QUOTE

Where love is lacking, power fills the vacuum. -Carl Jung

Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan (5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor and one of the most renowned conductors in music history. His obituary in The New York Times described him as "probably the world's best-known conductor and one of the most powerful figures in classical music." Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for thirty-five years. He is the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, with record sales estimated at 200 million. [...]

Karajan's membership of the Nazi Party and increasingly prominent career in Germany from 1933 to 1945 cast him in an uncomplimentary light after the war. While Karajan's defenders have argued that he joined the Nazis only to advance his own career, critics such as Jim Svejda have pointed out that other prominent conductors, such as Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Erich Kleiber and Arturo Toscanini, fled from fascist Europe at the time. However, British music critic Richard Osborne argues that among the many well-known conductors who worked in Germany throughout the war years—a list that includes Wilhelm Furtwängler, Ernest Ansermet, Carl Schuricht, Karl Böhm, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Karl Elmendorff—Karajan was in fact one of the youngest and least advanced in his career. [...]

QUOTES
Those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low.

I don’t just want it to sound beautiful, I want it to look beautiful as well - for music is an embodiment of beauty.

Explaining why he preferred conducting the Berlin Philharmonic to the Vienna Philharmonic: If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it. But then they ask why.

Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music (Hardcover)
REVIEWS
VON KARAJAN (1908-1989), an Austrian-born conductor who was a controversial figure because of his membership in the Nazi party at an early stage of his career and because of his lifelong autocratic behavior, receives an exhaustive, penetrating biography. Music critic Richard Osborne, who published Conversations with von Karajan shortly before the conductor's death, has drawn on a huge number of sources to create a notably balanced account of a career that still divides many music lovers into energetic pro and con parties. Von Karajan spent his early years as a provincial opera conductor and orchestra builder in Aachen (where he joined the Nazis as a career move in 1933), then endured years of struggle during the war--when, Osborne convincingly demonstrates, his career was in fact held back rather than encouraged by the Nazis because his wife was partly Jewish. It was not until after the war, when British record producer Walter Legge hired him for a series of recordings with his new Philharmonia Orchestra, that von Karajan began to build an international reputation. After a drawn-out struggle with Wilhelm Furtwangler, von Karajan took the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic. This, combined with his vastly successful recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, finally established the conductor as a world figure whose wide-ranging recordings sold at almost pop-star levels. Osborne is particularly good at showing the wide swings in the quality of von Karajan's performances, from the totally committed to the polished but banal; his material on the conductor's now largely forgotten efforts (to which he devoted large sums of his own money) to immortalize his performances on videotape is riveting. Beautifully written, eminently fair-minded and full of enthralling anecdotes, this book will be catnip to any serious music lover. Photos. [Publishers Weekly]

THIS IS probably the ultimate biography of a complex and controversial personality in recent musical history. The book is conventionally structured: it is based on a detailed chronology supported by a rich factual database on Karajan's accomplishments as an orchestra builder and manager, recording artist and film maker. Stretching to more than 700 pages, the rich detail of Osborne's account certainly is one of the main attractions of this book. We learn a tremendous amount about Karajan's working methods, contract negotiations, concert tours, recording schedules, casting policy, press reviews, etc. As the story progresses Osborne branches out in all kinds of directions, gradually weaving more and more threads into the basic narrative. Given the quality of Osborne's prose this never becomes tedious. And it really does teach us something substantial about the breathtaking speed, economy, tenacity and versatility of the Karajanesque genius. There is no doubt that the book as a whole transcends the merely anecdotal. What emerges is a rich, multifaceted, holographic image of a great artist. What is even more impressive about Osborne's book is that it gives us an idea of what constitutes the essence of great conductorship. Instead of being confronted with woolly and simplistic generalizations about a certain 'Factor X' that allows an individual to coax exactly the right sound from a full symphony orchestra, we see the conceptual foundations of this most elusive of disciplines emerge in all its technical, psychological and somatic richness. Therefore, this book is definitely a must-read for any classical music lover, irrespective of personal predilections with respect to the man himself.

Downfall - and the Mystery of Karajan's Personal Photographer
I worked at EMI in the 1970s when Karajan was one of our artists and I was fascinated by the 'court' that surrounded him and was intrigued by their background. It is documented that Karajan joined the Nazi Party on April 8th 1933 in Salzburg, two months after Hitler came to power. He was cleared by an Austrian Governement denazification tribunal in February 1946 which concluded that Karajan was not involved in any illegal activity between 1933 and 1938. A transcript of the tribunal is given in Richard Osborne's Karajan - A Life in Music. The following exchange is taken from that transcript:

Dr Zellweker, Deputy Chairman of Tribunal: Surely you must have had some thoughts about (politics), and then there you were in 1935 joining the Party.

Karajan: I'm prepared to admit that it was an error, but we artists live in another world, a self-contained one. Otherwise it would be impossible to play music properly, and music is the highest and only thing for me. [...]

Herbert von Karajan: Save Us From the Resurrection of That Old Devil
Ivan Hewett hopes that the return of conductor Herbert von Karajan is only temporary

Something creepy is happening in the world of classical music.

It started a few months ago, when a long-forgotten face started to appear on posters in record shops. Soon it spread to billboards and magazines. Suddenly, those rapturously closed eyes, those springing grey locks and that clenched jaw seemed to be everywhere.

It seemed as if Herbert von Karajan, one-time Nazi, the most tyrannical, reviled, and lavishly rewarded conductor in history, had returned from the dead.

Frankly, I wouldn't put it past the old devil. Before his death in 1989, Karajan talked of having himself cryogenically preserved so that he could be resurrected at some future date, and this was a man who always got what he wanted.

Fortunately, it's only an illusion, brought on by the determination of the music industry to make the most of the 100th anniversary of Karajan's birth, which falls next month. [...]

In Praise of Herbert von Karajan, with a Selective Critical Discography
My immediate reaction to Michael Miller's commentary on the Karajan centenary [Oh No! He’s Not Back Again, is He? - May 2, 2008] was rather choleric, but I've settled down a bit since then and can write this from a relatively balanced perspective.

I bought those 1962-63 Beethoven symphonies, too, which by the way are in such bad sound that three remasterings later, including the most recent in SACD, they remain boomy and muddy. I'm not sure where you heard them praised. But Karajan's quasi-hypnotizing style didn't appeal to me back then. I dropped out until the mid-80s. Since then -- don't be shocked -- I've bought his entire EMI output from 1947 until the early Eighties, all his Decca recordings (which are relatively few), a huge chunk of his DG catalogue, and many highlights from the historical archives. As a result, I incline toward his English biographer, Richard Osborne, in believing that Karajan was among the greatest conductors of the century. And not just in the Fifties, that canard notwithstanding.

Since a reverential regard for Karajan was common in his heyday but sneered at now -- not by you but by taste-benumbed pygmies like Norman Lebrecht -- I won't fight upstream. Time levels out these matters. Sheerly in the interest of offering your readers access to less well known great recordings, along with many that belong on every serious collector's shelf, here's a long list of my favorites. Its length may convince you that I suffer from Karajan monomania. Not at all. I rarely turn to Karajan's Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Bartók, or Stravinsky (with a few exceptions like his wonderful Haydn Creation). I'm distressed by his later Beethoven cycles from the 70s and 80s, which as you point out sound slick and bored. I'm not often convinced by Karajan as accompanist for Mutter, Weissenberg, Anda, Ferras, Kremer, Kissin, and other soloists he favored (again, with some outstanding exceptions like the Beethoven Triple Concerto with three great Russians).

