"He was perhaps the greatest conductor of the 20th century." "The Renaissance man reborn." "A Machiavelli with the soul of a child." ""I have power, I turn the thumbscrews."" "Like a bird flying in the sky and seeing the world from a new angle." "A buttoned-up personality." "Whether he was always like that, whether God created him that way," "I can't say." "When I met him he was cold and detached." "He could also be very funny and rascally." "A positive, friendly man who loved and cherished his orchestra." "Then came the late years when he turned bitter." "I don't know if he was very cultured and intelligent but he was clever and smart." "He was not an intellectual." "A grand master of psychology." "He was a man who filled the concert hall." "A terrific fellow." "One of the loneliest people I ever met." "I gave my first public recital when I was four and a half and persevered in Salzburg until I got my degree." "Then came the decisive day when I discovered that my two hands weren't enough to express what I wanted to express." "In this predicament my lifelong friend and mentor, Councillor Paumgartner, said:" ""There's only one thing you can do:" "you must become a conductor."" "or Beauty as I see it" "Then came the day in Salzburg when I first stood in front of a full symphony orchestra and was allowed to conduct a concert." "I felt as if I'd suddenly returned to my long-lost native land." "Everything happened so naturally and I knew that it would fill my entire life from that moment on." "Good morning, gentlemen!" "Musically he was highly conservative and faithful to the text, old-fashioned, you might say." "One, two..." "Much better already." "But please make the link even longer." "It should sound like this:" "That's what creates this ostinato character." "Now the transition again." "The second violins alone." "The piece begins slowly, heavily." "That's the atmosphere at the beginning." "So don't begin with an accent." "Give yourselves time..." "He had a quite special feeling for sound." "And then don't place one beside the other, but link the two." "May I just have this detail." "He worked with the orchestra as if they were beginners." "Now it sounds quite different, with the legato." "Please, let's begin again!" "It was very well played and then he said to them:" ""Now fill those four notes with life."" ""Fill them with life" — that's easily said." "I'd never heard such sound and power before." "When Karajan thought a passage important he'd have the groups play alone and musicians don't like that very much." "Flute and first violins, please." "And listen to the flute." "The flute brightens the sound as we need it." "One trains people to become a unit, to do something together that is beautiful and valuable in itself." "People are better because of it." "They come to me and want to share my positivism and I can share it with them because I'm convinced myself." "Karajan had a quality rarely found in German musicians:" "an enormous sense of colour." "Please, not like that." "It's like this:" "It's like a little ripple, not like this:" "Every schoolmaster loves to hear, right after the downbeat..." "Then it was truly rehearsed to a tee." "You're not sustaining the expression on the A flat." "It starts well, then suddenly stops." "No, how can you be so brainless!" "And when he got the sound he wanted he'd say:" ""Yes, please play with just that sound."" "When musicians believe in a conductor he can do what he wants with the orchestra." "That's what made Karajan such a magician." "But he had the aptitude to show it." "When Karajan was young he once conducted "Elektra" for Richard Strauss." "People think Strauss didn't care much about anything in old age." "But Strauss was completely spellbound by young Karajan's ecstasy and skill." "Later the tone got a bit silken." "Now there's definitely too little legato." "The whole thing must be in soft focus." "Critics often complained of it." "Then quite suddenly one felt that his conducting wasn't so direct any more..." "It's all about a single note, a bit down, a bit up." "...but much too concerned with beauty, perhaps a bit too ethereal." "No." "Like on a harpsichord, every note is clear and distinct." "One can view it positively:" "what he wants to say with music he tries to say by shaping the sound." "Now, tone." "Make that last note especially beautiful, otherwise it always sounds like throwing a sack of coal from a wagon!" "That's it, many thanks!" "The conductor's profession is very hard to describe in words." "The conductor himself doesn't produce a single sound so he needs an instrument:" "the orchestra." "And when the relationship works it's a constant give and take." "He was able to get the best out of a musician." "Conducting also means presenting music physically to the audience." "The hands, the fingertips, the motions and the personality:" "the figure of power." "Karajan was a tyrant." "He always said:" ""That's how it has to be."" "When he noticed that he wasn't getting all he could get then he was really tyrannical." "One can't conduct without enjoying wielding power." "No orchestra