100 Years Karajan – the new DVD-Edition opens up new sound dimensions for the fascinating recordings of the great conductor.

April 5th 2008 would have been Herbert von Karajan’s 100th birthday – and the music world celebrates one of the greatest and most influential conductors of the 20th century. He was renowned for his charisma and feared for his perfection and persistency.  

Karajan left a vast catalogue of recordings, which have essentially influenced the way we perceive classical music today. At all times Herbert von Karajan was interested in the newest developments in recording technology. He always had an idea of the perfect orchestra sound in mind and he worked on achieving this vision with utmost meticulousness.

Today, with the advent of high capacity data carriers like the DVD, it has become mandatory for current audiovisual media releases to include not only a stereo mix, but also a surround sound version of the same program to make adequate use of the disc space and to add further value to the product. The audio on the previously released generation of Karajan DVDs is in stereo. What seemed odd to us as we were screening the material, was the general "dryness" of the sound. Taking into consideration that many of these recordings were made in some of the most renowned concert halls in the world, renowned for their great acoustics – we decided to go back to the original recording venues and capture what has been left out at the initial sessions.

With this truly unique approach to generate a new, well-marketable and genuinely authentic product we did return to the philharmonic hall in Berlin and the Musikverein in Vienna to re-record their unique room signatures in response to the play-back of the original stereo source material. With an intricate matrix consisting of a set of up to 10 speakers, a well-levelled signal was generated on stage to trigger the room acoustics like an orchestra would. The room signals were then re-recorded with an orchestra-like microphone array and newly balanced for both stereo and surround.

A special challenge was the creation of a centre channel signal and its integration without compromising the timbre and sonic depth of the recording. The final mix of the original material with the newly captured room responses adds an impressive spatial homogeneity in both the stereo and surround and a pleasant natural frequency extension towards the low end.