Carlos Kleiber used to get enraged when he heard anyone disparage "the Karajan sound," insisting that such a profound musical mind had to be judged one performance at a time. I beg of you and other detractors to stop branding Karajan as at best a careerist and at worst a semi-charlatan. Subordinate your prejudices to the high opinion that you have of Kleiber, a vast admirer of the older master. (One could also fill a volume of encomiums from all the great singers who considered Karajan the pre-eminent opera conductor of his generation.)

Now to the list. It's not an olla podrida. I've limited it to Karajan's very best -- in my opinion, of course. [...]

Herbert von Karajan's Richard Strauss Recordings
I have been listening to classical music virtually my whole life. At around thirteen, I dove in head deep and started buying CDs like mad until I had a collection of over 500 classical and opera CDs. If one were to browse this collection it would be immediately apparent that I have more Herbert von Karajan recordings than I do of any other conductor. I suppose I just dig his style. There are many detractors to Herbert von Karajan's style, apparently. Most of the criticisms I've read pertain to the orchestral sound being too glossy or lethargic, for Karajan had a prediliction for perfection from his players and typically employed broad and expansive tempi that in some cases could drag the music down. These criticisms are valid to some degree with certain recordings, but on the whole I believe Karajan created a wonderful catalog of his own, offering most of what comprises the standard repertoire, with good to excellent performances and generally excellent sound quality. There are some true gems in Karajan's catalog, and I think most of his recordings of Richard Strauss's works with the Berlin Philharmonic are among them.

Karajan and Strauss, a Shared History
Herbert von Karajan was an up-and-coming young celebrity when he first met Richard Strauss in 1940, nine years before the composer's death. He looked up to Strauss very much, already a great admirer of his music. Strass was attending a performance of his own opera Elektra, conducted by Karajan. Strauss later told him it was the best performance of the opera he had ever heard, and was even more impressed that Karajan could conduct the entire score from memory, without the assistance of the score in front of him during the performance. Karajan had occasion to meet Strauss later and received a few pearls of wisdom regarding music and conducting that he later admitted had an influence on his own approach to conducting.

Karajan and Strauss also shared another similarity in their personal histories: they were both involved with the Nazi party in Germany. Richard Stauss served for a time as the President of the Music division of the Reichskammerkultur, a branch of the Nazi government tasked with identifying what was to be considered "degenerate art" in Nazi Germany. At first, Strauss accepted this position in an effort to reign in the growing atonal movement, due to the backlash against Romantic music it had created. Strauss was never an actual member of the Nazi party, and he did not last long in the position of president, due to the fact that he continued to collaborate with Jewish artists during his tenure. Considering Strauss's own wife was also Jewish, it seems clear that he did not buy into some of the Nazi party's more nefarious ideals, but simply felt a duty to his country to oversee the quality of music that was to be played in Germany. He became disenchanted with the Nazi party, but managed to survive the war years with his family intact.

Karajan joined the Nazi party in the early 1930s, presumably in order to remain in Germany under Nazi leadership and continue to further his ambitions. While he conducted several concerts for Nazi politicians and added the requisite fanfares to the beginning of concerts, there is little indication that Karajan had any real political aspirations. Furthermore, his wife at the time was of partial Jewish descent, and in fact he later became unpopular amongst the higher echelon of Nazi power players. This may have been influential in his decision to spend a few years in England developing his craft with the newly formed Philharmonia Orchestra, before ultimately taking over the directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1955, a post he was to hold until 1989.

To this day, much has been said of Karajan and Strauss's involvement with the Nazis. Several famous musical figures, such as Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern, refused to work with Karajan throughout his life as a result of his Nazi membership. Despite the moral judgments people make decades after the fact, it seems clear to me that both Strauss and Karajan were men of their time; they loved Germany and they loved music. While many conductors and composers fled Germany in protest of Nazi leadership, for better or worse, these men stayed and continued to make music. Whatever one may say about them as men, I for one can enjoy the music as the gift they gave the world despite their human flaws. [...]


Herbert von Karajan conducts A Hero's Life by Richard Strauss

Gross Misconduct? The Centenary of Herbert von Karajan
[Neil Fisher - TimesOnline.co.uk - 06/28/08]
Herbert von Karajan was a maestro whose monstrous life has obscured his musical genius

For many it is the stuff of pure nightmare. The old enemy back from the dead – on posters, on websites, even on coins. For it’s the centenary of Herbert von Karajan, and, 19 years after his death, the maestro with most recordings to his name, the man who led the Berlin Philharmonic for an astonishing 34 years, is being fêted again.

Forget Liverpool ’08 – in Germany and Austria it is definitely Karajan 2008, with a celebratory website (Karajan.org), a commemorative €5 coin, a sprawl of tribute concerts and a tonne of repackagings of some of his crucial cuts on Deutsche Grammophon. Next Saturday Radio 3 joins the party, with a Karajan Week devoted to picking through the conductor’s discography, and including a detailed documentary on his life and times.

No other conductor could possibly inspire all that – and no other conductor could possibly have prompted such a backlash in response. The party year dawned with a flurry of anti-Karajan polemics. He was, we were told, a bully. A barely repentant fascist. A self-publicist. And, worst of all, his music-making was facile: seductive, perhaps, and certainly disciplined, but empty of meaning.

It’s a tempting narrative – indeed, it’s a story that’s been given so much airtime that it is practically canonical. Growing up without any direct experience of the man, my first impressions were only the slurs: it was his great rival, Leonard Bernstein, who seized the imagination, even to the point of claiming Karajan’s home ground for his epochal performance of Beethoven’s Ninth at the recently fallen Berlin Wall.

Perhaps the most interesting release this year from Karajan’s record label is Robert Dornhelm’s biopic, Herbert von Karajan – or Beauty as I See it, a revealing clutch of interviews with those who knew the man. Fast forward through the toadying montages and you hit some fascinating observations.

The soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf recalls his instructions to one hapless cast: “And if any of you are unwilling I’ll twist the screws so tight that every one of you comes crawling to me on your stomachs.” That’s a story that sounds dramatic until you hear that at Karajan’s very first orchestra his sacked concert-master turned up to rehearsals with a loaded pistol in his pocket – such was his hatred of the jumped-up twentysomething who had the arrogance to dismiss him.

That this maestro took no prisoners isn’t up for debate: no, you probably wouldn’t have wanted to have a pint with him. But what emerges most strongly from the film is his artistic credo, indivisible from his personality: the pursuit of total perfection. He had an unflinching desire to control every aspect of music production, even including directing Wagner on stage at the Salzburg Festival (badly) to masterminding the bizarrely dated tableaux of his filmed concerts.

The error is to mistake this musical authoritarianism for the political kind. It’s a terrible and dangerous diversion to align Karajan’s moral cowardice (like many of the artistic community in 1930s Germany, he never considered exile and joined the Nazi party to further his ambition) with that artistic vision. To crave total power on the podium is not some warped adaptation of Nazi doctrine: he simply accepted no other authority. Or as the soprano Gundula Janowitz puts it on film: “he was the locomotive, we were the carriages.”

What were Karajan’s real crimes? He deliberately cultivated an image of cool self-control during performances. He shaped the craggiest of the Romantic repertoire into cogent, seamless wholes. And he believed that everything was subservient to music. One astute observer in the film points out that: “Politics came to art rather than vice versa.” No, Karajan didn’t do outreach.

All that clashes with our image of the perfect 21st-century maestro. We want him sweating like Valery Gergiev, or warmly beatific like Simon Rattle: we want to feel what they feel. The period movement has wiped out our image of rhapsodic Beethoven or Brahms, who now sound fitter, leaner, and meaner. And no maestro would ever dare to demand that politics serve art. Music rests uneasily within culture’s service industry: we hope this will do you some good – please don’t be intimidated.