would put up with it." ""And if any of you are unwilling", narrowing his steel-blue eyes to slits," ""l'll twist the screws so tight"" ""that every one of you comes crawling to me on your stomachs."" "A conductor transmits energy so that it has an impact." "If you can't do that, no matter how much you know about music, your conducting will be bland." "That's one of the secrets of the Karajan legacy:" "people followed him voluntarily." "They wanted to play for him." "Conductors like Karajan tell people through their actions:" ""That's why I became an orchestral musician."" "He raised the profession to an entirely new level." "Now give me more crescendo!" "Unlike Abbado or Maazel, Karajan worked his way up the ladder." "Ulm, the first stop in my artistic career." "I'd had absolutely no practical experience." "When Karajan was a young conductor he was happy when we gave him something free." "A butcher's wife would give him some meat and sausages because he was as poor as a church mouse." "Karajan was always precise." "His principle was that two things in life require a dictatorship:" "the military and music." "He made every musician rehearse until he got it right." "He said: "You know, it's an indelible experience"" ""to have to conduct 'Meistersinger' in Ulm"" ""with a small ensemble"" ""and no decent singers for the 'Meistersinger' roles."" ""You suddenly get a feeling for quality and become ambitious."" "All his efforts had the aim of making the theatre and its performances better according to his way of thinking." "To do this he had to demote all the principals he found wanting to the second desks." "The individual didn't count, only the artistic institution mattered." "And in those years there were three million unemployed." "The former concertmaster, a guy named Döbke, couldn't get over not being concertmaster any more." "During the break someone whispered to me what he planned to do:" "to shoot Karajan at the rostrum." "I immediately went to the intendant and reported it." "He summoned Karajan and Döbke and had Döbke frisked." "He really did have a loaded pistol in his pocket!" "Karajan said he wouldn't conduct a note with that man in his orchestra." "So Döbke was sacked on the spot." "Christmas of 1931." "The Ulm intendant told Karajan:" ""With gifts like yours"" ""you've got to get out of here." Karajan wouldn't have quit on his own." "He was, you might say, "chucked out"." "When I left Ulm I was penniless and given the competition in those days my prospects were grim." "Karajan applied everywhere and tried to audition." "Then he had to travel back with the night train, second class." "He couldn't afford a sleeper." "He developed a lifelong aversion to travelling by rail." "Later he could travel by aeroplane." "He also conducted in Aachen." "Then something very interesting happened." "The musicians said:" ""This young man seems very talented"" ""but he's a bit high-strung." "We don't really want him."" "But the head of culture in Aachen said:" ""Wait, there's something about him."" "And he made Karajan principal conductor without bothering about the orchestra." "It was the greatest stroke of luck in my life back then." "My parents had engagements in Aachen, and we cooked Viennese style at home." "So he often came to us for dinner because he loved his Viennese cuisine!" "I was five or six at the time and I had to curtsy to him and disappear into my bedroom." "I found it horrible!" "But that's how I met Herbert von Karajan." "He would get up at four every morning and study his scores;" "he was incredibly ambitious." "He knew everything by heart, every opera, every symphony." "That's something that has to be learned." "You'd been a party member for some time." "Was it out of conviction?" "Not at all!" "My party membership dates from the day when I was appointed Generalmusikdirektor in Aachen." "He joined the party twice." "He probably forgot the first time." "My parents said that his party badge always lay next to his eraser and his pencil sharpener." "Of course Karajan was no Nazi, but one of the millions of fellow travellers." "He was simply ambitious and wanted to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, the top orchestra along with the Vienna Philharmonic." "Artists have to eat, even in a dictatorship." "In the course of her visit Frau Wagner attended the grand symphony concert given at the palace under the direction of Herbert von Karajan." "Of course artists need to be admired." "If you deny them admiration they'll emigrate or commit suicide." "Of course artists bear responsibilities like every other citizen but no more than that." "The Germans and even the Austrians ran after Hitler in droves." "The difficulties began after the war was over and it took two years before I was again allowed to practise my profession." "Instead of Mozart we're retracing the footsteps of Johann Strauss because we happen to be in Vienna." "Here is today's honoured guest." "To you the orchestra is like an extension of yourself." "Yes, but it took a while." "Basically it's easier to stand in front of an orchestra that has a fully rounded