the orchestra, which meant they had to go.

He would wait behind the scenes, listening, I think,

and then would come on his own to have several bows.

-It was always the way.

-Did the orchestra mind?

No-one seemed to mind. They just shrugged their shoulders.

Was he a vain man?

Ja. Ja.

Yes, he was.

Sure, absolutely. That, of course, explained why he only wanted

to be photographed from the left and why he had his own photographer.

We were all very astonished

what will be the hair of the next season?

We have played one year with the hair up

and just one little part into the face,

next year the hair with oil directly on the head. What will be next year?

Away from the spotlight, Karajan immersed himself in his scores.

He learnt them by heart, and studied other recordings not just of

the classics, but of pieces by Schoenberg and Webern.

On the Continent he conducted British music by William Walton,

Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten.

And he tackled Delius and Vaughan Williams

before he ever went to London.

His downtime, when not in his car, his jet, his boat or the mountains,

he reserved for his daughters Arabel and Isabel, and his third wife,

the French model Eliette Mouret.

She was his representative on Earth, if you like.

Because the older he became, the more he withdrew from going to parties

and receptions and hated all that sort of accoutrement of fame,

and she went along in his place.

His recording in the late '70s of Debussy's opera

Pelleas And Melisande was not just ambitious, it was personal.

I think he saw his wife, Eliette, as Melisande,

and there's this wonderful moment with Pelleas and Melisande

when he says, "Je t'aime."

And she says, "Je t'aime aussi."

And he...he started crying.

OPERATIC SINGING IN FRENCH

That was probably the most expensive opera recording ever made.

My then boss rang me after we'd had 18 sessions.

He said, "18 sessions, my God, how long is this going to go on for?"

And suddenly I saw Karajan standing next to me.

And he looked at me and mouthed to me the name of my boss and I said, yes.

He said, "Give me the phone."

And he said, "Hello, Peter, do you have a problem?"

And my boss told me later, he was absolutely horrified to have Karajan

on the other end of the phone.

And so it went on to 27 sessions.

OPERATIC SINGING IN FRENCH

Shortly after their marriage in 1958,

Herbert had taken Eliette to Japan on an orchestral tour.

The glamorous couple were a gift for the newsreels.

And it was there, in Japan, that Karajan had a flash of revelation

about the global potential of classical music.

It was a life-changing moment.

Every concert was televised. We have 18 concerts,

and the estimate is that 25 million people watched these concerts.

There is no getting around the fact - this is the future.

And this is our times and today it's maybe 25 million. In three years,

when we will do the thing from the concert, that will be 200 million.

This moment of insight became a settled belief,

revolutionary at the time, in the visual power of music.

In the mid-60s he pioneered music films, like this one

showing off his working methods in Schumann's Fourth Symphony.

One can see that he conducts for the camera.

'He is so highly professional. Here he explains very clear.

'He's trying to achieve the start of a crescendo from practically nothing'

and he says practically everywhere the crescendos were started too loud

and therefore a good crescendo is not possible.

It's absolute correct.

And I remember about ten years earlier when he just murmured

and it was almost not possible to understand what he was saying.

But here he does it for the television audience.

Karajan believed that, as conductor, he was the channel for the music.

He felt he could show this

by committing more and more performances to film.

"This is the future," he'd said, and the films were, for him,

his most important legacy.

They were shot by his rules.

Maybe 90% of his video filming is Von Karajan

and the rest is the orchestra.

Maybe not so extreme, I don't know.

But I think for him it was very important that he looked beautiful.

I am the music and the music flows through me

and that's the way you should see it.

One camera was exactly behind the first violins.

The second camera into the second violins but closer on him.

And another camera was 30 degrees to him

and the other was over his left shoulder.

So all four cameras were showing Karajan?

Ja, just on Maestro, just on Maestro.

We did nothing on players, it did it later on playback.

-How much later?

-Maybe two, three, half a year later.

Sometimes a year later.

The orchestra, too, were part of Karajan's visual aesthetic.

He made sure his solo players were pleasing to the eye,

with, as it were, not a hair out of place.

He asked us to sit like, like soldiers, you know,

the instruments perfectly in one angle, everybody sitting like this.

And if you're sitting there for about 20 minutes -

"OK, a little higher. Second flute a little lower"

And, "No, please stay, no, a little more in front..."

-And so on, and...

-HE GROANS

So now recording and then like this.

It's very funny.

And when you record and we moved a little bit like this

because he saw it he said, from the off came the voice of Karajan,

"Too loud!"

So he had his picture of what an orchestra or what the music should be

and his aesthetic idea was the same,

it was to be very, very smooth with the very smooth brilliant surface,

with a very, very strong compact expression.

