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Stephen Pollard

ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard

Opinion

Art and the performance

February 1, 2008 24:00
2 min read

Dominic Lawson has a very good piece today on that old perennial - whether great art can be made by a shit: On Monday, the Berliner Morgenpost criticised the first of many celebratory television documentaries which, it claimed, "wiped off the table" the awkward issue of Karajan's membership of the Nazi Party. The newspaper reminded us that he joined the Salzburg branch of the NSDAP as early as 1933; then, showing a certain determination in the matter, he joined again in Aachen in 1935. After the war, Karajan was restricted in his work by the Allies' "de-Nazification" committees; somewhat paradoxically, he fetched up in London, where he became the principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1948 and rebuilt his career with spectacular effect. Yet there was, in fact, no paradox. Karajan was a supreme opportunist – or careerist, if you prefer.

...Much as we would like it to be the case, there is no connection between good character and good art – in music as in anything else. Bobby Fischer, who died a fortnight ago, regularly expressed a violent and abusive anti-Semitism which would not have been out of place in Der Sturmer; but Fischer's best chess games have an elegance and creativity which compares with a Mozart symphony. He had, in that sense, a beautiful mind. He was also a hateful person.

My own view - irrelevant to the point at issue - is that Karajan was in any case greatly overrated. I have - it's impossible not to if one is serious about collecting CDs - a great number of his recordings. How many do I listen to? Hardly any. His Richard Strauss is superb, and I would say unsurpassable. But that says so much about Karajan's music . It is full of the sheen - the velvet, if you like - which so much Strauss demands.