preconceived opinion of the music." "— It can't be forced." "— No, it can't." "Now each member is an individual and still they form a unity." "Perhaps it's only comparable to a flight of birds." "I've always been fascinated to watch three hundred birds steered by a common will." "They have no visible leader yet their movements are perfectly coordinated and exquisitely beautiful." "I find it horrifying to imagine the cosmos steered by violence rather than harmony as I see it." "When you reach the moment where a hundred and twenty people become a single entity then directing the whole is only an activity of the mind." "Even when my eyes are closed I know exactly when an oboist is running out of breath and with a slight motion I make the passage faster than rehearsed." "The next day he asks me:" ""How did you notice that?"" ""I feel it precisely," I tell him." "The best things happen all by themselves." "Now let's begin." "Thank you." "Bernstein told me he gave Karajan a lot of help during his ugly contretemps in America a long time ago." "He told me that Karajan asked for his help, which is very "un-Karajan-like"." "I believe he let Karajan conduct the New York Philharmonic whereas Karajan never let Bernstein conduct in Berlin." "Later he didn't need to, for he himself was already the greatest." "With Karajan the great age of the Vienna Opera was reborn with enormous changes in the basic functioning of the house." "He introduced performances in the original language —" "here, in our Vienna Opera, where for centuries all performances had been sung in German." "Mahler performed everything in German;" "Karajan does it in Italian." "Nobody from 1918 to the present day left a deeper impression on Austria's international image than Herbert von Karajan as head of this house." "At last politics came to art rather than vice versa." "Now people wanted something from him and that was a good thing." "He got everyone to agree, even in his recordings." "We travelled from Vienna to La Scala, and La Scala came here." "When Karajan was in the building we knew he was up in the opera, that is, not in the auditorium." "Everyone tried to sing better." "I was about to sing Eboli's great aria and suddenly he appeared backstage." "I said: "Maestro von Karajan, what are you doing here?"" ""When I see you I get terribly nervous!"" ""Don't worry", he said, "just go out and sing beautifully."" "He spread fear, innocently and involuntarily, just by his presence." "He had difficulties communicating;" "he said little and tended to mumble..." "Just play, then you can incoherently, but no one had the courage to ask him what he'd said." "My mother told me that he stuttered as a young man in Aachen." "He couldn't really express himself." "I think that's why he gave so few interviews in his early years." "And then he had these odd habits of speech:" ""Well then, see, I told you..." "you know what I mean..."" "Look, now he gives him this here:" ""What should I do?" "Talk, talk..."" "Perhaps he did that to cover this up." "Anyway, he was very detached." "I can hardly remember him using the familiar "du", not even in rehearsal." "When Karajan conducted the musicians didn't say "Karajan's conducting", they said: "The boss is conducting."" ""The boss is here, in the building, the boss has left" — relief!" "He was the "boss" in the full sense of the term and everyone acknowledged it." "He demanded respect but he also felt respect — tit for tat." "It was very simple:" "when he was here it meant that Karajan was here and it guaranteed top quality." "I remember, his licence number was 151." "Three-digit numbers were rare back then." "He arrived in tails, driving by car to the stage entrance, and went immediately to the rostrum." "But always very late." "We gradually got used to it." "But at first we thought he wouldn't come or had forgotten the performance." "When people who were allowed to enter visited him at the intermission they knew the secret admission code:" "when you press this blind panel the door opens." "The young generation, to which I belonged, cried bitterly when he finally left or rather was made to leave." "He simply drew the necessary conclusions." "It did huge damage to the Opera." "Ultimately the daily operations couldn't come with the perfection I was looking for." "At first I had my hopes but then I saw it wasn't feasible." "At the end of my tenure I realized that, even if it had been feasible, it wouldn't have been desirable:" "nobody wants every day to be a holiday." "It's a long story." "We went to a restaurant with a pianola that played really old songs." "And we danced." "The next day I had swollen feet because he couldn't dance." "He tried taking special lessons." "He never told me but a friend did." "Music was on his mind and in his heart." "Then we met again in London." "Herbert immediately asked:" ""What are you doing next week?"" "I had an evening with Clara Haskil," "Chaplin, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Walter Legge and myself — a little girl who didn't know much about life." "I didn't realize then and I haven't fully realized yet