Rehearsing an Orchestra: Herbert von Karajan. Part V. A Conducting Primer by Leonid Grin

Herbert von Karajan

The first time Leonid Grin met Herbert von Karajan was in 1969 when Karajan brought the Berlin Philharmonic to the Soviet Union on tour.  “He gave a master class for conductors in St. Petersburg and I was at that master class,” said Grin, who was 22 at the time.  “I have an amount of beautiful and very interesting notes.  He (Karajan) said, for example, ‘The worst enemy of music is the bar line.  The best music was written at the time of Gregorian chant, when there were no bar lines.  That’s the way music should flow.’

“Karajan was a perfectionist,” said Grin, in a discussion of rehearsal styles at the 2010 Neeme Järvi Summer Academy in Pärnu, Estonia.  “He would very, very meticulously destroy these divisions, the four-measure phrases, bar by bar, phrase by phrase.  He was very conscientious about achieving a fliessend (“flowing”) mood.”

Grin showed the class a video of Karajan rehearsing Schumann’s Fourth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic.  “The first note is just A.   He works this one note four times with the Berlin Philharmonic.  His goal is the quality of the sound.  If the color of that one note is wrong, then the string entrance will be wrong.  It should tune the whole orchestra into the timbre, the intensity of the vibrato and the coordination.  He works it until the tone that comes is what he wants.”

So it was in Karajan’s 1969 master class in St. Petersburg, said Grin, who immigrated to New York in 1981.  "There was a place in the Brahms Third Symphony where a brass chord was met by string pizzicato.  There was an audience.  The conductor conducted and Karajan said to them (the audience not the orchestra) ‘Das ist falsch’ (“That is false.”).  He didn’t turn to the orchestra, he didn’t stand up.  He was talking about pitches.  The orchestra understood and played superbly.  He was like a magnet.

“ Some people are blessed with that gift,” said Grin.  “He was sitting with his back to them (the orchestra), but he concentrated that power.  Of course everybody was watching him, but he was like a madman holding us all together.  And he was working with young conductors.  We were breathing with him, and it was perfect.”

Karajan’s practice was never to leave work unfinished, said Grin.  “If you start to rehearse something, never move forward until you are really satisfied.”

Next: Sergiu Celibidache.