“Herbert von Karajan looks absolutely majestic on this album cover photo. It’s one of the reasons I bought this record (€1 at a Record Fair) when I already had the music on CD (on the randometer with Symph 5 back in January 2019). . Karajan is without doubt one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he dominated his field, recorded much of the repertoire from baroque to early 20th century and sold an estimated 200 million records. He was always closely associated with Beethoven, recording many of his works and his entire symphony cycle not less than four times. Three of those was with the Berliner Philharmoniker, with whom he is also strongly associated – this LP is the first of their Beethoven 7 recordings together. . However, what I really want to discuss is Karajan’s hair. Conductors, like composers in most cases, generally give good hair. I don’t know if you’ve noticed (it’s probably just me) but most conductors have wild, exciting, unruly, sometimes even flowing locks of hair: Karajan, Gergiev, Rattle, Bernstein, Klemperer, Chailly, Jansons, Muti, Stokowski, Toscanini.* Even Tilson Thomas has succumbed to the flowing style as he’s got older. . Oldies like Klemperer and Furtwangler also didn’t quite adhere to the more common short back and sides for their era. Even Sir Colin Davis went a bit luscious with his silver fox locks in his latter years. Georg Solti is one exception that comes to mind. And Boulez. And maybe Maazel. I don’t know why this is, but I think there’s a Samson syndrome going on here, where their flair and creativity has manifested itself in slightly wild and a little bit sexy hair. . It’s not just the men obviously, but then female conductors are always going to be slightly wild and a little bit sexy anyway: Nadia Boulanger, Marin Alsop, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Xian Zhang, Barbara Hannigan*, to name but five case in points. . *Other conductors are available . FOR FULL REVIEW & PLAYLIST CLICK LINK IN BIO: . #beethoven #beethovensymphony7 #herbertvonkarajan #berlinerphilharmoniker #deutschegrammophon #vinyl #classicalmusic #conductors #recordcollection #nowplaying #randomrecordreview https://www.instagram.com/p/CDPV45OJLvk/?igshid=1adgq6x683tzf