just how lucky I was." "I saw my husband's blue eyes and something happened." "After that we almost never left each other's side." "When I paint" "I can't listen to his music." "It moves me far too much." "In the two years after I left Vienna" "I saw quite a few theatres." "Salzburg has every amenity and I feel attached to this house." "This is where I belong." "I was born here and I quite simply want to work here." "I was happiest to be present at the rehearsals, to watch a production emerging from scratch." "An empty stage..." "Walk from far back directly to the front..." "The rehearsal with playback for the singers is a very good idea." "Once again, the scene with all three of you." "When he comes, the crucial thing is to keep your distance." "But then, when you're next to him, it's this constant search for where he comes from, what has happened, why don't the prisoners come back?" "Like a helicopter flying over a chicken coop." "Have you ever seen that?" ""May I now learn it from you?"" ""This house is mine, this land is mine, Hunding is your host."" "And now comes the cue." "Take your time!" "Well, what's he doing?" "That's okay, but you still have to sing." "Are you ready?" "Please don't talk!" "I've secured it." "Now once again." "Take a point out there to think about and keep your eyes on it." "He was magnificent in demonstrating the things he'd imagined." "He had these light streams on stage and at a certain motif you had to step directly into the light." "When someone didn't do it right he'd jump out of the orchestra pit." "People used to say of Wagner that he wrote too many notes, that he's unplayable." "But it has its justification just when you're playing as many of them as possible." "They form a smooth, shimmering backdrop on which a single flame..." "you can almost hear it sputter." "Play it together with the piccolo." "The music is written for this orchestra and for the first time I understood what Wagner meant when he said:" ""If this music is played as I've conceived it"" ""it'll have to be banned because it's too dangerous."" "He began with "Walküre", which is much more effective than "Rheingold", "Siegfried" or "Götterdämmerung"." "I'd never heard an orchestra play with such a tender, translucent, meaningful sound." "He was a tremendous aesthete and he had something to say." "He'd already carefully studied the parts." "But he didn't want to squabble with a stage director;" "he'd rather do the whole thing himself." "He had a director's chair and a director's cap and a police whistle, just like a Hollywood movie director!" "The performance of "Otello"" "with Mirella Freni and Jon Vickers — incredible!" "I sat in the front row right behind the conductor." "I couldn't sit still the entire evening." "He radiated such dynamism when he stood there and conducted, even though I sat behind him." "It never let up." "There was something about him." "I couldn't sleep." "I walked the streets of Salzburg the whole night through as if I were hypnotized." "I love an orderly life and don't hold with intuition coming from alcohol or things like that." "When you study a new work or one you haven't done in a long time it can sometimes happen that you hear it or read it and it just doesn't come off." "Then you have to take it up again at the same hour every day, after you've freed your mind of irrelevant thoughts, and suddenly it's there!" "That's why orderliness is so important." "What I admired about him, apart from his music, was his discipline." "A man of remarkable self-discipline, even in his private life." "His clock was always ticking inside him." "Sometimes he conducted like this:" ""Oh, no, he has to catch a train again or dash off to the airport!"" "Otherwise he wouldn't be allowed to fly his private aeroplane." "I've done some flying myself so I sat behind him and watched." "He was in love with technology, with red and blue buttons." "It was wonderful to see everything glowing like a Christmas tree." "Then he got very nervous and everything went very fast." "His fat American pilot sat beside him and when they were ready to start the fat guy would merely do this:" "He'd make everything ready for take-off, everything Karajan had overlooked." "I thought: this plane can't crash;" "after all, Karajan's inside it!" "I always got sick to my stomach at the landing because he dropped altitude like a madman." "You take the jeep!" "My daily walk is absolutely essential to me, like a piece of bread." "I can only see it like this:" "that I have a task to accomplish and my fate or my Maker has given me lavish resources to do it and I have to tend them." "But now my time is getting very short." "We're ready to record." "When he was young he was fascinated by it because music films in that sense didn't exist back then." "Filmed opera maybe, but a filmed concert?" "Then Karajan came along for the first time and hired a thriller director, Clouzot." "Clouzot said: "Herbert's already so tired that his eyes no longer speak."" "I said: "It worked for me." "For you it did"" ""but the other interviews were ghastly."" "Those are Hungarian allusions, a