Much of that may be for the better. But the biggest tragedy of Karajan year would be dismissing his masterworks: that never so-silky Rosenkavalier, the riveting Tchaikovsky symphonies, a Mahler Ninth brimming with tears and anguish. To call any of those empty, fascist or facile is simply giving in to the dogmas of today rather than fairly judging the dogmas of yesteryear. So, roll on Karajan Week: hold your nose, perhaps, but don’t shut your ears. END

Karajan - A Film by Robert Dornhelm
REVIEW
This documentary is a masterpiece - a classic - the gold standard by which all film biographies of musicians will be measured in future. It's editorially balanced, showing Karajan's faults as well as his strengths.

It's also wonderfully crafted, effortlessly blending modern interviews and archive material - black and white and colour. The editing is so subtle you hardly notice it at first viewing. You just concentrate on the content which is riveting. But repeated viewing shows master-craftsmen at work. All the clips are cut back to sound bites so the film moves at a cracking pace, but never too fast. Underneath the clips are long lines of music - scrupulously chosen. These punctuate the comments and are brought up at strategic moments for a few seconds to illustrate the words, often with dramatic effect.

This film explains conducting better than any I've seen. It should intrigue musicians. It's also an object lesson in how to make a documentary with class and style - a must-see for anyone interested in the art of film-making.

Having read these rave comments you may ask if I'm a friend of the director, or linked to Deutsche Grammophon? No! But I am a professional broadcaster and appreciate a good documentary when I see it. This is a real life-enhancer. I watched it four times in three days and am still getting a lot out of it. The film is densely packed with information and wonderful images. Above all it's intelligent. You'll want to become a conductor - or film-maker - after watching this documentary.

Karajan Revealed (vids)
STEP ASIDE BBC and your poxy Maestrocam. Here's how you make a film about a conductor. Via YouTube - Robert Dornhelm’s 2008 biopic, Herbert von Karajan – or Beauty as I See it, attempts to decipher Karajan's dark art with the aid of archive footage and interviews with the likes of Christa Ludwig, Mariss Jansons and Gundula Janowitz.

He emerges, unsurprisingly, as a bullying perfectionist, ruthlessly dedicated as the film's title suggests to the pursuit of beauty. Watch the Berlin Phil take it on the chin as Karajan berates them as "brainless". Hear the tale of the sacked concertmaster who snuck a loaded pistol into rehearsal with the intention of taking out the maestro right there on the podium. Shield your eyes from Simon Rattle's retina-searing HvK tribute pullover.

As Karajan himself says in the film, when you have a hundred and twenty people acting as one, conducting is just an exercise of the mind.

Fascinating whether you're a Karajan fan or not.

Herbert von Karajan - or Beauty As I See it (TRAILER)


Herbert von Karajan - or Beauty As I See it (Part 1)

Karajan, centerstage, in Salzburg at a Götterdämmerung rehearsal

Masterpiece Theater
During his long career, Herbert von Karajan amassed a formidable recorded legacy. As the music world marks the conductor's centennial year, Peter G. Davis determines which Karajan records have stood the test time — and which ones haven't.

NO IMPORTANT conductor of his generation was busier in the recording studios than Herbert von Karajan, a musician fascinated by the media technologies of his time and how they could best be put to use. Karajan made his first recording — of the overture to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte — in 1938 and his last fifty years later, with a performance of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera completed just a few months before he died. In between came hundreds of other recordings, a discography that could easily fill a small book.

Those who heard Karajan conduct frequently in the opera house and concert hall might dispute how faithfully these documents reflect the true measure of his music-making, but the conductor himself — a man who usually got what he wanted — seemed more than satisfied with his recorded legacy. And, thanks to the celebratory nature of centenaries — Karajan was born on April 5, 1908 — virtually every disc he made has been reissued recently in one form or another. EMI has certainly done its part by cramming everything the conductor recorded for that company between 1946 and 1984 into two huge anniversary compilations: one set of eighty-eight CDs devoted to orchestral music and the other, seventy-two CDs, containing opera and vocal works. Karajan's other major recording affiliation — to an umbrella organization now called the Universal Music Group, which includes the Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Philips labels — has not been so ambitious, but most of his work for that conglomerate is also currently available. [...]

Generalized assessments of musicians as protean and prolific as Karajan can be dangerous, but I find some merit in the conventional wisdom that tells us early Karajan is generally better than late, or that his live performances often offer more gripping statements than the corresponding studio recordings. Certainly a strong argument can be made that the conductor's interpretations, while never less than cogently imagined and ravishingly played, tended to become increasingly mannered, aloof and self-consciously groomed as he aged, robbing the finished product of spontaneity and vitality. [...]

Rather than dwell on such still-hotly-disputed recordings, I've selected several Karajan opera sets that seem to me to represent him at his best. What better way to lead off than with the one that so vividly recalls the conductor of the Vienna Ring — his 1952 performance of Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth, long available in the pirate underground but now released in optimum sound on the German Orfeo label and with the official blessing of the Wagner shrine. To say that this interpretation of Tristan is an incandescent reading of the score is to understate the case: it is positively radioactive. Karajan seems to release the music in one gigantic, unbroken breath that is even sustained through the intermissions. Other old-time German conductors schooled in Wagnerian performance practices could also pull off this feat, but few combined continuity and structural design with the sort of instrumental transparency, luminously observed detail, forward-moving drive and sheer lyrical expansiveness that Karajan achieves here. [...]

When examining Karajan's lifelong work in opera, even a work as central as Lucia seems like something of a detour for him. With very few exceptions, the conductor focused on the undisputed masterpieces of the opera repertory, rather than reviving worthy neglected works that fascinated other conductors, let alone seeking out and preparing new operas by prominent young composers. Even as an apprentice in the provincial opera houses of Ulm and Aachen, Karajan seldom wasted his time on passing novelties that were liable to have brief lives, although there are a few works that he puzzlingly set aside and never returned to once he could pretty much set his own agenda. [...]

Some of the stranger omissions in Karajan's performing repertory, both live and on disc, can surely be explained by circumstances, but on the whole he went where he felt the call, and his musical instincts seldom betrayed him. What he left us on records and video can be infuriatingly willful much of the time, but the results are never less than provocative, and when the elements were all in the right place, simpy miraculous. END


Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore (final scene)
With: Plácido Domingo et. al.
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan, Vienna, 1978

Karajan: Symphony Edition - box set
REVIEWS
ADMIRERS of Karajan will probably own most or all of these symphony cycles from what was probably the pinnacle of the conductor's prolific career. However, if you are unfamiliar with Karajan's work, or well enough acquainted with it to desire further exploration, then this amazingly inexpensive anthology can be enthusiastically recommended. [...]

VETERAN collectors will be disappointed to know that none of these recordings have been remastered, only repackaged. A great shame, since the Bruckner cycle, one of Karajan's great achievements, suffers from a poor digital transfer that is glaring, shallow, and afflicted with tape hiss left over from its LP incarnations. [...]

I AM stunned at what DG has put into one box here, and I have already recommended it to friends galore. We have in one box the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Bruckner, and a selection of the best of Haydn and Mozart. You can make a very convincing argument that the Beethoven, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, and Schumann sets in this box are the best complete sets ever recorded by anyone. And the remainder are never anything less than compelling. [...]

IN THE eyes of the world, the name Herbert von Karajan is inseparably connected with Salzburg. The conductor, born in Salzburg in 1908, shaped and dominated cultural life in Mozart's city for decades. [...]

