Weekly SpinOn: Karajan’s Imaginary Sound

In 1973 and 1974 Herbert von Karajan took on one of the most unusual projects of his career: recording Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern with the Berlin Philharmonic. He said it had taken 15 years with the orchestra to reach the precision needed for this music, which often makes almost impossible demands — like Schoenberg’s triple pianissimo in the highest woodwind register. Only through intensive rehearsal and recording technology did he feel able to meet them.

For Karajan the goal was clarity and beauty, even in the sharpest dissonance. Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra seemed to him a vision of catastrophe, while Webern he remembered as deeply passionate. Above all, recording Schoenberg allowed him to realize an “imaginary sound” he had only ever heard in his mind. This week’s Weekly SpinOn is dedicated to that landmark project.

“Gentlemen, a dissonance is a tension and a consonance is therefore the necessary and corresponding relaxation. But neither of them can be ugly, because then they no longer constitute music any more.”¹

Track 1: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (Version for String Orchestra): V. Adagio (Bar 370) – Arnold Schönberg

Our journey begins with Verklärte Nacht, the work that sets the tone for Karajan’s entire Viennese School project. The recording was made in March 1973 in Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche, a location Karajan often chose for its warm yet precise acoustics.

At the same sessions, he also recorded Berg’s Lyric Suite and Webern’s Five Movements for string orchestra — all conceived as part of the ambitious plan to present Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern together in a dedicated LP set.

For Karajan, Verklärte Nacht was not simply a modernist breakthrough, but a continuation of the late-Romantic tradition in which he had been formed. It bridges the lush sound world of Wagner and Strauss with Schoenberg’s new harmonic language, and Karajan was determined to let that lineage be heard. In his writings around the project, he stressed that years of careful work with the Berlin Philharmonic were needed before such a score could be attempted. Only then, he felt, could the players find the unity and precision to sustain Schoenberg’s long, searching lines.

Equally important was Karajan’s conviction that dissonance must never be treated as ugliness. “A dissonance is a tension and a consonance is therefore the necessary and corresponding relaxation,” he told his orchestra. “But neither of them can be ugly, because then they no longer constitute music any more.”¹ Verklärte Nacht was the perfect demonstration of that belief: what begins in darkness and confession grows into radiant affirmation, the orchestral sonority transformed into something clear and luminous.

In this recording, the famous Adagio section from bar 370 — the moment of “transfiguration” — becomes almost symphonic in scale. It is both the culmination of Schoenberg’s late-Romantic idiom and the starting point of Karajan’s dialogue with the Second Viennese School. By placing Verklärte Nacht at the front of his LP box, Karajan signaled that the new was inseparable from the old, and that Schoenberg belonged as much to the tradition of Brahms and Wagner as to the radicalism of the twentieth century.

Track 2: 3 Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6: No. 1, Präludium – Alban Berg

If Verklärte Nacht represents the late-Romantic roots of the Viennese School, Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra show its direct confrontation with history. Karajan had lived with this score for decades before recording it in 1973–74, and in the text he provided for the LP set — later printed in Billboard and other magazines — he admitted that the work had “haunted” him for nearly twenty years. To him, Berg’s orchestral triptych was not just a technical challenge but a vision of impending catastrophe: “They were an enormous presentiment of the misery into which the world was plunging: Berg wrote the work on the eve of the Great War. It shocks me anew each time, and it too is a tremendously difficult work.”

The recording schedules from 1973 show that Berg’s Three Pieces were planned alongside Schoenberg’s Variations and Webern’s Six Pieces in a series of sessions at the Berlin Philharmonie. These were part of Karajan’s carefully designed set on the Second Viennese School, a statement about how these composers belonged together. Within this framework, Berg stood out: his music combined Schoenberg’s structural discipline with a highly personal and emotional voice.

The Präludium, with its shadowy textures and restless atmosphere, sets the stage for the violent Marsch that closes the cycle. For Karajan it required the same qualities he sought in Schoenberg: unity, transparency, and beauty, even in dissonance. “The tension too should be a thing of beauty,” he told his orchestra. He wanted every detail clear, so that the intensity of the score would not sound harsh but precise and expressive.

Listening to the Präludium in this recording, we hear Berg through Karajan’s ears: music that is both rigorous and deeply human. Rather than treating it as a radical break, Karajan placed Berg in continuity with the great tradition, giving even the darkest pages a sense of shape and inevitability.

Track 3: Symphony, Op. 21: II. Variationen – Anton Webern

After Schoenberg’s rich Romantic sound and Berg’s dark visions, Webern’s Symphony is the opposite: short, clear, and very concentrated. Karajan recorded it with the Berlin Philharmonic in February 1974 at the Philharmonie in Berlin, in the same sessions as Schoenberg’s Variations and Webern’s Passacaglia. These were the final recordings for the LP box on the Second Viennese School.

In his text for the LP set — later printed in Billboard — Karajan admitted:

“Webern’s Symphony is a work which I first came to understand during the rehearsals.”¹

This shows how difficult the music was, even for him. Only after many rehearsals did its special beauty become clear.

The second movement, Variationen, is a good example of Webern’s style: very few notes, each one important. The sound moves from instrument to instrument, like points of light passed around the orchestra. It is music that demands absolute concentration from players and listeners alike.

Karajan also described Webern as anything but cold. For him, Webern’s music was full of passion and intensity — qualities made more poignant by the composer’s tragic end. In September 1945, Webern was accidentally shot by an American soldier in Austria after stepping outside his house to smoke a cigar. The abruptness of that death seems almost symbolic of his music: brief, concentrated, but unforgettable in its impact.

Track 4: Variations, Op. 31: Var. 7. Langsam – Arnold Schönberg

If Verklärte Nacht served as the gateway to Karajan’s Viennese School project, then Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra were its centerpiece. Recorded in February 1974 at the Berlin Philharmonie, these sessions marked the culmination of years of preparation. Karajan admitted that he had thought about the work for at least six years before daring to record it, convinced that it demanded more time and precision than almost any other piece.

The seventh variation (Langsam) shows why. Here Schoenberg asks the piccolo for a triple pianissimo in its highest register — a demand Karajan called “completely pointless” in practice, since no concert hall could make it audible. For him, this was a case where the recording studio could achieve what the stage could not. In the liner note — reprinted in Billboard — he explained that each variation was recorded with the orchestra arranged differently, allowing the engineers to create the exact balance of lines that Schoenberg’s score required.

As Dennis Gerlach² points out, this was not just a technical experiment. Karajan was making a statement: that the record itself could bring to life what he called an “imaginary sound” — a sonority Karajan believed existed only in Schoenberg’s conception, and which the concert hall could never fully realize. Schoenberg himself had insisted the work was playable, and conductors before and after Karajan have proved him right. But Karajan claimed another truth: that technology could take the music beyond performance, into a kind of ideal sound world.

The result is striking. In the Langsam variation, the textures are almost transparent, every line floating with uncanny clarity. It is not the Romantic glow of Verklärte Nacht or the raw drama of Berg’s Three Pieces, but something different: Schoenberg’s serial logic transformed into pure color. For Karajan, this was the summit of the entire project — the point where his belief in beauty, discipline, and modern recording techniques came together most boldly.

—  Pia Bernauer (Karajan Institute, Salzburg)