I don't think Karajan for a minute enjoyed having a first flute

with a beard and long hair but that's how I was, you know?

We came straight from the UK and Carnaby Street

and we did what we did.

And in the films he wanted one of the flute solos to be played by me

and to be mimed by Andreas.

Maybe he didn't like so much the beard for the film.

But Jimmy Galway was playing in those films.

Ja, he was doing the recording and I was doing the playback.

-You had no beard?

-No, I had no beard, no.

Yeah, that's Andreas, but it's me playing it.

In the event, the playbacks were shot in tight close-up,

so the offending beard would never have been seen,

least of all by Karajan, who had his eyes shut.

-Did you think that was strange?

-Yes, of course!

And we were complaining but you couldn't do any anything against.

Karajan didn't stop there.

These apparent concerts were actually studio recordings,

with extras drafted in to listen in the gallery.

He took elaborate steps to ensure the rest of the audience

didn't move a muscle.

We say in German "pappkameraden."

Pappkameraden means only pictures on a...

But you couldn't see it.

Maybe if you look to the video and you look only to the background

then you will see that they don't move at all.

He had an image of how the orchestra should look.

You will not see one guy who is bald, but we had plenty

in the orchestra who were bald. They all had to wear wigs,

if you can imagine. I thought I was in the wrong orchestra.

HE LAUGHS

It's very hard to actually see any players' faces.

Yeah, well it's a film about Karajan

and he didn't want to see anybody in there.

When there's a horn solo you don't see who's playing it,

you see the horn.

Did that bother the orchestra?

I think it must have. You know, can you imagine how insulting that is

to be if you don't have any hair and you arrive to find that

somebody's chosen a wig for you to wear?

And then not to be shown as well...

HE LAUGHS

Yeah!

Karajan as conductor, film editor and recording engineer

took total control of the film-making in 1982,

when he set up his own company - Telemondial.

By then he was more relaxed about beards and baldness.

He invested several million pounds in the venture, such was his

commitment to project the sound and the sight of music around the world.

He embarked on 43 new music films,

managed and directed by his cameraman, Ernst Wild,

who completed each of them after Karajan's death.

What we did was really, really perfect.

Nobody in the next time

can do it in the same quality.

The nicest critic about one of my music films came from a man

who, just by chance, got me on the telephone.

And he said "Mr von Karajan, yesterday I have never, ever heard

"so well done the Fifth Symphony."

I said, "Now, do we talk about the same thing. It was a television."

He said "Yes, it was on television. I have never heard it so well."

So it gave me a sort of justification that,

by seeing, the hearing is enriched.

In the Berlin Philharmonic,

one of the double basses kept a close eye on his conductor...

..though in 24 years he actually spoke to Karajan only once.

These sketches I drew on the side

of my double bass during rehearsals.

This is Maestro Karajan like I knew him -

he's demanding-looking and expressively conducting.

It's something I never forget.

This is six years later.

That was the day he was looking constantly very sceptical.

It's really like a father figure.

His huge orchestral family were not above a few tantrums of their own.

They had an ego, like, fit to burst.

We did a Strauss piece. Anyhow, Karajan stopped in the middle

and he said, "Fourth horn, would you play it like this?"

And he said, "No, I played it like this for Richard Strauss

"and I'm not changing it for you." So Karajan looked round and said,

"Well, that's straight from the horse but I don't know where."

HE LAUGHS

When he told a joke that was a moment of highest political game.

-He was testing your reactions?

-Ja.

And from this he took knowledge about everybody's position

or everybody's personality.

Very often he said, "But I told you already this story."

And the whole orchestra would say, "No, no, no, no."

Like schoolboys, ja?

One of his favourite stories was about the West German Chancellor,

Willy Brandt, who'd seen a woman fall over in the street,

and helped her up.

LAUGHTER

The orchestra, like Karajan himself, had plenty to laugh about.

Their generous salaries were met from public funds, and topped up

with the substantial royalties they earned from his records.

In the best times, he represented 10% of the world market

in classical music and about 40% of Deutsche Grammophon recordings.

I mean, this is amazing, this is huge.

He was doubling the amount of money we earned.

Without Karajan the orchestra was still the best paid orchestra

in Europe. With Karajan it was double, easy.

He looked after his players,

and gave them a foothold in his home town, Salzburg,

even though their rivals, the Vienna Philharmonic, always played

at the summer festival, and thought it was their turf.

What Karajan did was to set up an annual Easter Festival,

bringing in the Berlin Philharmonic to give them their first taste

of playing opera, in his productions.

