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Rita Streich, a light lyric coloratura, was the child of a Russian mother and a German prisoner-of-war father. Circuitously, the family made its way to Berlin where Streich grew up, and studied with Maria Ivogün, Erna Berger, and Willi Domgraf-Fassbänder (the father of Brigitte, and Germany's leading Papageno between wars). She made her debut in 1943 at Aussig (today Ústí nad Labem on the northern border of the Czech Republic), singing Zerbinetta in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. In 1946, she became a member of the Berlin Staatsoper in the Unter den Linden, featured as Blonde in Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio and Olympia in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann. There, until 1951, she also sang Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. During two subsequent seasons at the Städtische Oper, temporarily relocated in the Theater des Westens, she sang Zerbinetta, Konstanze this time in The Seraglio, and the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute. In 1952 - 1953 she was the Woodbird in Wagner's Siegfried at the reopened Bayreuth Festival, then joined the Vienna State Opera, where she remained a member until her retirement from the stage in 1972. Streich made frequent guest appearances at Munich, however, and in 1954 debuted at London (Zerlina and Susanna, in Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, respectively), the Salzburg Festival (as Aennchen in Der Freischütz under Furtwängler), and Rome (Sophie again). La Scala came later on.

The soprano made her U.S. debut in 1957 at San Francisco, singing two performances each as Despina in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Zerbinetta in Ariadne, and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. She returned in 1959 for two more Zerbinettas, but in 1960 switched to the Chicago Lyric Opera -- a house too capacious for her voice. She appeared three times as Susanna in Figaro, and repeated the role in 1962, adding three more performances as Amor in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. These were her last American opera appearances. Her voice was a small instrument for all the purity and technical control, better suited to a small theater such as Glyndebourne, where she appeared for the first time in 1958 as Zerbinetta. During the 1950s, Streich became a best-selling name on recordings as Zerbinetta, Sophie, Susanna, Aennchen, Adele in Die Fledermaus, and Blonde, but especially on recital discs that included coloratura stunt-fluff as well as music by Mozart, Schubert, Wolf, Richard Strauss, even Milhaud -- most carefully chosen for the fach and size of her voice, although not always temperamentally suitable.

In the 1960s ,she appeared in Viennese operettas as well as operatic repertory, generously documented on German broadcast tapes of live performances. Streich retired from the stage in 1972 to teach at Essen, but returned four years later to Vienna, where she continued to teach, and where she died at the age of sixty-six. In the 1950s, and for some years after, she was considered the foremost German coloratura of her generation, often likened to her ageless teacher Erna Berger.

Ernst Haefliger was one of the better known and more versatile tenors of his day. He was impressive both on the operatic stage and as a recitalist, and in each of these realms his repertory was broad, from Baroque era (J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion) to the contemporary (Boris Blacher's Zwischenfälle bei einer Notlandung). Haefliger received high praise for his Schubert lieder, particularly for Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin. His 1949 Salzburg Festival debut as Tiresias in Orff's Antigonae received critical acclaim. Haefliger was probably best known for his Mozart (Pamina, Ferrando, Don Ottavio, and others), and for his portrayals of the Evangelist in the Bach Passions. He was one of the first tenors to record Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in stereo (Bruno Walter, conducting; 1960). The tone of Haefliger's voice, while appealing, was generally regarded as not particularly outstanding; yet, because of his precision in articulation and deft sense for phrasing, he achieved a vocal style quite unforgettable, quite distinct from other tenors of his generation. Though most of his recordings are decades old, many remain available on Philips (the largest source), Decca, Sony, DG, Naxos, Orfeo, Berlin Classics, Preiser Records, Testament, and other labels.

Ernst Haefliger was born in Davos, Switzerland, on July 6, 1919. He studied at the Zurich Conservatory and at the Geneva Conservatory, where his most important teacher was Fernando Capri; he later took vocal lessons in Vienna from iconic tenor Julius Patzak. Haefliger debuted in 1942 in Geneva singing the Evangelist in the St. John Passion. The following year he joined the Zurich Opera, remaining there until 1952.

From 1952-1974 he was a member of the Deutsche Oper, but frequently appeared at other major operatic venues and in recitals and orchestral concerts. Many important debuts took place during this 22-year run, including at Glyndebourne (1956) singing Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Chicago's Lyric Opera (1966), in the same role, and Moscow (1968) as the Evangelist.

