Karajan Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, 355 Discs. Part Four! 1980s DG orchestral recordings, avoiding massive threads!
Jan 10, 2026 · 9:04 AM UTC
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 1 Karajan opened his 1980s series of recordings with Richard Strauss’s mighty Alpine Symphony. Frankly, I found it thrilling, though I have some fairly minor reservations. The massive climaxes are spectacularly built with inevitable power and the…
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…Summit is reached with a sense of huge open space and far-reaching vistas. Throughout, all sections of the orchestra blaze, though I do think the winds are occasionally less prominent than I would like. When the whole orchestra is playing loud, the multi-microphone approach…
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…does fee a touch crowded and details can be lost, but overall the sound picture is very pleasing indeed. It’s especially lovely at low levels, particularly in the meltingly beautiful ‘Night’ sections. Karajan really dos this work justice and I will return with great pleasure.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 2 Bruckner Symphony No.2. I find the first two movements rather dense and unyielding at times. The very close recording actually just brings a wall of strings behind which everything is difficult to hear. It’s clearly a loving account, but I needed more…
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…air around the instruments. Somehow things lightened up in the third and fourth movements, with winds more obviously audible and given a chance to fly. So, I struggled with this overall.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 3 Offenbach overtures. These are brilliant pieces and they are given brilliant performances. Such incredible Joie de Vivre doesn’t grow on trees. Karajan and his team let their hair down and party hard!
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 4 The first of three discs of Strauss Waltzes and Polkas. It’s all very elegant, colourful and jolly, it struck me that Karajan and the Berliners emulate the uneven Viennese Waltz rhythms, rather than naturally ‘feel’ them, but they do a great job anyway!
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 5 The second of three discs of Strauss Waltzes and Polkas. The Kaiser Waltz is particularly lovely here, it’s another really breezy, light and fluffy disc and I enjoys every second.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 6 Third of 3 discs of works from members of the Strauss family. It's all fun and light-hearted, with Karajan and his orchestra showing warmth and joie de vivre. Perhaps the waltzes can't quite match the VPO, but who cares when the music-making is so heartfelt?
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 7 Haydn Symphonies 82 and 87. These are lovingly-shaped performances but clearly fly in the face of any HIP ideas. These are big, bold and colourful and actually bloody gorgeous. Why not, eh?
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 8 Haydn Symphonies 84 and 85. Again, these are shamelessly big band, but no less sensitive or satisfying. Occasionally the textures feel a little dense, but it’s impressive music/m-making with bags of charm.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 9 Haydn Symphonies 83 and 86. More excellent Paris Symphonies from Karajan. These are perfectly credible, disarmingly charming performances with plenty of wit and grace. Sure they are big band, but they are none the worse for it.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 10 Bruckner Symphony No.3. Here, the homogeneity of sound Karajan is often criticised for does come through. He draws a wall of sound, which rather undermines atmosphere. There are moments of magic in the finale, but otherwise I found this cloying.
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Karajan’s credentials in Symphonies 7 - 9 are very well-known and documented, but isn’t this is really a lighter work? To approach the score with this kind of uncompromising weight one might apply to the later Symphonies feels wide of the mark to me.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 11 Karajan’s tendency to balance towards strings obviously works in Tchaikovsky’s serenade for…..strings! This is a fabulous account of the work, finding weighty intensity in the 1st movement, introspection in the 3rd but light-footed joy in the 2nd and 4th. Classy stuff!
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 11 also contains Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings. This one, sadly, plays into the hands of those who declare that Karajan over-beautifies everything. He does so here, manipulating every phrase for maximum prettiness. The music loses freshness as a result! Pass.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 12 Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung receives a towering performance that doesn’t feel like a performance at all! The work unfolds naturally and inevitably with a genuine feeling of transportation at the end. It’s a deeply moving, powerfully communicative recording.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 12 Strauss’s Metamorphosen. Marginally faster than his 1971 version, this is an opulent and deeply moving document. The earlier DG version is not entirely disappointing laced, but this really is something special. Karajan’s Strauss is always impressive.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 13 a technically very impressive Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Mutter and Karajan. It borders on saccharine for my tastes, but then again that might actually be the work. Shock, horror. It’s not my favourite at all! I found this a bit superficial to be honest.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 13 Bruch’s Violin Concerto No.1 with Mutter once again on the fiddle. It’s a decent performance. Technically perfect, but musically a bit hollow. The orchestral sound is splendidly huge.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 14 Shostakovich Symphony No.10 in an intensely communicative performance. Karajan lets his strings dig deep and articulate, which prevents any smoothing of sharp edges. I personally feel it is a slight advance on his previous version, especially for sound.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 15 takes us to new levels of pain. Karajan’s Nielsen Inextinguishable is probably about as bad as his Shostakovich Tenth is great. The first three movements are touch and go, but bearable. Balances are weird and pacing is confused, but Karajan makes…
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…some sense at least. It’s his own version of ‘sense’ but at least you can hear some kind of conception. But when the strings rush into the finale all hell breaks loose and it just feels unrecognisable. Disturbing and disfigured were the words coming to mind.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 16 Mozart’s Great Mass. Ordinarily I find Karajan’s Mozart flabby and rhythmically loose. Absolutely not so here. It’s a taut and unsentimental reading, though Barbara Hendricks is on heart-melting form. A very nice reading, grandly expansive but not overblown.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 17 Bruckner Symphony No.1 in a recording that sounds pretty aged and certainly not digital! But it’s a dramatic reading, avoiding the episodic disintegration that can happen in some performances. Powerful, saturated textures add to the drama.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 18 is a powerful, but flawed Planets. Mars, Venus, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune made me happy, particularly in the magically atmospheric quiet moments, but also when angry power is required. Jupiter left me joylessly cold and Mercury is somehow less than fluid.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 19 Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Grieg's Holberg Suite and Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. all three need much lighter and buoyant treatment than they receive here, but there is no denying the quality of string playing. Holberg is very beautiful.
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#KarajanDG1980s CD 20 Karajan's Saint-Saëns Symphony No.3 is not generally pushed as one of the great performances, but I do think it is underrated. Why? Because the original recording of the organ is spectacularly poor. But in the version I heard, derived from the big Karajan...
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...box, the organ is completely acceptable. Even so, when you get past the organ, there is so much more to the this work. And Karajan invests a great deal of romantic energy into his interpretation. The strings deliver incredible refinement and the emotional arc is...
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