Music commentator Norman Lebrecht takes aim at conductor Herbert von Karajan as many in the music world gear up to celebrate the centenary of his birth. If you’re a Karajan fan, wear your seatbelt. Lebrecht’s latest assessment of the conductor shows no mercy:
Karajan had a tendency to homogenise music, bending it to his line of beauty, suppressing its diversity of character. Hearing an excess of Karajan is like spending a month at McDonalds, a bloating, desensitising experience. Those who listen to Karajan for the first time this year will, I suspect, be stupefied by the sameness of his brand.

(Karajan) never made an original note of music, bequeathed a transmissible idea or represented any appreciable human value.”
Click here to read the rest of Lebrecht’s article, “The Monster and His Myth”.