sort of pepper or rather paprika." "I want it not only to sound beautiful but to look beautiful, too." "Music is an embodiment of beauty." "And that led to a certain extreme:" "he even had scenes with musicians re-shot in the studio after the film was finished only because the horn players' movements seemed too vulgar or impulsive." "He actually took his reputation as a "conductator" into the visual dimension." "It's a true acoustical interpretation of my intentions." "I spend on average three months in the cutting room for a film." "But then I know that what it depicts is visible from very few places in the concert hall." "At times he even misused the Berlin Philharmonic." "They had to do playback sessions, though very well paid." "They do it but subconsciously they may hold it against him." "I knew it was wrong but it had to be done." "His aestheticism reflects his own time." "Back then his art was modern." "That's not how we'd do it today." "We learnt a great deal in creating an overall conception." "One gradually picks up such knowledge." "But there'd been nothing like it up to then." "There was one little crisis in those thirteen years, in the finale of a virtuoso concerto that I wanted to play faster at all costs." "Gundula Janowitz came to me and said:" ""Christa, nobody can sing the Benedictus, it's far too slow."" ""You'll have to tell him."" "I was sixteen at the time and didn't want to crumple." ""Herr von Karajan", I said," ""the Benedictus is too slow for us, we can't sing it."" "I held my ground and tried to get some of the orchestra on my side." "But Maestro von Karajan had the orchestra tightly under control." ""If you can't sing it", he said," ""l'll have to get some other singers."" "For a while everything was touch and go." ""You won't find anyone better than us."" "Then he took it a bit faster after all." "He was the locomotive, we the carriages." "Being a locomotive is always the most difficult thing of all." "He could be flexible but in matters of interpretation his influence was tremendous." "It's one of the great conductors' big secrets, and his as well, that he could conduct slowly without ever becoming boring." "One never thought:" ""When will this finally be over?" One went along with him and it was simply magnificent." "That changed over the years surely as a result of his age and experience and of course his artistic maturity." "For him it was very important that everything be perfect." "He was fascinated to watch someone sweeping the street with heart and soul." "He was a perfectionist not only as a musician but also as a sailor." "If he had to he could sail his magnificent yacht all by himself." "When he took over the rudder his racing yacht sailed along as if skippered by a professional." "If there was no wind and we had to wait he'd tell dirty stories and things like that." "Sometimes he watched other people through the telescope to see how something was done;" "then we'd try it ourselves, ten, twenty, thirty times in an afternoon, the same manoeuvre." "It had to work perfectly without any screams; he hated that." "Everyone had to know exactly what to do." "Like an orchestra, like a score." "Once I saw my father in tears." "It was after Kissin's performance here in Salzburg." "It moved him to the quick." "Of course we were grateful and happy to have the famous Karajan in Berlin." "All doors were open to him." "But I'm also certain that Karajan was happy and grateful to have us Berliners." "In the initial rehearsals with an orchestra only one person is allowed to speak and the others do what he says." "But we've been together now for nineteen years." "Do the ending with me, please!" "We think and feel together and we have the same worries." "No, you always emphasize the C." "It's turned us into a family." "They've thanked me for it and I thank them." "Today we realize that the one can't exist without the other." "One, two, three and now comes four, and everyone stands up on beat 1 with the fortissimo on the timpani." "Plain and simple, quick and soft." "Anything wrong?" "No?" "Good, let's go." "You're right." "No, you can't be serious!" "Is that all you can muster today? "Joy!"" "Nobody moves." "Until they get going." "Actually we never rehearsed;" "we worked together from the beginning." "Herr Kollo, sing in the repeat, not now." "We'll go through it again later." "Please don't rush off yet." "We have to settle the question of dress." "Mister Burton should come up." "Tell him to come up." "You have to see this picture; the image is completely different in tails." "Best to pin it with a safety pin so that your paunches don't bulge out." "No, I'm not kidding." "What have you got on?" "So, everyone in tails." "Remember, an estimated 170 million people will be watching this broadcast." "In any case, one thing is certain:" "our working relations were uniquely harmonious." "I believe we've really achieved something:" "Beethoven's Ninth represents our views." "Many thanks!" "The most wonderful thing of all is to experience the beauty of a work on our good evenings and to sense everyone's gratitude at being allowed