The large building is the Hotel Sacher, one of the most expensive hotels in Austria (I learned). The white buidling on the left of the hotel was the home of Herbert von Karajan, the world famous conductor. [Flickr.com__EricB2005]

HvK's private residence (detail)__[Wikipedia]

The Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin-Tiergarten is one of the most important concert halls in Berlin. It is home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It was built by the architect Hans Scharoun in the years 1960–1963.

It is a singular building, asymmetrical and tentlike, with a main concert hall in the form of a pentagon. The seating offers excellent positions from which to view the stage through the irregularly increasing height of the benches. The stage is at the center of the hall, providing an extraordinary atmosphere for both the artists and the viewers. The acoustics are excellent.

The building is located on Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, named for the Philharmonic's longest-serving principal conductor. [Text: Flickr.com__*Checco*]
[Pic: Flickr.com__Umschauen]

IMAGE GALLERY
1966

1967

1969

1973

1973

1974

1983

LINKS
Salzburg, 1978__[Flickr.com]

1. Herbert von Karajan Is Dead; Musical Perfectionist Was 81 (obit)
He also made more than 800 recordings, more than any other conductor. Deutsche Grammophon, the West German record company that shared him with EMI, an English label, said his albums sold "probably hundreds of millions" of copies. Der Spiegel, the West German newsweekly, reported that the conductor earned more than $6 million annually from record sales and conducting fees.
2. HvK Tribute site
3. Karajan on the Music of Today
As for myself, I can tolerate wrong notes, but I cannot stand unstable rhythm. Perhaps I was born in Africa in another existence. Once in Vienna after we had finished a recording session, I surprised everyone by telling them I was going to hear a Louis Armstrong concert. When they asked why? I told them that to go to a concert and know that for two hours the music would not get faster or slower was a great joy to me.

ROPE

Rope is a 1948 film based on the play Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions. Starring James Stewart, John Dall and Farley Granger, it is the first of Hitchcock's Technicolor films, and is notable for taking place in real time and being edited so as to appear as a single continuous shot through the use of long takes.

The original play was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb who simply wanted to prove to themselves that they could commit a murder and get away with it. However, they were both arrested and received long prison terms. [...]

PLOT
Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger) are two young men who share a New York apartment. They consider themselves intellectually superior to their friend David Kentley and as a consequence decide to murder him. Together they strangle David with a rope and placing the body in an old chest, they proceed to hold a small party. The guests include David's father, his fiancée Janet and their old schoolteacher Rupert (James Stewart) from whom they mistakenly took their ideas. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.

TAGLINE
The Guest Who's Dead on Time

COMMENT
[IMDb.com]
I just saw this movie for the first time this year. I was amazed. Alfred Hitchcock does an absolutely amazing job of making the audience cringe. I read reviews about this movie saying that it wasn't well accepted by the audience when it first came out. But that is understandable because a lot of great classics aren't accepted when first released. One big example is The Shawshank Redemption, which didn't do as well as it should have in the box office. That doesn't make the content or the worth of the film any less. Rope was the twisted story based on the real life murder case of Leopold-Loeb. Two college students commit the "perfect murder" and invite the friends and family of their victim over for dinner. The acting is superb, especially from everyone's favorite, James Stewart. The fear builds slowly as this movie keeps you interested by morbid discussion that everyone has thought at one time or another. This movie really did creep me out, and although it might not be as thrilling as Rear Window or North by Northwest, it will not disappoint. You will be biting your nails for sure waiting to see what happens to the seemingly "perfect murder". I would easily give this movie an 8 out of 10.

QUOTES
Brandon: We killed for the sake of danger and for the sake of killing. We're Alive. Truly and wonderfully alive.

Brandon: The power to kill is just as satisfying as the power to create.

Brandon: I'd hang all incompetents and fools in the world. There are far too many.

Brandon: Moral concepts of good and evil and right and wrong don't hold for the intellectually superior.

Phillip (to Brandon): You, perhaps. You frighten me. You always have. From the very first day in prep school. Part of your charm, I suppose.

Rupert (to Brandon): By what right do you dare to say that there's a superior few to which you belong? By what right did you decide that that boy in there was inferior and could be killed? Did you think you were God, Brandon? Is that what you thought when you choked the life out of him? Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave?! I don't know who you are but I know what you've done. You murdered! You choked the life out of a fellow human being who could live and love as you never could, and never will again!

[Via here & here]

THEMES
[Homoeroticism]
Rope may be considered a homoerotic movie, even though the film version never indicates that the two murderers in the film are having an affair, and Brandon says he was in a previous relationship with Janet, the girlfriend of the murdered man. However, there is no indication that the two men live apart; Phillip even has a key of his own for the Shaw apartment, and towards the end of the movie they discuss going away together for a holiday. At one point, when Janet asks where the telephone is, Brandon says "It's in the bedroom" — indicating there is only one bedroom — and she responds "How cozy!"

Even though homosexuality was a highly controversial theme for the 1940s, the movie made it past the Production Code censors; during the film's production those involved described homosexuality as "it". However, many towns chose to ban it independently, memories of Leopold and Loeb still being fresh in some people’s minds. Dall was actually gay in real life, as was screenwriter Arthur Laurents — even the piano score played by Granger (Mouvement Perpétuel No. 1 by Francis Poulenc) was the work of a gay composer. Granger, meanwhile, was bisexual. Granger’s role was first offered to another bisexual actor, Montgomery Clift, who turned the offer down, probably due to the risks of coming out in public. Cary Grant turned down the part of Rupert Cadell for similar reasons. [...]

In Hamilton’s play, the dialogue is much more homoerotic, as is the relationship between the students and their teacher. Many of these "risky" elements were removed from the script as the play was rewritten for the film. Despite this, Hitchcock managed to supply much subtext which made it past the rigorous tests of the censor.

One example is how Hitchcock makes plain the sexual nature of their relationship, as well as each character’s role, at the very start of the movie with the first lines of dialogue spoken. Directly after the murder, while both men are standing, Brandon wants to get moving to arrange the party — but Phillip, shocked and drained by what they have just done, asks if they can’t "stay this way for a minute". Brandon agrees, then lights a cigarette. This mirroring of post-coital dialog is immediately identifiable, and also indicates that Phillip’s role in the relationship is that of the submissive archetype, while Brandon’s is that of the dominant partner.

The fact that the two characters were inspired by Leopold and Loeb, who were themselves homosexual, only furthers the argument that Brandon and Philip were meant to be gay as well. [Wikipedia]

Rope - review by Roger Ebert
ALFRED HITCHCOCK called “Rope” an “experiment that didn’t work out,” and he was happy to see it kept out of release for most of three decades. He was correct that it didn’t work out, but “Rope” remains one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names, and it’s worth seeing this week during its revival at the Fine Arts theaters. [...]

Hitchcock's 'Rope': A Stunt to Behold
ROPE is not exactly a picture to warm your heart, take your mom to or make out by. The Arthur Laurents screenplay, adapted from Patrick Hamilton's play, is full of the kind of self-conscious epigrams and breezy ripostes that once defined wit and decadence in the Broadway theater. "What would you say to some champagne?" Brandon asks one of his guests at the post-murder cocktail party he's giving. "Hello, champagne," says the guest.

The film is so chilly you could ice champagne in it or place it around a silver serving dish of fresh caviar. It really is the "stunt" that Hitchcock calls it in "Hitchcock," Francois Truffaut's series of interviews with him, but it looks far more interesting now than either Hitchcock or Truffaut thought 20 years ago. And, once you get in touch with its dated speech rhythms, even its archness is acceptable.

