Herbert von Karajan’s strengths did not lie in the German symphonic repertoire, but there were some exceptions: the late Bruckner symphonies (Nos. 7-9), some of this 1970s Beethoven cycle (No. 9 especially), and most surprisingly, Haydn’s Paris Symphonies. The Mozart and Brahms performances are good if not necessarily among the best available, and in the Haydn London Symphonies he failed to capture the muscular vivacity of the Paris set–tempos drag, and the early digital sonics are oppressive (also in early Bruckner). Elsewhere, his trademark slickness rules, especially in Schumann and Mendelssohn, performances that verge on the repellent. Gorgeous string playing, relentlessly legato, buries winds, brass, and timpani and sucks most of the color from music that asks for as much as the artists have to give.
The Tchaikovsky cycle, however, is mostly splendid–Karajan recorded some of these symphonies as much as he did Beethoven (if not more), and these are the performances that prove the truth of the statement that opened this review. It’s a pity that DG did not include in this set his Shostakovich Tenth, Sibelius, Honegger, Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Mahler Fifth and Ninth, and Prokofiev Fifth. Then we would have had a Karajan Symphony box to really cheer about.
