Karajan & Ein Heldenleben - brief survey
I was a student in April 1985 in Sheffield. I borrowed a friend's hi-fi for the evening to record a concert that became very significant in my education in classical music. The Berlin Philharmonic were in London at the Festival Hall to play Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) under the baton of Herbert von Karajan. They had played the work in concert four times that Spring each time coupled with Bach's Second Orchestral Suite and Beethoven's Fourth Symphony. For some reason the Bach was dropped for the London performance. They had also recorded the work in February in that year: audio recording was released by DG and later a DVD by Sony. I didn't know the work at all but was immediately blown away both by the quality of the orchestral writing and teh intriguing idea of teh composer as subject of his own work and the sheer beauty of the Berliner's sound. None of their recordings captured that sound - but I guess that's always been the c...