Rope is not merely a stunt that is justified by the extraordinary career that contains it, but one of the movies that makes that career extraordinary. "I really don't know how I came to indulge in (Rope)," Hitchcock said almost apologetically to Truffaut, though he then went on to describe exactly why he did:

Hitchcock was interested in seeing whether he could find a cinematic equivalent to the play, which takes place in the actual length of time of the story. To do this, he decided to shoot it in what would appear to be one long, continuous "take," without cutaways or any other breaks in the action, though in fact there would have to be a disguised break every 10 minutes, which was as much film as the camera could contain.

These breaks he usually accomplishes by having the camera appear to pan across someone's back, during which dark close-ups the film reel is changed. Not all of these disguises are equally effective, as Hitchcock himself later realized. However, his obsession with telling a story without resorting to the usual methods of montage, and without cutting from one shot to another, results in a film of unusual, fascinating technical facility, whose chilliness almost perfectly suits the subject. [...]

When I saw the film last week at the Cinema Studio, the audience collapsed with laughter at Philip's tentative suggestion that the party might be a mistake, but this was, I think, the laughter of disorientation rather than derision. There are a lot of laughs in Rope but most of these are ghoulish ones, though Mr. Granger's Philip is so distraught right from the beginning that almost everything he says or does strikes the audience as comic.

The Granger role is impossible. However, Mr. Dall is exceptionally effective as the imperious, self-assured mastermind of the couple. It's another measure of Hitchcock's wiles that, though the film was made back in the days when any suggestion of homosexuality was supposedly taboo, Rope is immediately explicit without actually committing any offenses the Production Code people could object to. Constance Collier and Sir Cedric Hardwicke add a certain classy tone to the film as, respectively, the young victim's aunt and father, but Mr. Stewart is a problem.

This, I suspect, has something to do with the role, for which he is miscast. It's a smooth performance without being believable for a minute, possibly because it seems highly unlikely that the man we see on the screen could ever have spouted the nonsense attributed to him. He's also too down-to-earth and pragmatic ever to have been intrigued by the foppish manners and mini-intellect of the murderous Brandon.

That Rope does become emotionally involving has nothing to do with character identification and everything to do with watching a cinema master at work, as he denies himself the usual tools of his trade to find out just how effective the camera can be, working more or less on its own. It swoops and pries about the set, moving from close-ups to long shots to medium shots, with a kind of studied indifference. One high point: While the guests are discussing something of no great moment just off- screen, the camera, catlike, stares at the chest as the maid gets ready to put some books back into it, unaware, of course, that the chest is already fully occupied.

Hitchcock loved to put himself, as a filmmaker, into positions as impossible as those in which he placed his characters. In some ways Lifeboat is as much of a stunt as Rope, being set entirely in a tiny lifeboat. Having made Rope, however, he never indulged himself in this way again, though he did occasionally use the long, uninterrupted take in other films, most notably in the beautiful introductory sequence of Topaz.

Rope is not an unrecognized Hitchcock masterpiece, but one cannot understand the truly bold originality of the man without seeing it. END

Black & White

Black, eyelet dress by Alexander Wang at Start. Cycle shorts by American Apparel. Shoes by Christian Louboutin. Eyelet necklace by Thom Humphris.

Structured mac by Balenciaga at Harrods. Biker trousers by Beyond Retro. Boots by Topman.

Distressed arm piece by Tour de Force. Black top by Bassike at Start.

Structured, woollen coat and belt by Tim Soar.

The Black and White Issue

Autumn

Hyde Park, London__[Jezebel.com]

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. -P.D. James




Conductor: Herbert von Karajan w / Berlin Philharmonic
Soloist: Anne-Sophie Mutter

André Balazs

Housing crisis? Not on Balazs' watch. Recession or no, the crisply dressed hotelier is opening his fourth Standard hotel, a glass behemoth that literally straddles the defunct rail tracks (soon to be a birch-lined park) of the High Line in New York's Meatpacking District. If anyone can make it work, it's the man who—between the Mercer, the Chateau Marmont, and other properties too boutique to mention—has been sheltering the fashion and movie sets on both coasts for years. [Style.com]

BIO - Wikipedia
André Balázs is a New York City hotelier and residential developer.

A graduate of Cornell University as College Scholar and Columbia Graduate School. Balazs studied humanities at Cornell University, then got a masters degree in a joint journalism and business program at Columbia University. After college, he worked on a senate campaign and later founded a biotech company with his father. He subsequently became a developer and hotelier with the acquisition of famed Chateau Marmont in 1990.

Andre Balazs Properties, owns 8 hotels in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, including the Chateau Marmont, The Mercer, The Standard Hollywood, The Standard Hotel (The Standard has hotels in Downtown LA, West Hollywood, Miami, and New York which recently opened in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.), Sunset Beach and The Raleigh Hotel. His residential projects include 40 Mercer Residences in Soho, designed by architect Jean Nouvel; One Kenmare Square with Richard Gluckman and William Beaver House in New York's Financial District designed by Calvin Tsao.

André Balazs was a founding trustee of the New York Academy of Art, is currently a member of the board of directors of the New York Public Theater and Wolfsonian-FIU, and the recipient of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Design Patron Award.

BIO - Cityfile
Much like the granddaddy of the boutique hotel, Ian Schrager, Balazs knows how to cultivate a scene, albeit a rarified one. Marc Jacobs stays at the Mercer when he's not in Paris; when Rupert Murdoch needed a place to live several years ago while his SoHo apartment was under construction, he and wife Wendi Deng spent close to a year living in one of the Mercer's suites; and when Russell Crowe famously tossed a phone at a hotel employee, it was a poor Mercer staffer who walked away with the bruises. (Indeed, having such famous guests can be more trouble than it's worth: When Lindsay Lohan spent a year living at Chateau, there were repeated rumors that the hotel wanted her out on account of her "lifestyle.") [...]

For all his empire expansion, Balazs is simultaneously pruning his assets. In April 2008 he unloaded his Lindy Roy-designed Hotel QT in Times Square for $82 million; he sold the land that the Miami Standard sits on several months later (he continues to manage the hotel); and sold off the Raleigh in Miami in the fall of 2009. [...]

Until recently, Balazs lived in New Museum Building at 158 Mercer. (He sold the apartment for $10 million in 2007.) Outside the city, Balazs owns a 55-acre country house in upstate New York called The Locusts. END

Minimalist and Maximalist Style
Stop us if you've heard this one before: Two guys walk into a bar. One's dressed like a priest in mourning. The other's dressed like Elton John on speed. How can each claim to be the best-dressed man in the room? Because in matters of style and design, there will always be champions of simplicity (minimalists) and champions of excess (maximalists). [...]

Andre Balazs
"To get minimalism right, you have to work very, very hard or the result can be unattractive, cold, or even impersonal," says the owner of the Standard hotels in Los Angeles and Miami as well as New York's Mercer hotel. And Balazs gets it right, every time, by ensuring his properties have an airy, streamlined aesthetic--nothing fussy but no expense spared. Look for a gleaming new Standard in New York in 2009.

Two-button wool suit ($1,295) by Z Zegna; cotton shirt, Balazs's own, by Ermenegildo Zegna; silk tie ($160) by Salvatore Ferragamo; leather shoes, Balazs's own.

The 10 Most Stylish Men in America
André Balazs
Hotelier, Scene Magnet

If you’ve ever set foot on an André Balazs property—the legendary Chateau Marmont, say—you know his philosophy: Style isn’t about exclusivity or trends; it’s about honesty, authenticity, and above all else, comfort.

