Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan's affiliation with Nazi Germany and his dictatorial approach to conducting still cause controversy.
We take look at Karajan in quotes: ten comments by critics and performers about the controversial conductor over the years. Then, we end with three memorable quotes from the man himself.
Karajan in quotes
‘The Führer has a very low opinion of Karajan and his conducting’
Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, revealing Adolf Hitler's view of Karajan, 1940
‘If they [the critics] overrate material qualities such as the technique of conducting from memory, they are prizing hard work instead of artistic practice.
'They are aligning themselves with the stupid people who never seem to be in short supply, and who feel nostalgic for the circus when they are in the concert hall.'
Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (left, centre) reacts jealously to positive Karajan reviews in 1940
‘Now proudly conscious of his unique eminence, and having more power and authority than any conductor ever had, [he] is out for his last ounce of flesh, both in conditions and for the satisfaction of his ego.’
EMI record producer Walter Legge (pictured on right) on Karajan contract negotiations, 1958
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'Karajan was absolutely an inescapable presence. I first saw him in my teens playing the Brahms symphonies in the Royal Festival Hall, and I was fascinated and slightly repelled, almost, by the control and the distance and the perfection.
'I'd never heard a sound like it, and to be honest I couldn't make head nor tail of it. The idea of a conductor who would not make any visual contact with his orchestra at all is still something that I find utterly inexplicable.'
Conductor Simon Rattle
‘All over the world, people go in herds to see and hear him. He is undoubtedly a master of the orchestra, and he has some hypnotic power, though he often conducts with closed eyes…’
English writer and critic Neville Cardus (pictured centre), 1960
‘To the very end, he was accustomed to exercising authority, perhaps without compassion. I don’t know to what extent he was a compassionate man.’
Violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin on Karajan's lack of compassion
'His rehearsals were intense and the orchestra was disciplined, which they weren’t always with other conductors. Arguing with him wasn’t a possibility. He was God. He was always right even when he was not right.'
Thomas Brandis (pictured centre), Berlin Philharmonic concertmaster from 1962-83
'Something almost evil'
‘I got the impression from the concerts I attended towards the end of his life that there was something almost evil in the way he exerted the power, and that that was to the detriment of the music.’
Conductor John Eliot Gardiner
'Bordering on the miraculous'
‘Often in rehearsal Karajan didn’t conduct. The art was to make the orchestra listen to itself. Critics sniped but, for musicians, what he did bordered on the miraculous.’
Conductor Mariss Jansons
‘Karajan had been all concentration. All the normal things you associate with recording – time, money, the worries you have – had simply vanished. The music was so important to him, the real world seemed to fall away.’
Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade describes Karajan recording Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande
What did Karajan say?
Here are three quotes that vividly illustrate Herbert von Karajan's own conducting philosophy.
'He who reaches all his goals has probably not chosen them high enough'
'No music is vulgar, unless it is played in a way that makes it so'
'In our profession someone can be very brilliant and acquire total technical mastery. Yet in the last resort, the only thing that really counts is his quality as a human being.
'For music is created by Man for Man. And if someone sees nothing more than notes in it, this can perhaps be very interesting, but it cannot enrich him. And music should exist for one purpose only; to enrich Man and give him something he has lost in most respects.'