There was always something very special about these 1970-71 EMI recordings of the Fourth and Seventh Symphonies by Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. Both works had, of course, been in Karajan’s repertory for many years. He had first conducted the Fourth Symphony (to magnificent effect, by all accounts) in Aachen in 1936 at the age of 28 and the Seventh had been a regular fixture in his concert programmes from 1941 onwards. Curiously, though, it was not until 1970 that he made these, his first recordings of either work.
The Eighth Symphony had been recorded with the Berliners in 1957, the Ninth in 1966. That celebrated account of the Ninth was a harbinger of things to come. But the real catalyst as far as the Berliners were concerned was undoubtedly the Salzburg Easter Festival and the experience of playing Wagner’s Ring with Karajan at successive festivals during the years 1967-70. Certainly, there is a mystery, power, beauty and spontaneity about these performances that suggests an orchestra more than usually steeped in the Bruckner-Wagner sound-world.
The recording of the Fourth Symphony is one of the finest ever made in Berlin’s Jesus-Christus Kirche, the church’s clear but spacious acoustic allowing the Berlin playing to be heard in all its multicoloured, multi-dimensional splendour. On LP, the grandeur of the sound and the reach of Karajan’s reading meant that the symphony had to be accommodated on three sides (Bohm’s comparably glorious 1973 Vienna recording for Decca similarly spread to two discs) at a time when all other recordings were fitted on to a single LP. Hence the coupling with the Seventh Symphony as part of a three-LP set; hence, too, the recording’s slightly compromised status.
Both SJ and JS have pointed to a conspicuous survival from the ‘bad’ old Josef Woss edition of the Fourth embedded in the present recording (the octave doubling of the strings just before fig. A of the first movement). I can’t say it worries me. Like the several beautifully judged string portamentos, it is not entirely at odds with the performance’s general mood: what SJ referred to as “the symphony’s unique brand of pastoralism coming glowingly to life”.
‘Glowing’ is also an apt word with which to describe this account of the Seventh. Very much sui generis, this is arguably the most purely beautiful account of the symphony there has ever been on record. Other readings may surge and carol more than this – Knappertsbusch’s live recording with the VPO in 1949 (Music & Arts, 12/95) or Furtwangler’s 1949 Berlin account (EMI, 2/97) – but none captures so intense a sense of spiritual longing within the context of a calm yet unerringly sure articulation of the symphonic structure.
Oddly, the recording of the Seventh has moments of slightly wispy string sound (were the results of the October 1970 and February 1971 sessions wholly adequately matched?) which sound wispier here than they did on EMI’s earlier – less spacious, less full-bodied – digital remastering (6/89 – nla). That, though, is not enough to undermine the recommendation as such.'