Haefliger remained active well past his 1972 retirement from the Deutsche Oper. In fact, he was singing Schubert's Winterreise in recital as late as 1995 (London's Wigmore Hall), when he was 76! Even after he finally retired from singing, Haefliger made concert appearances in speaking roles, as in the 2002 performance of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder at the Proms (in London), where he was narrator. Haefliger died in Davos on March 17, 2007.

With a membership that is entirely amateur, the Vienna Singverein has developed a reputation as one of the finest choral ensembles in the world. Made up of about 200 singers, it has performed under the baton of some of today's leading conductors, including Gergiev, Ozawa, Boulez, Mehta, Muti, Barenboim, and Koopman. Such podium stalwarts from the past as Karajan and Furtwängler have not only conducted the Singverein but have held an enduring relationship with the ensemble, both in concert and on recordings. The Singverein's repertory is inclusive of a vast range, from J.S. Bach to Franz Schmidt and beyond, and while they have sung works by Verdi and Bizet and many composers outside the Austro-German sphere, they have shown a decided preference for music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, and other German or Austrian composers. Although the Singverein have sung in operatic performances and recordings, Mozart and Wagner in particular, they have generally performed concert music. The Singverein has made hundreds of recordings over the years, many of them available on such major labels as Chandos, Decca, DG, EMI, Philips, and Sony.

The Vienna Singverein was founded in 1858 as a wing of the Society of Friends of Music. The roots of the ensemble actually date back to 1812, when the Society of Friends was originally formed. The Singverein's home in the concert world is the Vienna Musikverein. Johannes Brahms served as one of the Singverein's early artistic directors. Under his baton a partial premiere of his Requiem was presented by the ensemble in 1867. The Singverein developed a long history of important premieres, including those of the Bruckner Te Deum, Mahler Eighth Symphony, and the Franz Schmidt oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln.

In the 20th century the ensemble gained an international reputation and from mid-century made numerous concert tours throughout Europe, the U.S., Australia, Japan, and elsewhere. Among the more memorable concerts abroad was a 1985 performance of the Mozart Coronation Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome under Herbert von Karajan, with Pope John Paul II present.

Karajan made over 70 recordings with the Singverein, many of them achieving broad critical acclaim. A number of these recordings have been made available, like the 2007 reissue of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony on DG (Grand Prix). Since 1991 Johannes Prinz has served as choir director of the Vienna Singverein.

Herbert von Karajan was the most renowned conductor to emerge from Europe in the post-World War II era -- and through fortuitous timing throughout his career, and in spite of controversy that dogged his early years, he was the most recorded conductor of the 20th century, and is likely to remain one of the most visible (and biggest-selling) conductors well into the 21st century. Born in Salzburg and descended from a family of Greek origin with deep roots in Austria -- including scholars and physicians in Vienna and Salzburg -- he was a music prodigy, playing the piano at three and playing his first recital a year later. He received encouragement in his teens to shift his focus from the piano to the podium, and the experience of hearing Toscanini conduct on a visit to Vienna possessed him to follow that path. Toscanini and -- a great irony -- Wilhelm Furtwangler became his two idols among conductors; Karajan's teachers included the renowned Viennese conductor (and one time Bruckner student) Franz Schalk. He got his first musical post in 1928 -- at age 20 -- at the Ulm City Theater, initially as chorusmaster and later as conductor, and over the next seven years he learned how to lead an orchestra from the ground up, serving as coach and every other capacity common to a small but busy musical berth.

With the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany (which Karajan joined in 1933) and the positions that opened up with the purging of Jewish and part-Jewish musicians from all posts, Karajan saw an opportunity to advance rapidly on a bigger stage than any available in Austria -- he moved his career to Germany in 1935, and became the youngest man in the country to hold a music director's position when he was appointed to the job at Aachen. He was not overtly political, however, and gladly accepted an invitation from Bruno Walter -- perhaps the most prominent Jewish conductor to have been forced out of Germany -- to conduct Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Vienna State Opera. From 1938 through 1942, he conducted the Berlin State Opera, and that same year he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1941, he accepted the appointment as music director of the Berlin State Opera.

