Herbert von Karajan piloted his own Learjet, raced yachts, drove a Porsche 911 Turbo in Martini racing livery, and hoped to be reincarnated as an eagle soaring over the Alps. He was also arguably the most commercially successful conductor of the 20th century, selling over 200 million records. This episode traces his path from a Salzburg family of Greek-Macedonian origin ennobled by Saxon kings, through piano studies at the Mozarteum from 1916 to 1926, to the teacher Bernhard Paumgartner, who pushed him toward conducting.

The episode examines the documented record that Karajan joined the Nazi Party twice, in Salzburg in 1933 and in Aachen in 1935, his placement on the Gottbegnadeten list, his 1942 marriage to Anita Gütermann, who had Jewish ancestry, his flight to Italy in 1945, and his clearance by a denazification tribunal in Vienna in 1946. It then follows his 34 years as conductor for life of the Berlin Philharmonic, his eyes-closed conducting style, his 800-plus recordings with Deutsche Grammophon, his video company, and his championing of the compact disc.

• Helmut Schmidt’s characterization of Karajan as a Mitläufer rather than an ideological zealot
• The 1938 Tristan und Isolde performance that earned him the nickname Das Wunder Karajan
• Why he had his rhythmic accuracy tested against a computer and preferred Berlin players to Viennese
• Protests at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and Eugene Ormandy’s refusal to shake his hand
• Critics’ split verdict on the Karajan sound: sensual, refined Wagner versus heavy-handed Haydn