Herbert von Karajan was a ruthless narcissist, a relentless egotist, and a hopeless bully. And of course one recognizes that much, if not most, of his recorded legacy is an exquisitely wrought monument to vacuous sonic beauty. That said, one has to admit that
von Karajan's recording of Haydn's Die Schöpfung with
Gundula Janowitz,
Christa Ludwig,
Fritz Wunderlich,
Werner Krenn,
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,
Walter Berry, the Wiener Singverein, and the
Berlin Philharmonic is beyond all argument the greatest recording of the work ever made. Of course, the singers are all as good as has ever been assembled or will likely ever be assembled for the work and they bring more joy, more lyricism, more sensitivity, and more humanity to their roles than can be told in words. Of course, the Wiener Singverein is as good a chorus as has ever sung the work, not only because of their superb intonation, perfect diction, and wonderful tone, but because they are descendants of the chorus that gave the work its premiere. Of course, the
Berlin Philharmonic plays as if it is one of the two greatest German orchestras: it is one of the two greatest German orchestras. And finally, of course,
von Karajan leads a performance of exquisitely wrought sonic beauty, but, almost unbelievably, the beauty is full and rich and deep and -- above all -- profoundly transcendent. After all, he was a narcissist and egotist and so on and so forth, but somewhere under that carefully coiffed and manicured shell, there occasionally beat the heart of one of the greatest conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. Deutsche Grammophon's stereo sound almost real.