The mere mention of Herbie's name is, I know, sufficient to make some music-lovers start to sweat and froth at the mouth. A friend used to like to recount how he walked into a record shop (remember those?) where HvK's "Madama Butterfly" was playing and was convinced it was Wagner - yet that is still my favourite version and I can name so many of his recordings which are my preferred recordings. As Marc says, however, there is plenty of evidence that Karajan could be a very exciting risk-taker live in the concert hall - I particularly esteem the recordings of his live performances with BPO in Moscow and some of his later appearances in the RFH, even when he was old and sick - so I am decidedly not in the Lebrecht school of loathing (which I suspect is based on personal prejudice rather than musical criteria). Where I disagree with Marc is over Solti; in my numerous opera surveys I was surprised how often he came out of top in my recommendations; far from "[breaking] everything he conducted" he is, in my estimation, still under-valued - and not just in opera but in many major Romantics. But there it is - de gustibus.
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