Spotlight Ives: “The Unanswered Question”

Karajan conducted Samuel Barber’s famous “Adagio for Strings” eight times in concert but there has been no recording of it so it seems that the live recording of Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question” is the only piece of American music we have from Karajan. But is it true? Not quite. On 2 July 1959, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the spectacular Hollywood Bowl, he had one of his rare encounters with an American orchestra (others were with the New York Philharmonic and with the Cleveland Orchestra). The concert, which was recorded for broadcast, started with the national anthem of the United States, John Stafford Smith’s “The Star Spangled Banner”. After Wagner’s “Meistersinger” overture and Mozart’s “Haffner Symphony” the first part ended with Ives’ “Unanswered Question”. Richard Osborne wrote: “The programme was guilefully chosen and made a splendid opening to the thirty-eighth summer season.”

Other recordings of American music were two marches by John Philip Sousa, “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “El Capitan” with the Philharmonia in 1953 and two carols in the Christmas album with Leontyne Price in 1961, John Henry Hopkins’ “We Three Kings of Orient Are” and Richard Storrs Willis’ “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”. A bit of a curiosity was a single performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” with Alexis Weissenberg in Berlin in 1979. Karajan wasn’t very keen on conducting the piece but did it as a favour to the West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, whom he also met on private occasions. This concert wasn’t recorded but there is indeed one Gershwin recording with Karajan on the rostrum. His “Fledermaus” from 1960 features some special guest star appearances in the 2^nd act. Leontyne Price sang “Summertime” (not for the first time) and the Vienna Philharmonic played Gershwin (I bet for the first time).

Our database notes another American performance of Karajan’s. On New Year’s Eve 1930 – he had just started his very first engagement in Ulm – he performed Fletcher Henderson’s version of the “St Louis Blues” in a mixed programme.

—  P.R. Jenkins