The Karajan Miracle continued with the Maestro as conductor,

impresario and stage director.

He was sick and tired of being told by stage directors what to do,

so he thought, "I'll do it myself."

And it was his own money.

At one point, long before he died he said,

"Until now I have put into the Easter Festival 27,000,000 marks,"

at that time.

I hear it as he said it.

It was not because he wanted to be a one-man show,

it was because he wanted to put his whole feeling for the piece

into everything, not only into the music.

SINGING IN GERMAN

No part of the production escaped his eagle eye,

least of all the lighting, such was his passion to visualise the music.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

When we start we start right away with the lighting rehearsals,

which go on through every rehearsal.

I've never made a rehearsal without a full lighting.

Or lack of it.

Of which he was so often accused!

That was a dark chapter, yes, so to say!

He lit long, long, long, long times

and in the end often it was very dark.

There was the memorable story of Birgit Nilsson turning up at

the dress rehearsal of Walkure at the Met in New York.

Birgit Nilsson thought it was too dark,

put on a miner's helmet with the lamp on it.

Which Karajan did not think was funny, but everyone else did.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

In the mid '60s, he invented a playback system of stage rehearsals,

which meant that he could dispense with rehearsal pianists

who'd given him trouble in the past.

Instead, he played the full orchestral recording in the theatre

through speakers,

leaving the singers free to concentrate on their movements,

and sing along to the music as much or as little as they wanted.

Every singer has a small tape recorder and they have time about

three months or four months to have it under their pillow,

so they really arrive so full with this music and so prepared

that you can concentrate only on the stage.

And it's a complete new way.

HE SINGS IN GERMAN

Only he could have got away with it.

What he needed was a tape of the opera with the same singers

as he'd be using on his darkened stage.

So what did he do? He got muggins, the good old recording companies,

to actually record the opera beforehand,

so therefore we paid for all the orchestral rehearsals.

He then, very cleverly,

used the finished tape for the rehearsals in Salzburg,

which meant the singers saved their voices and it meant that

the recording was out in time for the performances, so he could sell it.

There was a wonderful incident, when Don Giovanni's servant

invites the peasants to go in to the castle...

HE SINGS IN GERMAN

..and so on.

And that happened and he interrupted and said, "No, no, no.

"Gentlemen, you're rushing, stay in measure."

Everybody looked at each other. "OK, once more."

HE SINGS IN GERMAN

"No, no, no."

He was really angered, he said, "No, no, no!

"I told you! You rush, you rush! Please stay in measure!"

So in the end I took my heart in my hand and said,

"Herr von Karajan, that's your tape."

"So..." he said,

"OK, let's do it once more."

HE SINGS IN GERMAN

"Allora! Why not immediately like this?" He said.

Mozart's Don Giovanni was one of Karajan's final opera

ventures in Salzburg.

The ageing conductor was then only supervising rehearsals

from the stalls. He'd brought in Michael Hampe as stage director,

who was impressed by Karajan's commitment to his team.

Mauro Pagano the stage designer,

he fell ill and he was lying dying

in the big Roman Gemelli Hospital.

And it went on and on and on and we couldn't work it out.

And the workshops said, "We can't wait any longer, Herr Von Karajan.

"If you want to have a decoration on stage we have to start

"and we have to take another designer."

And Karajan said stubbornly,

"No, we wait for Mr Pagano."

And then in fact a little miracle happened. One of the two doctors

who discovered the HIV virus brought Pagano back to life.

But Karajan couldn't know that.

He just said, "No, I want him and we will wait."

And that I'll never forget.

How long did he wait?

Two months.

With the production approaching, it's a long time.

Two, three months.

And it was his money at risk.

Loyalty, for Karajan, wasn't a one-way street.

He expected it in return. That was why his relationship

with the Berlin Philharmonic had gone sour.

After surgery on his back in the mid-1970s

he had a long stay in hospital.

Recordings were cancelled, and the orchestra fretted about their loss

of income, and their longer term future.

They pleaded with him to allow them other conductors in his stead.

He was very angry and he said the famous sentence

"They just wait for my death."

And from this moment on, the whole situation turned round.

The atmosphere, it was slightly Ancient Rome, you know,

and knives out and, and cabals in corners, you know,

plotting and things like that.

The wounded lion then insisted on choosing the new

principal clarinettist, even though he knew perfectly well it was

a choice for the orchestra, not him.

It was simply a fight of power from one side to the other

and it was induced by Karajan. He wanted to see how far he can go.

He didn't realise, as so many great men often don't,

that at some point they become vulnerable.

