Brother Wolfgang

Sometimes he stays at home in Salzburg, playing in the drawing room of his elegant villa for the pleasure of the crowds that cluster outside the open French windows. Sometimes he packs his three oak organs on the back of a red and blue furniture van and takes his music on the road, like a traveling medicine show. Whichever, the driver of the truck and the owner of the villa bears one of the most celebrated names in European music: Von Karajan--Wolfgang von Karajan.

At 56, Wolfgang is not so well known as the Berlin Philharmonic's famous conductor, Herbert, but to Austrian and Bavarian chamber music fans he is every bit his younger brother's equal. For the past six years, he has blessed the countryside with his proudest achievement: the world's only traveling organ ensemble.

Clean & Clear. Both Von Karajan brothers were regarded as prodigies in their youth and studied at Salzburg's famed Mozarteum. But after graduation, Herbert took up conducting; Wolfgang studied electronics, went on to become both inventor and manufacturer of electromedical instruments. So successful was Wolfgang that today, despite Herbert's astronomical concert and recording fees, Wolfgang is the more prosperous of the two.

In 1957, Wolfgang decided to take part time off from business to form his own or gan group, determined to bring the clean, cold, clear sound of the 18th century baroque organ to 20th century ears. Von Karajan's basic ensemble consists of three organs, fitted out with 6-ft.-high wood and metal pipes, and Wolfgang plays one of them himself. When necessary, Wolfgang and his associates are joined by flutists, oboists, violinists and viola players who trail behind the furniture van in a chauffeur-driven station wagon. Wandering from town to town, playing for anybody, the group has worked its way through the sonatas, preludes and choir introductions of J. S. Bach, all the organ music ever written by Mozart, the works of Handel and of both the Haydns, Franz Joseph and his brother Johann Michael.

Polyphonal & Popular. Last time out, it was Munich's turn. Wolfgang and his troupe moved their instruments into the splendors of the Herkulessaal, disappeared behind the screen of organ pipes, and played through Bach's Art of the Fugue, the final composition of his life and a showcase of his innermost contemplations on polyphonal theory. Only at the end of their two-hr.-long performance did Wolfgang and his assistants appear to take crisply correct bows, and then they were off on the high road again.

Such evenings leave audiences aglow with delight and thundering applause, and Wolfgang basking in a sense of his mission. "We have found a new way of presenting organ music," he said, steering his van down the empty Autobahn. "My shop has become just a hobby; music is now my profession."

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