Customer Rating:  
Summary: Thrilling Brahms
Comment: Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in Brahms was always special. Even his final years produced an excellent recording of the Violin Concerto with his protege Ann Sophie Mutter. These performances from the 1970s provide that unique dark and deep Berlin string sound and brilliant golden brass so suited to bringing out the best in this composer's unique sound world. The performances are classically direct with plenty of passion. Karajan always excelled in Nos 1 and 2. He, like many conductors including Toscanini, had difficulty in getting No 3 just right. This performance is certainly his best attempt. No 4 is also excellent.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another superb Brahms DVD set from DGG
Comment: I loved the Brahms symphonies conducted by Leonard Bernstein that were released several months ago on DVD by DGG. In my review, I noted that Bernstein used extremely broad tempos, often making Brahms sound more like Mahler. One gets used to those Adagio speed slow movements because Bernstein makes them sound so right, wringing pure emotion from them as only he could. Now DGG offers us the anti-Bernstein in Herbert von Karajan's splendid set of Brahms symphonies recorded in 1973. Karajan conducts them with eyes closed, often intently enraptured by the music, smiling occasionally when a passage or solo sounds just right to his ear. He conducts Brahms with a greater sense of urgency than does Bernstein: the First symphony is 11 minutes shorter as conducted by Karajan! Nothing is rushed but there is what can only be described as emotional compression, an intensity of expression that sounds quicker than Bernstein's performances.
By comparing these different visions of Brahm's great symphonies, one is confronted by the rather stark differences between these two great conductors. Bernstein inhabits these symphonies as a sort of surrogate composer, making them his own, adopting a very personal mode of expression, channeling Brahms as if the symphonies were part of a musical seance on a rainy afternoon. Karajan conducts them as if he were a spectator at a concert and this was how he most enjoyed hearing them played. This emotional distancing makes sense, in fact it is most helpful, because Brahms is a Romantic composer by way of temporal contingency and probably not by inclination. In fact, Brahms is a profoundly Classical composer, his closest antecedent being Mozart, with whom Brahms shares a deep expressive ambiguity and a disinclination to wallow in strong emotional outbursts.
Karajan conducts Brahms as if he were conducting Mozart. In the process, he elicits great beauty from the Berlin Philharmonic, their slow movements sounding autumnal and burnished by sadness, heartbreaking but never self-indulgent. The Second symphony is profound and tragic, yet never yielding its mellow loveliness. The Third symphony is more ephemeral, quicksilver and slightly elfin in quality. The Fourth symphony wraps itself in the weightiness of the Bach derived eight bar passacaglia, whose variations construct the final movement. All the while, Brahms is looking back at a vanished world, the symphony's musical notes sounding like the soft whisper of ghosts. These are powerfully atmospheric performances, with lovely orchestral colors and a paradoxically calm yet urgent expressiveness. This was von Karajan at the height of his powers.
The two DVDs last for 161 minutes. The picture is digitally remastered, the sound in PCM stereo and DTS 5.1 crisp and clear. The films are quite well done, utilizing concert footage as well as discrete studio closeups. Karajan's Brahms performances are exemplary and are most strongly recommended.
Mike Birman
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![Brahms: The Symphonies [DVD Video]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31BlRuUy8iL._SL160_.jpg)
