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I was wondering just that when I was watching this wonderful video of Herbert von Karajan conducting Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony from 1966. It’s not just Karajan’s intensity much less the intensity of the orchestra that makes this a great video but also the way that the orchestra and Karajan are shot, especially the close-up’s of the string and horn sections at various points.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing from the YouTube posting to tell us any information about the director much less which orchestra we’re watching. Through a little online detective work, I was able to track down the full version of the video at Google. There we learn that we’re watching the Berlin Philharmonic and the person who captured all of this is none other than director Henri-Georges Clouzot, who has given the world the classic film Wages of Fear (later remade as Sorcerer) some thirteen years before this performance. The Google video entry doesn’t even note this though- we only know it because that info happens to be included at the beginning of the full-length video.
So what about the dozens or 100’s (or thousands) of other videos that we’ve watched and enjoyed at YouTube? Depending on who’s uploading the video, the information can be pretty spotty, usually just a short description of what we’re watching. The professionals or amateurs who actually make the videos are usually unknown and that’s pretty sad. We love these videos not just for the characters and action in them but how it’s all staged. Even when it’s just some spontaneous, unscripted action, someone was still there with a camera to capture it and they ought to get some credit and glory out of it.
Don’t get me wrong- it’s great to have this treasure trove of videos available, especially for free, but the people behind these mini-masterpieces deserve some recognition.