"I view myself as a very traditionalist hotelier, regardless of what kinds of labels get placed on me for this or that, or for my clientele. To me, what makes a hotel great doesn’t come from the Zeitgeist. The new Standard [hotel] in New York, for example, has what I call a familiar modernity. It’s not using design as a gimmick; it’s using design to achieve a purpose, a sense of emotional well-being. It’s the same with style. There’s a million ways to be stylish, as long as it’s true to the individual or the place. But comfort is the most important thing. Comfort is like happiness—who’s not looking for happiness?"

Trench coat, $1,695, by Burberry. Suit, $2,200, by Louis Vuitton. Shirt, $385, by Oumlil. Tie, $155, by Massimo Bizzocchi.

Style & Design: Visionaries
"I often compare putting a hotel together to old-time movie production," says André Balazs. "You come up with a story line, you hire the writer, the director, the stars, the set designer." [...]

The Influentials: Architecture & Design
André Balazs and Ian Schrager
Hoteliers turned developers
Together, they polished downtown to a lustrous sheen. Their hotels became blueprints for modern luxe living (when Rupert Murdoch decided to relocate downtown, he hired Balazs’s Mercer Hotel designer), and both are expanding in every direction. [...]

Andre Balazs and the Raleigh Hotel - interview
"I worked in journalism because I started a publishing company. And I worked in biotechnology because I started a biotechnology company. Really, I'm an entrepreneur, who, for a variety of reasons, found one area where my various other adjacent interests came together. I like starting things. I've always liked design, and I went to architecture school briefly. I went into nightclubs and restaurants before getting into hotels. I've thought about these earlier vignettes in my life and how they have come together. There's an element of journalistic aspect to the creation of a hotel, at least the ones we do. It involves researching and finding a story to the culture of the hotel." [...]

What is the essence of a good hotel?
I think the hotels that mean the most to people are the hotels that feel like home - like your own home. For me, how you achieve that feeling is really the whole point of being an hotelier. There are many different tools to doing that: visual tools, special tools, service tools, tone and the mix of people. That combination is what makes someone feel emotional about a hotel. A good hotel is one that makes you want to come back. [...]

Why is this (The Raleigh) a good gathering place for people who are interested in the Arts?
I think there's something about the hotel that is sophisticated and appeals to people who buy art or are artists. At the Chateau in L.A., we have a very longstanding, loyal clientele of writers, directors and the creative community. I feel there's something similar at The Raleigh. It's a mindset that takes you back. It's not an in-your-face attitude. It's casual. [...]

Style.com gallery



STANDARD HOTEL NY
The Standard NY - set

New York's Standard Hotel Hosts Storefront Art Auction - slideshow
Each year, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, a nonprofit New York-based organization founded in 1982 and committed to the advancement of innovation and emerging voices in architecture, art, and design, holds its annual spring benefit at a new, important architectural site. [via]

The Little Somethings Add Up
Mr. Balazs operates remorselessly stylish hotels in California, New York and Florida, and with them, a number of restaurants.

Yet none of them really established Mr. Balazs as a restaurateur. The Standard Grill, adjoining his Standard Hotel, does. The rambling menu doesn’t always cohere, and the waiters can be unequal to their jobs, but somehow none of that matters much. [...]

The Standard Grill - slideshow

Name Dropping: Bye-Bye to 'Boom Boom'
So what should we call the spanking-new penthouse bar atop the Standard, André Balazs’s hotel in the meatpacking district?

Last month, when Jeff Koons, Calvin Klein, Josh Hartnett and others toasted T’s fifth anniversary there, everybody was calling it the Boom Boom Room. But now we’re hearing that the name has been scrapped. QT is being tossed around as a possible alternative. To that, we say: ugh. [...]

Andre Balazs' Saturday Night Boom Boom Room Party
Andre Balazs is really becoming NYC’s sweetheart. With the explosion of the Boom Boom Room, he is basically sitting back and letting the stars swarm around his Standard Hotel. This Saturday he had a party at the bar, well, just cause. Naomi Watts, Griffin Dunne and Patrick McMullan stood out among the banquettes of beautiful people, but there is one girl about which we’re especially curious. A tipster tells us that the hotelier was spotted after this soiree, around 4:30 in the morning, walking down Broadway with a slim, cigarette smoking brunette clad in black. Just a stroll? Maybe, but we don’t hold hands with our friends…


Dakota at the Standard__[purple-diary.com]

RUMOUR
IN 1999, Balazs opened the first Standard Hotel on The Sunset Strip directly across from the Chateau Marmont. Original investors of the hotel included Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and Benicio del Toro, securing its status as one of the hottest spots in Hollywood.

The ultra-chic hotel was a perfect venue for Balazs' infamous experimentation with avant-garde notions of design, punctuated by a woman laying down behind the check-in counter sleeping behind a glass window. Since then, Balazs has opened Standard Hotels in Downtown Los Angeles, Miami Beach and, most recently, in New York City.

The Standard in New York is famous for its ominous modernist design, and its integration with the Hi-Line, an elevated railroad track that has been transformed into a sort of "park in the sky." Recently, The Standard has been in the news for the public sex acts that go on inside the rooms, and are clearly visible to the pedestrians down below. Rumor has it that Balazs is more than pleased with all the press the public sex has earned his hotel, and that he intended it all along. Why else would he build a hotel entirely out of non-reflective glass windows? [AskMen.com]

Hot Standard Hotel Staff Pose for Calendar Cheesecake
To promote the opening of the forthcoming Standard Hotel in New York, handsome hotelier Andre Balazs had a 2008 calendar made featuring some of his most photogenic employees. [...]

Stan D'Arde Blog
Walk of Shame!
Aug.04-09
The other morning while we were walking through the lobby of the The Standard, New York, we saw a breathtaking woman in a gorgeous white Calvin Klein dress and Christian Louboutin heels heading towards the front door. Although we thought it peculiar that she was so dressed up so early in the day, we still complemented her on her ensemble. She smiled coyly upon receiving our kind words, and replied "The dress looked better last night!" AH! It all made sense at that one moment. This young woman was about to embark on her Walk of Shame.

The Walk of Shame has been ongoing for centuries before us. This is when you are forced to go home after a night of unbridled passion with a love who you have taken at a place other than your own bedroom. In the morning, you must don the clothing which you had on the night before and make the trek home, knowing that everyone who sees you knows exactly what you have done. The feeling of embarassment is crippling. Your clothes are wrinkled because they were lying on the floor all night long. Your head is pounding because you indulged in one too many glasses of Dom Perignon. Your mouth feels like an ashtray because you didn't have a tootbrush on you. But now there is a solution to all your problems...

We'd like to introduce to you the Walk of Shame Kit. This kit is everything a young lady with a highly charged "personal life" will need to indulge in her nightly excursions. It comes equipped with a dress for the morning, flip flops to save your feet from those heels, a backpack, sunglasses, pre-pasted toothbrush, wipes, a call/don't call leave behind note card and a breast cancer awareness bracelet....and all of this for only $34.99. That's worth its weight in kisses if you ask us!

So no longer do you need to worry when going out on the town. The only thing you'll need to worry about is fitting the kit in your CHANEL Paris-Moscou bag. [WSK vid]

As the elusive blogger behind the Standard Hotel brand, Stan D’Arde is a man on a mission: to chronicle the chic things happening in New York, Miami, and L.A that would interest guests of the Standard. He writes about everything from racing bikes to racy restaurants, employing the royal “we” and exclamatory French as he goes. [Hamilton1883.com]

CHATEAU MARMONT

REVIEW
Well, I am proud to say that I have been to the Chateau Marmont on many occasions. In fact, I even spent my 29th birthday there in a bungalow with its own koi fish pond!!! I listened to the Beatles White Album and hung out on my very own patio, what a treat! This book is a wonderful escape into the private and not so private life of the Chateau. This wonderful hotel still has its 1926 flavor, yet with a hip new twist. The drawing room is still the most wonderful place on the premises and many stories in this book revolve around that very room. Legends, baby! This book, like the Chateau will never die, I will see to that. I agree with the last reviewer, Dominic Dunne writes about his experiences living in the Chateau's Hughes penthouse in the early 1970s. Truly magical, this book will delight and intrigue anyone who reads it. I love and miss the Chateau and plan to return very soon! Great book, great place!

