Herbert von Karajan

He conducts the Eroica with elasticity and power, with a flick of the wrist and yet with seriousness. This is no longer the 19th-century hero, the Napoleon of the funeral march, but a technician in uniform, even in overalls.

It is a matter of life and death for him too, but he does not have the bulging muscles of a statue, but rather a nervous composure: a positivist seriousness, so to speak, that starts from the given, from the musical text, incorruptible and unromantic. With the greatest authority, Karajan thus ‘introduced’ into the history of German-Austrian interpretation what perhaps a Toscanini, a Beecham or a de Sabata had already hinted at elsewhere.