The deaths of great performing musicians are always fateful. These personalities do not shape music, but they do shape the way it is perceived. Their passing in every case leaves both a void and an opportunity for good or for ill. Nowhere is this more true than with Herbert von Karajan. Equally at home in the opera house and the concert hall, he was the greatest conductor to emerge on the international scene after World War II. A master of orchestral ensemble and tone, he made Berlin the finest orchestra, and Salzburg the most prestigious festival, in the world. He was always interested in new talent, exerting the effort and taking the time to coach young artists, and then watching over their careers to make sure they were properly launched. He was not just passionately interested in making recordings; he was passionately interested in every aspect of the always evolving technologies by which performances are reproduced.

Karajan was also passionately interested in commerce. Given his remarkable musical abilities and a platform charisma unmatched since Toscanini, these commercial instincts enabled him to become the first power in classical music the world over. With his secure base in Berlin, his control of the Salzburg Festival, and his position as primus inter pares in the Deutsche Grammophon recording empire, he was able to do more than get what he wanted for himself musically and economically; he was able to get what he wanted for others, and to enable a favored few, using his name and position, to advance their own interests. Karajan was thus more than a great conductor; he was the linchpin of the entire classical music business.

The recordings Karajan made will continue to sell, and the artists he inspirited will continue to perform before the public. But the master personality, and even more the mastermind, is now gone. The Berlin Philharmonic is leaderless, as is the Salzburg Festival. Many names will be bandied about as Karajan’s successor, but it is apparent now, and has been so for many years, that no conductors of anything like his status exist today. Furthermore, there are other vacancies in the orchestral world, vacancies not quite so important but nonetheless significant: the most important of these are in New York and Los Angeles, where neither Zubin Mehta nor André Previn is leaving anything like a success behind him.

As this game of musical chairs is played out, only one thing is certain: conductorial choices these days are made not because of the musical values of inspiration and seriousness but because of a conductor’s standing in the international glamour derby. A new Karajan, were one to exist, would be chosen not for musical reasons but for his presumed ability to bring recording contracts to his new orchestra and, above all, to sell records, as Karajan supremely did, by the millions. What music these records are to contain, and how that music is to be played, are matters of minimal importance to the new powers that determine performing destinies. It would be sad indeed if Herbert von Karajan’s legacy were to be not his superb musicianship but his equally impressive commercial achievements.