Selecting from the richest back-catalogue in the world is no easy task, but it is my impression that the high noon of the analogue era has been unfairly neglected by the avatars of EMI reissue policy. Patiently we await the restoration of much of Karajan’s Sibelius, but here at last is his opulent mid-1970s Strauss, not always ideally urgent but ever suave and sophisticated. The remastering has retained the wide range of the originals, focusing detail better in a big, sometimes cavernous, acoustic space even if, to my ears, that fabulous Berlin string tone is not always so well served. Wolfgang Gulich, who worked with Karajan over many years, has been brought in to supervise the process and his comments disarm criticism: “To be honest, I have always made recordings for myself, with a sound that I liked, and I was lucky that I had the same feelings about the sound as Karajan. This is the only secret... I’m very happy to have the opportunity, using new technology, to remaster these recordings that I made over a 20-year period. I’m sure that this is what Karajan would like and that one day he’ll give me his comments!”
The most important of the Strauss performances is the Symphonia domestica. The conductor recorded it only the once and, as is often the case in his overstuffed discography, the one-offs are rarely also-rans. Even this playing is not absolutely impeccable – sharp-eared LS criticized the trumpet intonation in his original review – but only those implacably opposed to Karajan’s brand of manipulated orchestral sonority need hesitate. Rudolf Kempe is less insistently luxurious, as befits some of Strauss’s more exquisitely tender and beguiling invention; his account is available only as part of a three-disc box.
The second of Karajan’s recorded Heldenlebens seems less like an obligatory purchase, for all its sonic splendours. It is the most self-confident (or should that read self-satisfied?) of the three and it is difficult to avoid the impression that an indefinable element of freshness has been allowed to evaporate. The climaxes are unfailingly grand and sumptuous – deeply impressive in their way. The battle scene has not yet slowed into the deliberate, minutely chronicled campaign of his last performances. Despite the presence of Mstislav Rostropovich, Karajan’s second Don Quixote is also on the sedate side and I have to say that I derived more pleasure from the recently reissued Janigro/Reiner version of 1959. Despite its narrower dynamic range (and at one point near-inaudibility), the orchestral contribution is easier to listen to as pure sound and considerably warmer in terms of feeling. The Berliners’ lack of spontaneity was noted by RL in the course of his generally very positive review in 1976.
EMI’s generous supplement of Wagnerian bleeding chunks is derived from a couple of generally well-received LPs from the same period. The charge of over-refinement is not entirely avoided by the Parsifal Prelude to Act 1 – almost as slow as Toscanini’s BBC relay but altogether less intense. The blood courses more strongly in the excerpts from Tannhauser and Tristan, though again some will feel that the sensuous moulding of sound takes undue precedence over substantive communication. All three discs come elegantly packaged in the livery of the Karajan Edition. That said, the execution of the concept is inferior to that of, say, DG’s Originals series. While full notes are included, it is not always possible to make sense of the recording information. Nor would I have commissioned the Berlin-oriented chronology of career highlights. The results are tendentious and could scarcely be otherwise.'