Herbert von Karajan - Overview | Deutsche Grammophon

In honour of the 35th anniversary of Maestro Herbert von Karajan’s passing, STAGE+ is offering comprehensive access to Karajan’s complete DG and Decca albums, highlights from his Unitel video catalogue, and exclusive films from his Telemondial production company. Discover a new complete digital edition of his DG and Decca audio recordings, released weekly as 25 composer-focused volumes over the next few months. Enjoy a re-issue of Karajan’s monumental Ring cycle on a single blu-ray audio disc in high resolution, along with his complete cycle of Bruckner’s symphonies, newly re-mastered on 17 LPs, following the example of our Original Source Series.

STAGE+ is delighted to host the most extensive available audio-visual catalogue of performances by the legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan. The selection includes more than 50 filmed concerts and operas, including exclusively the Telemondial legacy from the 1980s.

Discover Herbert von Karajan on STAGE+

Watch Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1985 for free on STAGE+. Enjoy the Wiener Philharmoniker’s glowing sound and instinctive dance rhythms in this thrilling and warm performance, filmed in the golden hall of the Vienna Musikverein.

Discover Herbert von Karajan on STAGE+

DG released Karajan’s debut recording, the overture to Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with the Berlin Staatskapelle, in 1939. He made his final album for the yellow label, a visionary account of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, fifty years later. Karajan became Principal Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1955 and held the position for the rest of his life until 1989 – a partnership fully documented by DG, delivering recordings from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and St Matthew Passion to Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra Op.31 and Webern’s Six Movements for Orchestra Op.6. Our digital series of 25 composer-focused albums of Karajan’s complete recordings for DG and Decca is concluded today. 

Throughout his career, Herbert von Karajan (1908–89) was intrigued by new and improved recording techniques. In 1962–63, he conducted the first complete stereo Beethoven symphony cycle (the best-selling cycle of the Beethoven symphonies to date), and in 1981 he took part in the press conference held in Salzburg to present the compact disc to the world, having been involved in the development of the new medium. His recording of Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie was the first classical CD to be commercially released.  

Karajan’s iconic artistry arose from the awe-inspiring power of his podium presence, the poetic fluidity of his gestures and the passionate intensity of his music-making. His pursuit of perfection in performance – reinforced by meticulous preparation in rehearsal – and his cultivation of an ideally-blended orchestral sound were aided by advances in recording technology, from the introduction of the LP and stereo sound to the arrival of digital recording. 

Among its many repertoire highlights, Karajan’s complete recordings on DG and Decca contains complete cycles of the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Tchaikovsky, together with Anne-Sophie Mutter’s celebrated recordings of the Brahms, Bruch, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky violin concertos. The set also encompasses the conductor’s majestic interpretations of Mahler’s Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde, his profound readings of the Brahms, Mozart and Verdi Requiems and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and compelling performances of 20th-century masterworks by Bartók, Berg, Honegger, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky and Webern. In addition to Karajan’s fourteen complete opera recordings for DG, the set contains his eight complete operas for Decca, including Puccini’s La bohème with Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti and Nicolai Ghiaurov, considered by many to be among the greatest of all opera recordings. 

Karajan began making films with Unitel in the 60s. In the final decade of his life he established Telemondial and produced a further series of films which document not only his unique interpretations but also his farsighted awareness of the visual medium’s potential. Working in partnership with the Karajan Institute, we are delighted to have added the Telemondial productions to our existing Unitel collection in STAGE+. These include Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Verdi’s Don Carlo from the Salzburg Festival, Karajan’s hugely insightful late interpretations of Bruckner, and his celebrated appearance at the helm of the Wiener Philharmoniker for the New Year’s Concert of 1987.