Yeah, this one makes me sad.

We can see his hands are really ill and they're painful,

to stand there with the help of a support, and how difficult

is to move during conducting

and his body really looks tired and his face...

Once I was furious with the orchestra.

I said, "Now, for the 36,000th time I tell you, you hold a note when it

"goes over the bar, and not stop and make a thing. So what can we do?"

I said to them,

"Sometimes I would like to take a big cord around you...

"..20 gallons of fuel and a match."

And everything was dead...

And in this silence, someone said,

"But afterwards, you wouldn't have us anymore!"

"Well, I've forgotten it, so let's leave it as this!"

That joke was no joke. It's like a father hitting the children.

Karajan felt his "children" had been disloyal,

and showed his anger by depriving them of a projected recording

of Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Anne-Sophie Mutter.

At three weeks' notice Karajan said,

"We're not doing it in Berlin, we're doing it in Vienna."

And so, of course, the Berlin,

the orchestra must have been very sore at the time

because that was probably the best recording, best-selling recording,

of The Four Seasons ever made, and still sells to this day.

Was the relationship ever repaired with Karajan?

Not really.

It was undercover all the time.

I remember that at his 80th birthday we celebrated on stage,

and our members of the Orchestra, who were spokesmen of the Orchestra,

did a miserable job, a really miserable job.

They stopped the talk, they didn't say anything personal,

and it was Mr Resel of Vienna Philharmonic

who spoke a wonderful little speech which was just personal and wonderful

and Karajan was very upset that we couldn't celebrate.

For years, the Vienna Philharmonic had played second fiddle.

Now, in his final music films, he moved them into the limelight.

He demonstrated that he loved us.

That he really loved us.

Did you love him, as an orchestra?

It was, um...

We had really great respect.

He was not maybe a man you would...love.

But at the end, seeing him suffering,

focused on the music and nothing else,

then, yeah, it was then also a kind of love.

The tenderness he felt in Vienna found no echo in Berlin,

where Karajan's life contract, designed to give him

artistic freedom, now felt like a life sentence.

This affection from the Viennese was in scant supply

at his final rehearsal with the Berliners in 1989.

He opened the fingers

and the baton was dropping down.

And he hold his hand this way without any movement -

he didn't tell nothing. And so we went to be shocked about,

all the orchestra sitting there, expecting maybe something,

but after an endless time of waiting, maybe 40 seconds,

50 seconds in total silence, there was still no reaction and so we all

rose up slowly and went to go home.

We were sure maybe there is something happen,

maybe a stroke or a brain stroke or something but it wasn't.

He just decided this moment to give up.

Shortly afterwards, Karajan the untouchable wrote to the orchestra.

"Ich kann nicht mehr." I can't go on.

And resigned from his lifetime contract.

But he never actually retired.

It was the Vienna Philharmonic, not the Berliners,

who would help him through to the finish.

In February 1989, he'd taken them on tour to New York.

He was almost 81 and very frail.

But it was his career in Hitler's Germany

half a lifetime before that worried him.

There was a rumour where there would be some demonstrations outside

and in the concert hall.

And in the last rehearsal Karajan said, "I just wanted to tell you,

"if there happens something in the hall, we keep playing."

The demonstration, when it came,

was not the one Karajan had feared.

Those who were there have never forgotten it.

It was such an enormous tension in the air.

He was actually not able to come on stage on his own.

Only with the Vienna Philharmonic I have seen the speaker

of the orchestra put down his cello on a chair, he went off stage

and brought Von Karajan on his arm.

It was a very touching scene.

I have never seen this in Berlin, it didn't work here.

He had to come on his own.

But then when he entered the stage...

..all the audience stood up.

It was at the beginning of the concert, standing ovations.

It was kind of a devotion.

A religious feeling.

Adoration.

And at the same time kind of nostalgic, like...

like the end of er of an era, is finish, you know.

It was, and everybody... It was a strange, strange, strange feeling

in that day.

And the way the orchestra was playing for him,

that Bruckner Symphony, that was really...

I confess maybe I was also in such an incredible mood myself,

but I think I witnessed that the public altogether felt the same way.

TUMULTUOUS APPLAUSE

They were out of their minds.

-AUDIENCE MEMBER:

-Bravo!

He came off stage very exhausted, very tired,

and he was sitting in a chair like this.

You couldn't say he sat on the chair -

he was not sitting there.

He...broke down and he was there, fallen on the side there,

and he...he...

..just, he-he couldn't speak.

But he stammered, in some ways, said to everybody,

said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you,

"it was a fantastic concert, thank you, thank you",

to many colleagues and grabbed their hands,

what he never did.