THE MERCER
BUILT IN 1890 as an office building for John Jacob Astor II, this landmark location was until recently home to shabby lofts for Soho artists...It is across the street from the Guggenheim Museum Soho and near all the galleries of SoHo. It is not far from Greenwich Village, Little Italy and Chinatown as well. The super chic restaurant The Mercer Kitchen is located in the basement. [HotelsoftheRichandFamous.com]

The Mercer - reviews
LOCATED at the intersection of Mercer and Prince in SoHo, The Mercer hotel is New York's first loft hotel and captures the very essence of the area. Lofts are a uniquely SoHo phenomenon, pioneered by artists in the 1960s who took over the neighborhood's many abandoned warehouses. Loft living is about sunlight and leaving the original architecture intact, and at The Mercer, brickwork is exposed, windows are industry size, and iron support columns run from floor to ceiling. It's one of the few New York hotels to boast wooden floors, and Christian Liaigre's spare furnishings are appropriately unobtrusive, because, as your downtown designer friend might say, the beauty of a place is in its empty spaces.
Walking into the lobby/library (not a gimmick—you can check the books out) is like walking into the apartment of that same designer friend of yours—pale leather screens, worn Turkish carpet, leather banquettes and low oval coffee tables. The rooms have a nice secular touch—no Bibles, just Paper magazine—while bathrooms feature stark white tiles, deliciously soft Frette towels and hip Face Stockholm beauty products. Ask for a room where the Scandinavian blonde wood partitions dividing bedroom and bathroom slide open and voila, you're having a soak just steps away from your plush, inviting bed. To be frank, the arrangement (the cube shaped tubs easily fit two) is conducive to frolicking, as are the huge walk-in showers and the six-foot mirrors. (Yes, there are complimentary mints and condoms alongside the shampoo.)
The neighboring Mercer Kitchen houses a bar, usually crammed with well-heeled Manhattanites gossiping, and sporting plenty of Prada-clad attitude, while the restaurant is French family dining, as interpreted by über-chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and is booked out weeks in advance.
Surprisingly, perhaps, The Mercer is a good hotel for families—babies can sleep in Frette-lined cribs, complete with toys—and while the staff may be well-dressed, they don't put on any airs: they'll get you anything from Assam teabags to a bikini wax in your room at two in the morning. You never have to step foot outside the Mercer for want of anything; and in New York terms, that is living at its most decadent. END

TripAdvisor Popularity Index: #24 of 418 hotels in New York City

[Pics via]

WILLIAM BEAVER HOUSE
Model suite

Me! Me! Me! All the Way Home
EVERYBODY has been telling me something I’m not too excited about. Namely, that to get a good deal on a new condo one has to commit to a space before the building has even been topped off. That explains why developers spend oodles of money not only on mock-ups of rooms but also on elaborate marketing plans that highlight future amenities — even if there’s not a corner deli in sight in the neighborhood.

Nowhere else does this seem to have been done with such élan as at the William Beaver House, André Balazs’s 47-story, 320-unit tower at 15 William Street in the financial district.

The building is where William and Beaver Streets meet — hence the name and the inspiration for the jaunty, cute, key-toting beaver that is the mascot of the project. [...]

Now water views are something I would give up lots of other things for, so I was sort of surprised when Calvin Tsao said without hesitation: “This building is absolutely not for you. Its target is a younger, more mobile community.”

He was right, I guess. But somehow, as soon as someone says that something is not for me, it just makes me all the more interested.

“Most of the units are small,” Mr. Tsao continued. “They are for people who travel, maybe not for families, as there’s nothing like Central Park near here, and the Battery is quite far. They are for a new generation that love living in hotel rooms.”

Now just hold on, Calvin, I wanted to shout. You may not know me all that well, but Calvin, that’s me! Me! Me! I love everything about hotels — especially room service, or any kind of service. And I’m particularly partial to Mr. Balazs’s hotels.

Mr. Tsao continued listing the building’s future amenities — and I was loving most of them: an upscale deli on the ground floor (that really caught my fancy); a spacious gym with an outdoor terrace; on-site parking and a garage; a screening room; an indoor pool; a covered dog run (with luck, our elderly cairn terrier will live long enough to enjoy it).

I loved, loved, loved all those things — and was not entirely immune to the handball court and half basketball court.

“The building is a vertically integrated village, a very self-sufficient place to live,” Mr. Tsao added, pointing out the comfy lounge area with its meandering sofas where I was enjoying my second espresso.

“We’re romancing the public areas — where people can interact,” he said, “and trying to create a lobby that’s a series of lounges you can use.” I get that — the large lobby where you can see the world come and go, as if you were a permanent guest in a grand hotel — a hip, modern grand hotel.

Maybe some of those mobile people who are on their way somewhere glamorous will be able to stop and interact with those of us who may be just over their age limit. [...]

Revolutions__[Flickr.com__seeking_epiphany]

Last night I went to the launch party for the William Beaver House--a ridiculously high-end residential building in the Wall Street area...

Uploaded Nov. 2006

...It seems all the wealthy progeny of New York's finest were there last night--obviously the future tenants of the abhorrently named building.

[Flickr.com]

William Beaver House - official site
Building Features
William Beaver House offers an original collection of 5-star hotel services and unmatched amenities:

__André Balazs designed Lobby Lounge, modeled after the world's great hotel lobbies
__24-hour doorman and concierge
__Terrace hot tub with outdoor shower
__Penthouse Sky Lounge with catering kitchen, private dining room and entertainment terrace, overlooking lower Manhattan, New York Harbor and the East and Hudson Rivers
__Large, professional screening room / dance lounge with wet bar
__Landscaped sundeck on 47th floor
__Indoor parking with valet
__Fully-equipped, indoor/outdoor fitness center
__Glass-enclosed lap pool with lounge-deck and bar
__Outdoor basketball court with bleachers
__Squash court
__Outdoor handball and tetherball courts
__Sauna & steam rooms
__Men's and women's locker rooms
__Refrigerated storage in lobby for perishable deliveries
__Covered outdoor dog run



Rendering / Reality: William Beaver House
Rendering / Reality is a Curbed feature that considers the often unsubtle differences between what a building or apartment looks like in its renderings, and what it looks like when they get around to building the thing.

William Beaver House, a new Financial District condominium building developed by star hotelier André Balazs...has really come far along. We'd rate the similarities to the rendering at a solid 70%. The yellow crap came out a little more "highway road markings" than "melted stack of butter," and we've yet to see any animé Wall Streeters and their Friday night conquests hovering near the construction site.

COMMENTS
Curbed.com
Oh, that's what that building is! I walk past it from time to time on my way to work and have wondered why so much of the exterior was still on back-order. I thought the yellow bits were place holders until the real exterior pieces showed up via UPS.
Hmmm. Interesting. Nope, doesn't work!

If you want to see UGLY - you should see this building from the Brooklyn Prominade - holy crap does it stand out.... For the longest time I thought the yellow was just construction stuff but it is actually going to stay!!! What the heck were they thinking?