Karajan found himself in an awkward but prominent position in Germany during the Nazi era. His approach to conducting -- his demanding rehearsals and his precision, even in dealing with such august bodies as the string section of the Berlin Philharmonic -- and his intense personality, coupled with bracing, exciting musical results, earned him the admiration of Adolf Hitler. Additionally, his avoidance of any public displays of resistance to Nazi ideology made him a favorite of the Nazi cultural officials as a counterweight to Wilhelm Furtwangler, the most renowned conductor in the German-speaking world but also a fiercely independent voice, who was known to regard the Nazi Party officials around him with disdain and dismissiveness. It soon became clear that the government was intent on playing Karajan off against Furtwangler, using the younger conductor to subtly pressure the older man and prick his understandably outsized ego. And Karajan gained the quietly repeated nickname of "Hitler's favorite." How much he did to encourage or engender this "fandom" -- beyond pursuing excellence at the podium -- is questionable, and it should be pointed out that septuagenarian composer Franz Lehár enjoyed similar admiration from the Nazi dictator, despite his being apolitical and also having a Jewish wife. Ironically, Karajan found himself in a somewhat similar situation when he married a woman of Jewish descent, Anita Guetermann, in 1942; after that, he was out of favor with the party as well.

Karajan made his recording debut in 1938, at age 30, and those early recordings, including his first Beethoven symphony (No. 7) and some Wagner preludes, as well as symphonies by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Dvorák, are of significant academic interest, as are his wartime recordings. But Karajan's major career on record didn't really begin until after World War II in Vienna, when he met producer Walter Legge. Although Karajan wasn't able to conduct in public because of his activities in Germany during the war -- he was "denazified" officially until 1947 -- Legge, as representative of a privately owned business (EMI Records), was able to arrange sessions with the Vienna Philharmonic. Those recordings, done during a time when musicians in occupied Vienna needed to work just to raise their food rations to a subsistence level -- which included the Beethoven Eighth and Ninth symphonies, among other works -- had a quality and an urgency that were bracing to listeners at the time, and they were still being reissued, in audiophile remastered editions, four decades later, in 2005 and 2006.

Karajan's career ascent was stymied in the decade after the end of the war by his rivalry with Furtwangler, who would not let him near either the Berlin or the Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. Instead, he took the leadership of the Vienna Symphony, and also became the principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. It was with the Philharmonia, for EMI, that Karajan's recorded legacy grew astronomically in the late '40s and the first half of the '50s. Karajan's denazification and his appointment to the Philharmonia coincided with the advent of magnetic tape recording in England (though EMI was slow to adopt the new system) and the LP record; he was also more open to the concept of recording than Furtwangler or any of his older conducting rivals, who tended to regard making records as an unpleasant adjunct to a music career. Where Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber, Hans Knappertsbusch, etc., kept their recording activities to a minimum, Karajan reveled in the act of recording -- he made dozens of records across those seven years, of repertoire ranging from Bach to Vaughan Williams, including operatic works, from Mozart to Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss that have never been equaled, not even by his own subsequent efforts. He also cut his first complete Beethoven symphonic cycle, which straddled the mono and stereo eras -- the First through Seventh and the Ninth were in mono, but the Eighth was in stereo. The Beethoven cycle was also an illustration of Karajan's mindset -- Karajan had never performed the Fourth Symphony in concert, and it would never have occurred to Furtwangler, Kleiber, et al., to record a work that they'd never had in their concert repertoire, but Karajan simply did the Fourth for the first time for the cycle. That series of recordings was also notable for the vision of Beethoven's symphonies that they presented, resplendent in a lush string tone, bursting tension, and energy that oozed out of every bowing and note. Virtually all of his recordings from the 1950s, whether in mono or stereo, retain exceptional luster and richness, owing to Walter Legge's production and the work of the EMI engineering staff, and continue to sell well in the 21st century.

From the second half of the 1950s onward much of Karajan's activity -- apart from occasional forays to RCA Victor and Decca/London, and a short return to EMI at the outset of the 1970s -- was centered on the Deutsche Grammophon label, where the lion's share of his Berlin Philharmonic recordings would be made and released. From the advent of the stereo era onward, as his recordings gained him an ever-widening audience around the world, he would become among the busiest conductors in the studio in the entire world, and also one of the first to avail himself fully of the newest developments in air travel, jetting around the world to meet commitments and also learning to fly himself. Karajan in the late '50s and 1960s seemed as "new world" in his habits as the men he succeeded had seemed "old world." He re-recorded all of his key repertoire, from Beethoven to Schubert, more than once throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including a new cycle of the former's nine symphonies in each of the those decades and once more in the 1980s, and he extended himself more deeply into the classical era, with the symphonies of Haydn, and into the Baroque period with Bach and Handel (and even such crowd-pleasing pieces as the Albinoni Adagio and the Pachelbel Canon in D), and to the post-Romantic and modern eras with the orchestral works of Berg and Webern -- he was superb at the latter two, less so with Haydn, Bach, Handel, et al. It was almost a necessity to find these other areas, however, as Karajan's recording commitments multiplied; by the end of the 1970s, he had passed Leopold Stokowski -- the earliest major conductor to embrace the phonograph record, and practically a one-man recording industry -- as the most recorded conductor in history. Among his few "blind spots" among major Romantic composers was Gustav Mahler, whose music didn't become part of his repertoire until very late in his career -- although when he did embrace Mahler, the results were most impressive.

