Karajan Recidivus: Arnold Whittall assesses Christian Thielemann’s homage to Herbert von Karajan’s Salzburg ‘Walküre’

Review of Die Walküre, directed Nemirova, conducted Thielemann, Salzburg, 2017 (C major, 1 Blu-ray disc).

March 2018, Volume 12, Number 1, 84–7.

This recording can scarcely avoid making a drama out of the differences between Then and Now. History records that the very first Salzburg Easter Festival, in 1967, began with Herbert von Karajan conducting and producing Die Walküre – performances reflecting his larger-scale engagement with studio recordings of the complete Ring cycle, in progress between August 1966 and January 1970. Fifty years later, the festival presented what the C major label’s publicity describes as ‘a “recreation”’ of Karajan’s ‘musico-theatrical vision of the 19th-century masterwork’. It would be a lengthy and complex task to detail precisely the similarities and differences between what was seen and heard in the Großes Festspielhaus in 1967, what could be seen and heard there in 2017, and what is heard and seen on this new Blu-ray release.