to share the experience." "He was a handsome man and attracted men and women alike with his charisma." "A man who stands in the spotlight." "That doesn't exist any more." "All he had to do was stick out his nose and the entire audience went wild with bravos." "Come on, once again, go, go, go!" "The same thing but not so far away." "— Thank you." "— Please go." "The final fourteen to fifteen years were undoubtedly an era in the Philharmonic's history." "The great thing is that we knew exactly what we were witnessing at the time." "A musician can thrive on it for an entire lifetime." "You're not getting an inferiority complex, are you?" "What you're doing is wonderful!" "I'll put it down in writing if you want." "Drop the complex; you don't need it." "He's like a baby elephant:" "he doesn't know how strong he is." "Really, most people are like that." "You're not suffering from complexes, that much I know." "You're doing excellently, so carry on." "See, that's presence of mind." "Tenors, please:" "Dona!" "Let's do it again so that you're together with me." "But we've got that already." "If you don't look beautiful here I'll train the camera on myself." "If your wrists begin to quiver in the light it's not arthritis, it's because you're executing a professional tremolo." "Once again, please!" "He was very choosy about his soloists and those he accepted he treated very kindly." "I think Karajan liked my voice because I sang very much like an instrument." "I was completely out of voice." "No singer likes to talk about it but it was during my menopause." "I already noticed at the dress rehearsal that somehow it wasn't working." "And the horrible thing was that it was a morning rehearsal with audience." "Hardly had we touched down in Japan — after a 20-hour flight after all — than he ordered me to appear the next morning for a piano rehearsal so that I could sing Eboli to him." "He was ill; he'd just had his first back operation and I couldn't sing a note because I had a sore throat that nothing seemed to cure." "Singing difficult parts is hard enough." "And I heard him say: "Oh, God!"" "Then came the première and I cracked on a high note in the aria." "I was so unhappy that I immediately left for home." "His doctor said he shouldn't have done the festival at all." "But there's no arguing with an Aries;" "he'll ram his head through a wall." "There he was, looking like death warmed up, and completely exhausted." "He took a lot of time with me and we did a lot of work together." "Then offers came that I couldn't and didn't want to accept." "One thing led to another and I couldn't sing any more." "So I said: "No, I can't do it."" "I was supposed to sing the Verdi Requiem with Karajan." "I felt so ashamed that something like that could happen to me:" "to crack on a high note with Karajan!" "I felt out of voice." "It was horrible and I left for home." "Then that was the end of it." "He wouldn't put up with three no's." "So I was out of it for the time being and thought:" "What should I do now?" "I'll open a restaurant because I won't be singing any more." "After quarrelling with Karajan you're out of it." "Well, I wasn't invited any more." ""Dear Herbert von Karajan"," ""I don't think I can manage it."" "And he replied: "You're like a cat."" "I said: "Like a cat?"" "When a cat wants to jump up on to something, it first goes up to it and looks up once or twice, measuring the distance." "Then when it jumps, it's sure to land safely." "Or it draws in its tail and walks away knowing it can't manage it." "On the day it was over, after twenty years, he kissed my hand and said: "Farewell."" "And I knew it was all over." "I found it noble to part that way." "Two weeks later Bernstein called and asked if I had time to drop down to Tel Aviv and sing "Das Lied von der Erde" with Christa Ludwig." "So I thought:" ""Okay, let's switch trains."" "The two conductors could hardly have been more different." "Bernstein perspired, Karajan never did." "Well played yesterday." "I listened carefully." "Many thanks." "Both were remarkably disciplined in front of their orchestras." "But Karajan's entire lifestyle consisted of self-discipline." "Not so with Lenny Bernstein!" "He enjoyed life." "A very uninhibited life." "Karajan practically sacrificed his entire life to music." "He was discipline incarnate." "Almost nauseating!" "Ten." "See, you can do it after all..." "No, you're not together." "Always too late." "What sticks are you using now?" "Karajan, the aesthete of conducting." "I'd like it clearer and more limpid." "It's very blurred." "The artist who tried to get everything he wanted with a minimum of visible means." "As opposed to Bernstein, who put his emotions openly on display." "Bernstein himself was music, Karajan made music." "Away, away, back." "I didn't hear the downbeat." "Just hit it!" "Good!" "Very good!" "It's all boring because you're playing "normally"." "Nothing is "normal" in this music." "There's no poetry at all in the opening." "Mahler is missing." "This note of lamentation..." "There should always be maximum tremolando." "A climax like 18 