He says that as Karajan's power grew, so did the list of his enemies.
It's been estimated that Karajan has sold more than 200 million LPs, CDs and videos worldwide.
Yet for all the stories of greed and egomania, Karajan was a master conductor.
If a standard bearer like Herbert von Karajan suffices, Spotify has all four of his complete cycles.
Karajan's final concert and recording, made that same month, was with his other orchestra: the Vienna Philharmonic.
For better or worse there is no one around any more with Karajan's clout as maestro, businessman and jet-setter.
What is undeniable, as Karajan said himself in an interview, is the man's singular quest to make beautiful music.
Philadelphia Orchestra director Eugene Ormandy refused to shake Karajan's hand when the Berlin Philharmonic toured the U.S. in 1955.
Karajan finally stepped down in April 1989, just three months before his death.
Richard Osborne wrote the book Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music.
But it is no longer the cash-generating machine it was in the heady days when virtually every Karajan recording became an instant hit.
So here we are, 100 years after Karajan's birth, and the record companies are again trotting out hundreds of reissues for one of their heroes.
The over-fussy Janacek production by Christoph Marthaler, for instance, was booed as well as cheered with a gusto (too) rarely encountered in the Karajan era.
Karajan's concerts were banned in Detroit and picketed in New York.
In classics, it has the great Universal Classics catalog, meaning recordings by artists like Herbert Von Karajan, Maurizio Pollini, the Emerson String Quartet, and other best-in-the-world acts.
Plenty of local business-folk yearn for a new Karajan, who they reckon would bring back the good old days when the town was awash with visitors brandishing gold credit cards.
On the whole Mr Mortier has managed to build in a lot of modern, even contemporary, work as part of Salzburg's staple fare without wholly alienating Karajan fans (grumble though they still do).
On the positive side, since he took over in 1989 Mr Abbado has widened the Berliners' repertoire to include modern composers such as Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio and Alfred Schnittke that von Karajan shunned.
Selection is limited so far, especially in classical, but fast expanding and it does include two of the Karajan cycles (1950s EMI and 1960s DG, if you find the right one among various editions of just that particular set).
Small wonder, given the personnel changes and shift in repertoire, that the orchestra has bit by bit been losing the sheer polish and uniquely burnished tone in the classical and romantic repertoire that von Karajan fostered so assiduously for over three decades.
With the help of his handlers in New York, he has learned how other classical musicians developed and exploited their star power, how Horowitz and Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan and Anne-Sophie Mutter and Yo-Yo Ma took the extra steps that provided more celebrity and greater fees.
The Naxos Music Library (and versatile Qobuz) offers a well honed, classical-only streaming experience with plenty of relevant information, and Immerseel on both services, but on the Naxos Music Library only select early Beethoven recordings of Karajan (made for HMV with the Philharmonia Orchestra, now EMI, just sold to Warner as part of the Parlophone auction) are available, and early post-war broadcasts from Berlin (Audite).
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