Karajan's career timing was fortuitous in other areas as well. With the advent of the home video era, there were two major bodies of his video performances waiting to fill that demand. Karajan's appearances on television dated back to the end of the 1950s, and his broadcasts from 1965 into the mid-'70s were distributed by Unitel, which later made them available on videocassette, laserdisc, and DVD. From the end of the 1970s, however, all of Karajan's video work was done through his own production company, Telemondial, which later licensed them to Sony for release commercially. Ironically, many of these were among his least-favored and controversial works critically -- too many of the Telemondial performances were more like music videos, with hours spent getting the sections of the orchestra looking right, from the correct angle, and synchronizing that shot up with a recording that was already made. With a few notable exceptions, such as the actual live performances in front of an audience at the Vienna New Year's concerts, most viewers dismiss these "documents" as artificial and totally the opposite of what a concert is supposed to be; they were about visual perfection rather than performance, and that seemed to characterize many of his late-career efforts in music. Additionally, during the final 15 years of his life, Karajan engendered some resentment from critics and fellow musicians for his rapidly escalating fees, which led the way to similar demands from other artists and helped to turn the economics of classical concerts into something resembling major-league baseball.

Karajan also played a key role in the development of the compact disc format, lending his work and his prestige to its rollout in 1981 -- it was also reportedly at his insistence that the original intended running time of the CD, 60 minutes, was pushed to 68 minutes, using the running time of a typical Beethoven Symphony No. 9 as a benchmark. At the time of his death in 1989, he had completed yet another Beethoven cycle and was beginning to redo many key works in the digital format; his last recording was of the Bruckner Seventh Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic. Oddly enough, for all of his renown, he was not the most honored conductor of his time, at least in the United States -- Sir Georg Solti earned more Grammy Awards -- but he was, along with American Leonard Bernstein, one of the two most well-known conductors in the world. And even the timing of his death was perfect, in that there was no slowing of the number of releases of his work -- CD conversions of work from the 1940s, 1950s (especially legitimate versions of live opera recordings, and in particular those with Maria Callas), and 1960s have filled release lists and still fill the racks of music stores more than two decades later; both EMI and Deutsche Grammophon have their "Karajan Editions" in various forms. ~ Bruce Eder

The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. His compositions, which frequently pushed the boundaries of tradition and startled audiences with their originality and power, are considered by many to be the foundation of 19th century musical principles.

Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, he received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he earned some money as an assistant to his teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, then was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers as his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Antoine Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron to him. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn; despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style. His subsequent teachers in composition were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. In 1794, he began his career in earnest as a pianist and composer, taking advantage whenever he could of the patronage of others. Around 1800, Beethoven began to notice his gradually encroaching deafness. His growing despondency only intensified his antisocial tendencies. However, the Symphony No. 3, "Eroica," of 1803 began a sustained period of groundbreaking creative triumph. In later years, Beethoven was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over a nephew, Karl. Yet after a long period of comparative compositional inactivity lasting from about 1811 to 1817, his creative imagination triumphed once again over his troubles. Beethoven's late works, especially the last five of his 16 string quartets and the last four of his 32 piano sonatas, have an ecstatic quality in which many have found a mystical significance. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.

