On 11th June 1944, Karl Böhm conducted ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ at the Vienna State Opera. It was, in his own words, ‘despite the dark shadows cast by the war which was already long since lost, a feast for musical Vienna’. The occasion was the 80th birthday of Richard Strauss ­which would have undoubtedly been celebrated […]

Karl Böhm’s only studio version of this work was recorded in 1958. When Deutsche Grammophon originally planned the recording, there were already two rival versions on the market: the Decca recording under Erich Kleiber and EMI’s version under Herbert von Karajan. Karajan’s recording was made in December 1956 and should have included Irmgard Seefried as […]