A building with Beaver in its name that looks like God's giving NY a golden shower. No thank you.

That isn't yellow paint. It's yellow bricks. What makes it worse is that they used dark gray mortar between the yellow bricks. It looks like the Death Star wrapped in caution tape.

15 CPW cost a fortune to build (probably well over $1,000 sq ft). Beaver and it's little Karl cousins in W-Burg cost next to nothing (less then $500 sq ft.)

Just because one wants to save money doesn't mean a building has to turn out looking like straight ass. If they maybe had kept the color, aligned the windows, gotten rid of the yellow, added some horizontal or vertical flairs, we would have a building as beautiful as the Monadnock.

Funny, now that it is built it does look a bit like Pei's Hancock Tower in Boston after the wind blew out the windows...perhaps that was their design precedent.

So unbelievably ugly. Shocking that something that crappy can be built. The name, as noted by others, is ridiculous. It's like they hired a branding consultant who is in their mid-80s and has no clue that beaver may reference more than a loveable, dam building animal.

Calling All Eager Beavers: Your Swimmin' Hole is Ready!
As buyers started moving in to André Balazs's William Beaver House in the Financial District, we heard some gripes about the state of the amenities. What a difference a month makes! [...]

COMMENTS
Curbed.com
A skinny shallow indoor pool with a view of the building 20 feet across the street and no direct light is gloomy and depressing. They should have put it on the roof. Looks like a therapeutic pool in a hospital basement.

I picture fat guys sitting around the pool wondering when the hot models are going to show up.

Once the residents take over the condo board all the fat middle aged out of work wall street guys who bought these to boink mistresses at lunch can hire models to swim nude in the pool.

Looks identical to their marketing brochure...NOT!

This building is so ugly and out of place that I actually like it. That said, prices still need to drop 40%. In twenty years I think living in an amenity-laden, 2009 condo will be the ultimate ironic hipster accessory.

Agree that the only people moronic enough to buy in this building are fat guys that thought it would help them get laid by models.

I've been down at the William Beaver House 3 times now, and have rather closely followed the work on the amenities (and drop of the prices - am interested in renting). If you're not into contemporary-urban-Balazs' kind of style, then of course, you won't like WBH. But if you do like a design that's a bit different from either the glass-towers or that oh-so-boring classic-modern take, then I think it's a great building. And by the way, that photo shows the pool in a bad light - literally. I've seen the space (and gym), and it looks nice.

Core Sues William Beaver Developers
Core Group Marketing has filed suit against the developer of chic downtown condominium William Beaver House, claiming it is owed more than $220,000 in unpaid commissions for units sold at the building. [...]
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RELATED__Room Mate Grace
Room Mate Grace - reviews
Formerly Hotel QT, the Grace is the Spanish Room Mate group’s first stateside outing — and it seems the stylish budget chain and the quirky Times Square boutique are a match made in heaven. While the name has changed, the idea remains the same: to offer something cheap but still chic, more inspiring and attractive than the chain motels but stylish enough to attract the right sort of patrons.
Though this is Times Square, you won’t see the usual tourists in souvenir shirts. Instead expect young arts-and-media types, up-and-coming musicians, and anyone else with Mercer style and a Holiday Inn budget. Youth hostels were one inspiration, but we’ve never seen a hostel with free wi-fi, flat-screen televisions, DVD players and Egyptian cotton bedding. Rooms for four are available, with twin bunk beds and an LCD screen in each bunk, perfect for a traveling band or four very close friends.
Other decidedly non-hostel perks include a swimming pool with underwater music and a swim-up window for ordering drinks from the bar. DJs play nightly in the lobby lounge, and there’s a 24-hour coffee bar for anyone exhausted by New York’s round-the-clock schedule. A continental breakfast is complimentary, and there’s even a sauna and a steam room. No restaurant, but given the location, you won’t go hungry for long.
With rates starting at around a hundred dollars for the simplest rooms, this is an excellent value, as cheap as some of the dismal motor inns and miles more stylish. And even if you’re not prepared to rough it, the penthouse at the Grace runs about as much as the most basic room at one of the tonier downtown hotels. END

[Pics via here & Flickr.com]
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RELATED__Jeff Klein
Hollywood Hotels Like Sunset Tower Are Hubs for Deal Making
THE Sunset Tower Hotel, once a dilapidated dump but now a power-broker capital in Hollywood, recently hired a detective. After all, a crime had been committed — at least in the eyes of its owner, Jeff Klein.

When US Weekly reported in August that Renée Zellweger and her new beau had guzzled Champagne in a Sunset Tower suite, Mr. Klein had a meltdown. The detective was hired and, soon, a room-service waiter was fired.

“He claimed he only told his mother,” Mr. Klein says. “I didn’t care. Gone!”

A New York society brat turned serious hotelier and restaurateur, Mr. Klein, 39, bought the Sunset Tower in 2004 and has transformed it partly by throwing out the handbook of how entertainment industry haunts are managed, especially in Los Angeles. A ban on media leaks about boldface business deals or celebrity frolicking is strictly enforced. Mr. Klein is also very careful about curating a clientele. Celebrities deemed out of place, including the rapper Sean Combs and Britney Spears, have been — gasp — turned away. [...]

For the Moment: Jeff Klein
This week’s guest blogger is Jeff Klein, the hotelier behind The City Club in New York and the Sunset Tower in Los Angeles. In his first post, Klein recalls his early fascination with the hospitality industry. To read all of Jeff Klein’s prior blog posts, click here.

EVER SINCE I can remember I have been freakishly obsessed with hotels, much more so than the average hotel geek who concerns himself only with bathroom products, bed linen thread count and front-desk service. [...]

UNDER Bernard Goldberg's aegis I discovered that the only way to run a successful hotel was to know how to do every job well. I began as a bellman and worked my way through all the departments, including housekeeping, room service and front desk reception. I eventually became the general manager of the hotel group and worked as the owner’s representative on the restoration of new hotels Mr. Goldberg had acquired. My experience with him was invaluable.

I was lucky to have started in earnest when I did. The 90’s were a great time to get a foothold in the changing landscape of the hotel business. Ian Schrager and Andre Balazs in particular were doing really interesting stuff by infusing a new aesthetic into an otherwise staid industry. I especially loved their trendy designs for lobbies and bar scenes. This “movement” in the hotel industry was unquestionably exhilarating, yet somehow I never became an acolyte.

I found many of the emerging boutique properties to be singularly focused on design and neglectful of the things that make a hotel experience memorable, like delicious food, brilliant service, great linens, etc. As much as I respected Mr. Schrager and Mr. Balazs and their contribution to the hotel business, César Ritz was more my speed, and I adopted his obsession with excellence, old-world elegance and flawless service. [...]

I HAVE learned to create the hotel experience around my customer. My guests tend to be titans of their industries, successful artists or just plain old busy people whose greatest luxury is time. These customers want an intimate relationship with their hotel, and quality and service are at the top of their list. With that in mind, I don’t want 100 kids drinking $16 cosmos; I am my customer, and like me, my customer is an adult and wants an adult experience.

It sounds like a cliché, but great service is really what sets great hotels and restaurants apart. Service must be charming, sexy, and most importantly, personalized. A great example of the service I strive for is Dimitri Dimitrov, the maitre d’ of the Tower Bar, the restaurant in the sunset tower hotel. Dimitri is truly an old pro. He remembers names and tables, even peoples’ personal tastes and allergies. He keeps it all in his head; no computer profile or anything silly like that. He is genuinely connected to the customers. In fact, we often make menu changes based on what Dimitri tells us what the clientele is asking for. There is no one like Dimitri. [...]