What is Herbert von Karajan best known for in classical music?

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What is Herbert von Karajan best known for in classical music?

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Herbert von Karajan (Salzburg April 5, 1908 Anif near Salzburg – July 16, 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was one of the most prominent conductors of the postwar period and is widely regarded as the world's most recorded conductor. Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for thirty-five years.

In March of 1935, Karajan's career was given a significant boost when he applied for membership in the Nazi Party. ('Aufnahmegruppe der 1933er, nachgereichte') That same year, Karajan was appointed Germany's youngest "Generalmusikdirektor" and was a guest conductor in Brussels, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and other European cities. Moreover, in 1937, Karajan made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin State Opera with Fidelio. He enjoyed a major success with Tristan und Isolde and in 1938, was hailed by a Berlin critic as "Das Wunder Karajan" ("The Karajan miracle"). Receiving a contract with Deutsche Grammophon that same year, Karajan made the first of numerous recordings by conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin in the overture to Die Zauberfl㶴e. However Adolf Hitler had only scorn for the famed conductor after he fumbled at one point in a gala performance of "Die Meistersinger" for the King and Queen of Yugoslavia in June 1939. Conducting without a score, Karajan lost his way, the singers halted, the curtain was rung down in confusion. Furious, Hitler directed Winifred Wagner : "Herr von Karajan will never conduct at Bayreuth in my lifetime", and he did not. After the war, Karajan did his best to prevent the evocation of this shameful and not too glorious incident that perhaps saved his post-war career.

Karajan played an important role in the development of the original compact disc digital audio format (circa 1980). He championed this new consumer playback technology, lent his prestige to it, and appeared at the first press conference announcing the format. Early CD prototypes had exhibited a playing time limited to a mere sixty minutes. It is often asserted that the decision to extend the maximum playing time of the compact disc to its standard of seventy-four minutes was achieved in order to adequately encompass Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the existing library of Karajan's recordings, and his expressed wishes.

Karajan's DG recording of Johann Strauss' An der sch㶮en, blauen Donau (The Blue Danube waltz) was used by director Stanley Kubrick for a sequence in the science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (with Kubrick animating the sequence to match the prerecorded music—the opposite of the usual practice for soundtracks)