Music plays on as pandemic closes Sydney’s concert halls

With concert halls closed due to the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis there’s no reason you need to miss out on your daily dose of music if you can still play CDs.

German conductor Herbert von Karajan’s complete Decca recordings have been released to mark the 30th anniversary of his death.

• Jazz from the top shelf
• 120 years of mellow yellow
• Celebration of a great voice

In fact, Universal Music has released some must-have box sets featuring some landmark recordings on the Decca label.

Pick of the bunch is the 33-disc set of the complete Decca recordings by Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and, on the spectacular recording of Puccini’s La Boheme – featuring Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni – the Berlin Philharmonic.

The release of the set marks the 30th anniversary of the German maestro’s death. As well as La Boheme the set includes Verdi’s Aida (1959); Offenbach’s Die Fledermaus (1960); Verdi’s Otello (1961) and Puccini’s Tosca. There’s also a 1970 recording of his Salzburg Festival production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Gudonov, which for this listener’s taste is a little too sumptuous and elegant, lacking the visceral, organic feeling of Boris Christoff’s recordings.

REVERED

Karajan was born and raised in Salzburg so not surprisingly his Mozart recordings are almost as treasured as the groundbreaking Beethoven symphony cycle that he recorded in 1963 with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. The Decca set includes the last two symphonies – coupled with equally magnificent readings of Haydn’s London and Drumroll symphonies, as well as a blue riband complete Marriage of Figaro starring Jose van Dam and Ileana Cotrubas.

Karajan is a revered interpreter of Richard Strauss, whom he knew as a young conductor, and Also Sprach Zarathustra – the actual recording used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – is the first disc of the set, quickly followed by three more tone poems and the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome.

Beethoven’s Seventh, Brahms’s Third and Dvorak’s Eighth symphonies are featured, along with Tchaikovsky’s ballets, a jaw-dropping The Planets by Gustav Holst and a Christmas album featuring American soprano Leontyne Price, who Karajan championed despite the racist taunts of the Viennese establishment.

You can get Herbert von Karajan: The Complete Decca Recordings for $199.75 at Classicsdirect.com.au.

If von Karajan was by far the most famous conductor of his day and sold more records than anyone else, Dutchman Paul van Kempen has slipped into obscurity. In his lifetime he was more popular as a recording artist, his complete recordings for the Philips label have been reissued by Decca in a 10-disc set. Recorded in the 1950s before the advent of stereo, their quality is surprisingly good, aided by the fact that van Kempen conducted all the top orchestras including the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam and the Berlin Philharmonic.

VILIFIED

There’s plenty of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky alongside the occasional rarity – Isaie, le Prophete by 20th century Polish composer Alexandre Tansman and Max Reger’s Hiller Variations, for example – and one of the undoubted highlights is an edge of the seat performance of Verdi’s Requiem, which has become a collector’s item over the years.

Van Kempen was much vilified, mainly due to the fact that he became a German citizen and conducted in that country during the Hitler years. He was cleared of any wrongdoing but that didn’t stop protesters disrupting performances of Verdi’s Requiem with tear gas. In one concert the entire orchestra left the stage, leaving van Kempen a lone figure under the spotlight.

You can get the box set at Classicsdirect.com.au for $59.95.