HERBERT VON KARAJAN: A LIFE IN MUSICBy Richard Osborne, Pimlico, £ 8.10 It was impossible not to be enthralled by Herbert von Karajan. You could disapprove of his music-making but you would be forced to admit the magnetic quality of his personality. He was larger than life. He was a conductor who had magic in his baton. Sir Isaiah Berlin with his unerring ear for music and language once said of Karajan, 'A genius - with a whiff of sulphur about him.' The comment, quoted as one of the epigraphs to Osborne's rather worshipful biography, cannot be bettered. Karajan's life, like his music-making at times, could be a trifle overblown. He was handsome with piercing blue eyes. His looks nurtured all the Aryan myths. He piloted his own jet, parked a 77 foot racing yacht at St Tropez, was fond of fast cars which he drove outrageously fast; to please his third wife, the French fashion model Eliette Mouret, he bought her 'first a Picasso, then a Renoir, then a Bellini' Despite his obvious celebrity status, controversy chased Karajan. It was rooted in his Nazi past. Osborne does his best to clear up this controversy. In his words, 'The facts as to when Karajan joined the Nazi party, and why, could be adequately stated on the back of a postcard...Karajan, 27, joined the Nazi party in Aachen in April 1935 in response to a formal request from the head of Aachen's NS-controlled municipal authority under whose aegis the musical life of the city was organized.' The popular view that Karajan joined of his own volition in 1933 in Salzburg is the product of a 'trail of misinformation' by journalists and not the least by Karajan who declared the relevant documents to be forgeries. The Nazi image and background could not stop Karajan from leading two of the world's leading orchestras - the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, and the music that he made with them is unforgettable. Players in both orchestras were taken aback by the fact that Karajan always conducted with his eyes closed and without even glancing at the score. But they adjusted to this manifestation of Karajan's outstanding musical memory and produced under his baton music which at times touched the ethereal. But behind this music-making was a play of power which seems to be at the opposite pole of the emotions evoked by good music. Osborne underplays this aspect of Karajan even though the documentation of this trait of the conductor is ample. John Eliot Gardiner watching Karajan conducting recalled, 'I got the impression from the concertos I attended towards the end of his life that there was something almost evil in the way he exerted the power, and that that was to the detriment of the music. There were no surprises, no moments of joy...everything came came back to himself.' Osborne, a self-confessed admirer, can only counter this judgment with, 'One wonders what he heard.' Berlin, a discerning listener, told the author that he thought Karajan was an 'ignoble' conductor. Given the demands of complete dominance on Karajan's part, his relationships with his orchestras were never smooth. The high water mark came when before the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 1984, he sacked the Berlin Philharmonic and flew in the Vienna Philharmonic at his own expense. After the concert, he showered the orchestra with roses. Karajan was both booed and cheered when he came on stage. But most listeners were convinced of the excellent quality of the music - Bach's E major violin concerto (played by Anne-Sophie Mutter with Karajan conducting from the harpsichord) and the C minor symphony of Brahms. Osborne's detailed biography, like its subject, pulls in two different directions. The man was colourful but not admirable. The music-making dazzling but the persona threatened often to overwhelm the music. An earlier book on the conductor was called Controlled Ecstasy. With Karajan, the emphasis was always on the first word and the first person singular.