Description
Herbert Von Karajan - New Year's Concert 1988 - Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 & Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 / SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menus / Liner notes, Biography / RECORDED 31 DECEMBER 1988 AT THE PHILHARMONIE, BERLIN / DVD
Format: NTSC
Run time: 118 Minutes
UPC: 074644598698
- Aspect Ratio : 1.33:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : Yes
- MPAA rating : Unrated (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 5.3 x 7.5 x 0.62 inches; 4.8 Ounces
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, Classical, Color, NTSC
- Run time : 1 hour and 58 minutes
- Release date : October 26, 1999
- Actors : Various
- Dubbed: : English
- Language : English (PCM Stereo), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
- Studio : Sony Classical
- Number of discs : 1
If you’re a double-bassist or violist, the idea of a New Year’s concert of Strauss waltzes might well give you a case of the screaming habdabs. Millions of bars of ‘oom’ (bass) and ‘pah-pah’ (viola), while the other instruments get to have fun, can indeed be a kind of torture in most orchestras. But then most orchestras are not the Vienna Philharmonic, and most conductors aren’t Herbert von Karajan – and when those two titanic forces met for a legendary New Year’s Day concert of Strauss works in 1987, every ‘oom’ and every ‘pah-pah’ sounded like magic. Thirty-four years on the magic is as vivid as ever.
The most important factor is that Herbert von Karajan takes the music seriously, and there’s not a moment when he goes into ‘oom-pah-pah’ autopilot. But also – and it’s wonderful to hear in a conductor with such a reputation for Austro-German seriousness – he has fun. He pulls the tempi about, and keeps it lively and dance-like. It’s sensuously playful in a way that only Austrians seem to be able to manage. Try this gorgeous account of ‘The Blue Danube,’ performed as an encore, to get a taste of the event – and marvel at the accuracy of the idiosyncratic ‘Vienna rhythm,’ in which a teeny-tiny emphasis is put on the first of the ‘pahs’ in the ‘oom-pah-pah.’