The Karajan Case

Herbert von Karajan dominated the twin symphonic peaks of Berlin and Vienna, and controlled the shrine to Mozart, Salzburg from the sixties well into the late eighties. He was and, more than a decade after his death, remains a controversial and polarizing figure. His involvement as an official member of the Nazi Party is well documented, which for some people, means he was a true-blue anti-Semite. Other German cultural figures during the war like conductor Karl Bohm and soprano Elizabeth Schwarkopf were involved as well, I believe.

Richard Wagner and wife Cosima were anti-Semitic, so much that their heirs who run Bayreuth go to so much trouble in correcting the errors of the past by inviting Jewish conductors like James Levine to conduct Wagner operas at the festival. In fact, Hitler exalted Wagner's music, especially the bombastic kind like the Flight of the Valkyries, while condemning the Schoenberg school of atonality. To this day, some people still associate Wagner's music with Nazi triumphalism.

The link between the composer and the conductor is obvious: their politics were askew, but whether or not they deserve to burn in hell is not for me to judge. Wagner's music is glorious, although I'm not a big fan of Karajan (who likes to stamp his own brand of interpretation totally different from the composer's intentions), he had some scintillating performances as well.

Here's an example of that, the final Liebestod to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, with Jessye Norman along with Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic splendidly interpreting this paean to eternal love that transcends death.