The orchestra all came, greeting him,

kissing his hand, leaving.

Amazing.

-And you never saw that with Berlin?

-No.

That was, eh...that was a picture burning in the soul, just nowadays.

It still takes me.

Yeah.

I had dinner with him three days before he died.

And he was in a very bad way.

He took me to the door, which he normally never did,

um, and said goodbye.

Even at that point, he was still at work -

rehearsing a Verdi opera for the 1989 Salzburg Festival

a few weeks later.

We were working fine and I tell you, the only signs he gave it to me

when he told me, you know, he said, "This makes me so tired,

"this exercise that I'm doing every day."

MUSIC: Mild Und Leise Wie Er Lachelt by Richard Wagner

On Sunday...

..was the ending of Maestro's life.

Normally, he called at 9 o'clock, normally.

On a Sunday, normally, at 10 o'clock,

it was very kind of him.

And on that day, he called at 7.30 in the morning

and I thought, "Oh, God, something is happening,

"something happened."

And I'll never forget that.

He said he wanted to thank for everything I have done for him

and this was terrible.

Normally, he said what I have to organise,

or whom I have to call, or what my work was.

And there, nothing - no order came.

But Karajan still had business to conclude.

In the diary that July morning

was a meeting with his friend, Norio Ohga from Sony,

whom he'd persuaded to invest millions in Telemondial.

They met in Karajan's bedroom, overlooking the Untersberg mountain.

That's where he met his people visiting him,

he was sitting in his bed

and they were sitting there discussing

and during that negotiations, he just got a heart attack.

He wanted a glass of water, Ohga gave it to him,

and in his arms, if you want,

he just leaned back and, er...that was it.

At 1 o'clock, he died,

still with these Japanese people, that came for a signature.

That was a really incredible day.

So had he actually signed the deal?

The deal was signed, yes.

Shortly afterwards, Placido Domingo arrived

to find the place in turmoil

when the housekeeper answered the bell.

She opened the door

and I can see some Japanese people in the garden,

I see some commotion.

And I ask her, I said,

"I heard that Maestro's not feeling...too well."

And she told me, "No, Maestro... Maestro passed away."

And I can see movement in the back,

because at the main time, Mr Ohga, the chairman from Sony,

had a heart attack of depression of the death of Maestro.

I immediately, in shock,

I went with my son to the Festspielhaus

and everybody knew about...about the news.

I just, at the moment, I just cannot...cannot imagine

you know, this...powerful, unbelievable personality, you know.

It is life, this is what happens.

That we, a few days back, we had been working together

and just in three, four, five days, we lost him.

Toscanini said, "In life, democracy,

"but in the arts, aristocracy."

And I think that also Karajan could have said this.

It would be interesting if the orchestra nowadays would follow him

as we did 40 years ago.

Today, it's very democratic, very friendly

and, er...I don't know if they could come along

with this conducting style.

Is the democratic way a better way?

It's an easier way...I would say.

It's easier for the colleagues to be together

but I don't know if you reach, at least,

the highest points of the musical mountain.

That's when all the storm is over and reminds me of the time

after we had the fight with Maestro von Karajan

and he himself liked one spot which is coming right now

on which Strauss wrote in the score, in German, "mit sanfter ekstase" -

"with tender ecstasy."

And Karajan loved this expression for the music

and he expressed it...to sing very deeply

and have a lot of time for these upbeats

and for the flowing melody,

to fill it with a...with a glow of sunshine,

late evening sunshine, the last years of his life.

I just remember when we played this piece -

and I think I played it all the performances,

maybe 50 or more with Karajan in his last years -

every time, at the end, I was really exhausted by this intensity

which you just could hear coming in these last parts.

I like it when the orchestra plays together.

I like it when it's pianissimo when it should be.

I like it when it's raucous when it should be

and I like it when it's really note-perfect.

What's the matter with that? What else do you need?

He brought classical music out of the niche of, you know,

this ivory tower where it has never, erm, been well-off

and where it doesn't belong.

There is not one day in-between...

Like yesterday,

I-I see exactly the same good-looking, charismatic...

..incredible person.

Not many in this world like him.

I had only once the opportunity to ask him, "Maestro Karajan,

"can you tell me who was the most important figure in your young ages?

"Have you a great idol you were following?"

Immediately, with a clear voice, "Arturo Toscanini".

He spoke clear.

That was the one unexpected thing.

And the other was that he told me this name.

And so I took the chance asking him quickly, "Why Arturo Toscanini?"

And he told me, with the serious and high-up voice,

"Arturo Toscanini believed in what he did."