Beethoven's Eroica - Karajan 1962

The Eroica is, highly non-originally, one of the most central pieces of music for me. I have more than seventy recordings.
Karajan, as will be known from other posts here, is not one of my top rated conductors. Beethoven can be both unrestrained and savage - attributes that are clearly linked. Karajan's moulded orchestral textures do not fit this. The first movement in Karajan's 1962 recording of the Eroica therefore strikes me as underpowered.
However, the second movement funeral march, in contrast, strikes me as a fine reading for two reasons - both illustrating that there is no 'spirit' over and apart from the notes actually played but the impression is in the way it is played.
First the somewhat moulded orchestral texture, the lack of savagery, produces a certain, but not excessive, feeling of restraint. This is suitable. A sleeve note to a recording of Mahler 2nd symphony made the intelligent comment that Beethoven in the funeral march in the Eroica was thinking of the mourners (or it might be put as the occassion of the death of a hero), whereas Mahler in the funeral piece starting his 2nd symphony was thinking of the corpse (or it might be put as the fear of death). That Beethoven's funeral march has the feeling of a public or state occassion, or of heroism in the face of death, an element of restraint is not out of place.
The second feature is the way that in the central section of the movement Karajan both gives prominence to the trumpet part but integrates it in the texture - an example of moulding. This gives a 'military' character which is in place in this piece known to be originally associated with Napoleon.
Despite my reservations on Karajan therefore it is a reading of stature of one of the greatest pieces of music - no wonder Toscanini, at one of his last rehersals, performed it so to speak 'for himself' to appreciate the greatness of a work he had conducted his entire life.