Beethoven's epochal career is often divided into early, middle, and late periods, represented, respectively, by works based on Classic-period models, by revolutionary pieces that expanded the vocabulary of music, and by compositions written in a unique, highly personal musical language incorporating elements of contrapuntal and variation writing while approaching large-scale forms with complete freedom. Though certainly subject to debate, these divisions point to the immense depth and multifariousness of Beethoven's creative personality. Beethoven profoundly transformed every genre he touched, and the music of the 19th century seems to grow from his compositions as if from a chrysalis. A formidable pianist, he moved the piano sonata from the drawing room to the concert hall with such ambitious and virtuosic middle-period works as the "Waldstein" (No. 21) and "Appassionata" (No. 23) sonatas. His song cycle An die ferne Geliebte of 1816 set the pattern for similar cycles by all the Romantic song composers, from Schubert to Wolf. The Romantic tradition of descriptive or "program" music began with Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony No. 6. Even in the second half of the 19th century, Beethoven still directly inspired both conservatives (such as Brahms, who, like Beethoven, fundamentally stayed within the confines of Classical form) and radicals (such as Wagner, who viewed the Ninth Symphony as a harbinger of his own vision of a total art work, integrating vocal and instrumental music with the other arts). In many ways revolutionary, Beethoven's music remains universally appealing because of its characteristic humanism and dramatic power. ~ Rovi Staff

Although Anton Bruckner wrote a great deal of sacred choral music (including not only his grandly conceived Mass No. 3, but also his more intimate Mass No. 2 and his astringent motets, which fuse Renaissance and 19th century techniques), he is best known for his symphonies: two unnumbered apprentice works, eight completed mature symphonies, and the first three movements of a Ninth. (The finale has been reconstructed by several hands, but most performances include just the movements Bruckner completed.) The symphonies, influenced to some extent by Wagner and identified with his school by the Viennese public, are monumental: expansive in scale, rigorous (if sometimes gigantist) in formal design, and often elaborate in their contrapuntal writing. Their sonorities are stately and organ-like; the Viennese critic Graf wrote that Bruckner "pondered over chords and chord associations as a medieval architect contemplated the original forms of a Gothic cathedral." Despite occasional folk influences in the scherzos, his symphonies are uniformly high-minded, even religious, in spirit. Together, they form the weightiest body of symphonies between Schubert (whom he greatly admired) and Mahler.

Bruckner was born in the town of Ansfelden, Austria, on September 4, 1824, the son of a schoolmaster/church musician and the eldest of 11 children. His first music teacher was his father, and at ten, he was deputized for his father as organist at church and made his first attempts at composition. At 13, the year of his father's death, he was accepted as a choirboy at St. Florian, which, however far afield he would travel, was to become his lifelong spiritual home. He spent the first years of his career as a choirmaster for a group of monks and teaching in various parishes, one of which was close to Enns, where he studied with Leopold von Zenetti beginning in 1843. In 1845 he returned to St. Florian as organist and teacher and remained there for the next decade. He next began studying composition and counterpoint with Simon Sechter, primarily by mail.

Until this point, Bruckner's output consisted mostly of sacred choral music and organ pieces, but now he would start to expand his horizons. He passed exams at the Vienna Conservatory in 1861, and then, the 37-year-old student approached cellist/conductor Otto Kitzler for lessons in form and orchestration. Around the same time, he created his first large works, including a Symphony in D minor that he later derisively named "die Nullte," the Symphony No. 0. Kitzler had introduced Bruckner to Wagner's Tannhäuser in 1863, and Bruckner was present at the premiere of Tristan und Isolde in 1865. He remained a near-fanatical admirer of Wagner, but the extent to which his own vast musical structures were modeled on Wagner's is a matter of debate. His symphonies sometimes show a spirituality similar to his sacred choral works, which he also continued to write.

Bruckner landed a teaching post at the Vienna Conservatory in 1868, but always retained something of his original rustic character. An often-repeated anecdote tells how he gave a tip to the aristocratic conductor Hans Richter after a successful rehearsal of his Symphony No. 4, telling Richter to go and buy himself a beer. Musical life in cosmopolitan Vienna at the time was split between two schools, the Wagnerians and the Brahmsians. The resulting criticism of his music from the Brahms faction, plus his own lifelong self-doubt are generally seen as the main reasons for his multiple revisions of many of his major works. Bruckner also gave organ performances throughout Europe in this period, impressing audiences with his improvisations that often produced ideas he would use in the symphonies. The Symphony No. 7 (1881-1883) was successfully premiered in Leipzig and New York before being revised and performed in Vienna in 1886. The Eighth brought a standing ovation when premiered in Vienna under Richter in 1892, with even Brahms heartily joining the applause. It was dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph I, who had decorated Bruckner with the Order of Franz Joseph in 1886 and supported the composer in his final year. The last years of his life were spent in ill-health and working on the Ninth Symphony, but it would never be completed. Bruckner died in Vienna on October 11, 1896, and was buried in the crypt at St. Florian, below the "Bruckner Organ." ~ TiVo Staff