here..." "Don't leave me dangling there again!" "I can't believe it!" "Sometimes it's not fast, then it's not slow, and now you're leaving me behind." "Stay with the others!" "Again!" "You can't play Mahler like that." "It doesn't work, it's not Mahler." "Please, for once just play a soft A and take your cue from it." "Again!" "Please!" "I don't care about your eight hours." "Either we work or we don't." "Otherwise it won't be Mahler." "Lenny Bernstein was a political man." "Karajan wasn't." "To prove that people in Bavaria..." "Do you know the story about the..." "the way he..." "He just loved to tell jokes." "With his rasping, much-imitated voice he'd tell anecdotes and jokes and everyone doubled up with laughter." "Once when Brandt was still Chancellor, before the second election date, he travelled to Munich and as he walked across the street a woman slipped and fell." "He goes to help her and she stands up and says:" ""My word, Herr Chancellor!"" "He calms her down of course." "Then she asks: "How can I thank you?"" "He says: "You don't have to thank me"" ""but when the next election comes along you and your friends can..."" "She says: "But Herr Chancellor, I fell on my arse not on my head!"" "Good, cigarette!" "At the last meeting there again was a good atmosphere in the Musikverein." "Your husband's final concert in Vienna with the Berlin Philharmonic." "And in the intermission Bernstein went in, the door closed, and the two old men were left alone." "After the concert we asked:" ""What did they say?"" "Karajan: "What do two old men usually say to each other."" ""It hurts here and it hurts there..."" ""Our little maladies."" ""But we even made plans."" ""We'll tour with the Vienna Philharmonic."" ""l'll conduct the first half and he'll conduct the second."" "When we held a memorial for Karajan in Vienna after his death we had a rehearsal with Bernstein." "Bernstein said:" ""We'll play this piece for Herbert."" "Nobody has yet written about the psychology of an orchestra:" "how does it respond, what does it want, what does it secretly want?" "What would the members want if they could talk about it?" "Basically the crisis began with his spine and with Sabine Meyer." "The final five years were not very nice." "If you talked to someone who joined the orchestra two years before his death he'd probably say:" ""Old, crusty, horrible."" "Later he had big problems with his slipped disc." "Sometimes the walk to the orchestra took him twenty minutes before he'd wearily dragged himself on to the rostrum." "I know the Berlin Philharmonic hated him." "A viola player said:" ""What we'd really like to have done was to trip this old cripple up"" ""so that he'd at least go flying."" "Many things are not so simple in old age, especially after decades of being the greatest, the handsomest, the most successful, and you notice things are beginning to unravel." "I won't start a race now." "I wish I could." "I can well imagine it though I know it's not possible." "But I'd gladly have carried on as long as it takes to truly put down all the things that most matter to me." "So I'll probably have to wait for my reincarnation." "If I still have so many things left to say and my body lets me down then it's up to nature to give me another body." "The greatest goal is to view one's profession as a calling." "Sometimes he conducted almost mystically in his old age." "Two or three years before his death he conducted the Verdi Requiem as if it were already in paradise." "All the savagery in the Requiem he translated into a vision of beauty and melody." "One of my final impressions was the New Year's Concert in Vienna." "He was already suffering from pain and had trouble walking and one of the musicians accompanied him to the rostrum." "But the moment the first note sounded was like a facelift: everything opened up, the pain had vanished." "My dear fellow music lovers, the Vienna Philharmonic and I wish you all the very best for the New Year, and one thing, I think you will all agree with me, we want above all else is peace, peace, and again peace." "I did Honegger's "Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher"." "That was a piece he wanted to do with me one day." "He died before it could take place." "I did it a few years later in Argentina." "I travelled to Iguazú and the waterfalls for one day." "I don't know why I think of that now." "And I stood before those tons of water that nearly came down on me and I said: "Damn, why aren't you here?"" "I truly wished I could have gone there with him." "He looks deep into my eyes and gives a little laugh." "I hold him, with a glass of water, and he dies in my arms." "But he's still here." "In my heart and in my thoughts he's still here." "Perhaps that's why I haven't changed anything because I can't imagine all these rooms suddenly having a different colour..." "I need the feeling that he could come back any moment." "I'd rather have been born twenty years later for the developments we now face will be very interesting." "And I really must say that I'm extremely grateful to fate that I was allowed to be part of it."