Weekly SpinOn: Beginnings

“For each beginning bears a special magic, that nurtures living and bestows protection….”

Herman Hesse

 

These words ring true for life in general, as well as the art of classical music. If we think about a child starting to play an instrument, a composer birthing his first work, an overture that starts an opera, or a musical introduction that is highly original – all of these beginnings have a magic to them.

I have prepared a playlist around this topic with classical music pieces, that also marked special beginnings in Herbert von Karajan’s life. So you might want to enjoy the music while reading on.

Track 1 – William Tell – Overture, Gioachino Rossini

From the very first track of our playlist onwards, it becomes clear that beginnings and endings are inevitably linked. With “Guillaume Tell”, based on the play by Friedrich Schiller, Gioachino Rossini created his first completely newly composed grand opéra, but also his last opera ever. The last opera work by the great star of the opera world and the celebrated bon vivant of the Parisian music world was premiered on August 3, 1829 at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. In terms of content, there is also a strong connection to the term “beginning”: the struggle of Wilhelm Tell and his comrades-in-arms marks the end of humiliation and enslavement by the Habsburgs and the beginning of freedom for the Swiss population.

If we now take a closer look at the overture, the beginning of the opera, from a musical point of view, it is quite different from Rossini’s other opera beginnings. It is divided into 4 parts and already anticipates the plot of the opera in a descriptive way. One could therefore speak of a musical “abstract”. Unusually, it begins with five solo cellos, which Hector Berlioz once described as follows: “calm and profound solitude, the solemn silence of nature when human passions are silent”¹. One could also speak of the calm before the storm that follows in the second part. The Swiss rebel, whose culture is described in Part 3 through musical quotations of popular “cow rows”. Rossini transports us here to the rural tranquillity and the idealized world of Swiss farmers, who are represented by one of Rossini’s most beautiful Englishhorn solos ever. And in the last part, the theme that made music history follows: the finale, which is introduced with triumphant trumpet fanfares and whose driving gallop became one of the most famous pieces of music ever.

And at what point in Karajan’s life did precisely this work mark a beginning: it was at the very start of his conducting career. After he had decided to give up his technical studies and devote himself entirely to music studies, the time had come on December 17, 1928. He appeared in public for the first time as a conductor, in a concert at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna with the Academy Orchestra. He spoke about this in an interview he gave to his good friend Ernst Häusermann:

“Yes, and there was a final concert of the academy and there
had to be rehearsed and I, the one who rehearsed the longest, because the piece in question was the overture by Rossini to ‘Wilhelm Tell’, that was the only piece in the program that was purely orchestral […] I set my mind to it that I had to get the piece, […] and when I wanted something back then, I withdrew into myself for days and prepared and concentrated on it and I got it.”

 

Track 2 – La Valse M.72, Maurice Ravel

After his very first public appearance as a conductor, another event marked the beginning of a lifelong love affair: on August 21, 1934, Herbert von Karajan conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time at a private concert in the Naturtheater in the Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg. This collaboration lasted until the end of his life, an incredible 55 years. The program for this evening was French, so in addition to Debussy, Ravel was also on the program with his probably most “Viennese” work.

 

The famous ballet impresario Sergei Djagilev had once again commissioned Maurice Ravel to compose a ballet, but when Ravel presented the piece in 1920, Djagilev rejected it. He did not see it as a ballet but as a parody of a ballet. This assessment is also understandable: Ravel was strongly influenced by folk music and so he took on the Viennese waltz for this commission. But it was much more than just an adaptation of the typical rhythm and stylistic devices: in this piece, he musically describes the beginning, the radiant bloom through to the decline into chaos and violence. All of this was clearly characterized by the recent end of the “Great War”.

So here too we hear and recognize the beginning, which is shamefully approaching and is inevitably linked to an end.

 

Track 3 – Symphony No. 1, Johannes Brahms

Brahms’ first symphony was a work that could be described as a difficult birth for him. He worked on his first symphonic work again and again over a period of 14 years, which he found so stressful above all because he saw it as a new beginning for the symphonic genre after Beethoven. The great symphonist Ludwig van Beethoven left behind a legacy that was regarded as a burden by many young musicians after him. It is therefore not surprising that Johannes Brahms quotes Beethoven frequently in his first symphonic work. After finally making a start with the premiere of the work in 1876, Brahms found his next three symphonies much easier to write. It only took him 8 years to complete all his other symphonies. So in Brahms’ case you might say: every beginning is hard. Musically he couldn’t have entered the stage more dramatically: A dramatic forte of the whole orchestra interspersed with hammering timpani beats, as if someone were knocking on the door to gain entry to a room. And Brahms was let in.

As was Herbert von Karajan, who chose precisely this work for so many beginnings in his life: first symphony concert in Aachen as General Music Director, first concert in Italy, first concert after the war, which also took place with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1946, and the symphony was on the program for his very first tour of the USA in 1955. You might also find some further landmarks in Karajan’s biography in which he chose this piece that he conducted in an unbelievable 143 concerts during his lifetime.

Track 4 – Die Walküre – Prelude, Richard Wagner

The prelude to the opera Walküre marks the beginning of the first day of Richard Wagner’s Ring trilogy. The beginning of the beginning, so to speak. However, this seems confusing in that it is not 3 but 4 operas. Wagner conceived his Ring as a “stage festival for three days and an evening before”. So it is also referred to as a “tetralogy” (4 parts).
Evening before: Rheingold
Day 1: Valkyrie
Day 2: Siegfried
Day 3: Twilight of the Gods
In today’s Hollywood-influenced language, one could therefore speak of the opera Rheingold as a prequel, which only serves to explain the prehistory before the actual plot begins.
In the Valkyries’ prelude, Wagner knew how to build up the tension from the very first note. You are immediately drawn into a dark universe of your own that you want to discover and understand.

It was no coincidence that François Reichenbach chose a rehearsal with Herbert von Karajan, featuring this very prelude, as the opening scene of his documentary La Naissance d’un opéra. In powerful images, the film depicts the creation of the Salzburg Easter Festival, which still exists today.

In 1967, Herbert von Karajan founded his own festival in his hometown of Salzburg and inaugurated it with Die Walküre. Performing Richard Wagner’s operas during the summer Salzburg Festival was not possible at the time, due to an agreement with the Bayreuth Festival stipulating that Wagner’s works would be performed exclusively in Bayreuth, in order to avoid competition.

 

Karajan therefore created his time slot at Easter, during which Wagner could be staged in Salzburg. At the same time, the festival offered him the opportunity to indulge his passion for directing. In 2026 the Salzburg festival announced to go back to the start and will present a new production of the ring cycle. But only this time, they will begin with the “Rheingold”.

—  Pia Bernauer (Salzburg, 03-04-2025)