Otto Klemperer Documentary.

Thank you George for sharing this link.  I find this very fascinating as well.   Klemperer was such a compelling man with a keen musical mind.  A tower of strength from a different era so different and definitely foreign to us today.

One of my favourite books is called, "Images of Music" with the photographs of Erich Auerbach.  I love to just look at the Otto Klemperer photos as well.  They give the same sense of a man who has vision to see through the fluff and is primarily only concerned with the substance or the big picture.  No compromises.  It was nice to see the images of a younger Klemperer in this video.

I will have to watch this several more times to take everything in to fully appreciate this.

Thanks again,

Doug 

One strange aspect of seeing film of Klemperer conducting - however grim the sonics - is to be astounded that the orchestra could respond in a way that is unlike they way they would for other conductor while Klemperer quite often did little more that make a tiny series of gestures with his left hand that seemed kinetically somewhat unrelated to the expression and dynamic of the musical line ...

I was amazed to see his rehearsal sequence of the "Introduction" to the first movement of Haydn's "Oxford" Symphony in Abbey road in 1972. It is clear from this little piece of film that his effect on the orchestra is more about mental energy than obvious command through physical energy. I have the studio recording [most recently issued on EMI CDs a couple of years ago] and without the visual cues that the film gives, one gets the impression of a great orchestra playing its soul out for a clear and beloved master. The film makes the point that the orchestra were doing this on the basis, as much, of mind reading, as taking the cue of the baton. All the more remarkable a performance - or so it seems to me - having watched this film.

ATB from George

Dear Doug,

I don't think Klemperer was remotely concerned with little details as such, but the thing that counted for him was that the spirit inside the music was everything that mattered.

He was moulded by the times, even if if he was not typical of his time, and his like will never emerge again.

Thanks for your reply. ATB from George

George,

This is a serious question. Have you ever considered writing historic articles or reviews for classical music magazines or websites? I really enjoy reading your posts on these things. You write extremely well and bring great insight. Either your innate knowledge is encyclopedic, or you do great research. You then add your own spin. It just makes great reading. It could be an alternate career....

(There used to be another guy on these forums who used to try to pontificate on classical music at great length, but perhaps the less said the better!)

Winky

Dear Winki.

You are much too kind. I love music, or at least music that is beyond comprehension. In other words, the more I look into it the more I love it, but realise that there is no full comprehension that is possible.

In different circumstances I might have done something different in life, but at my age there is no changing direction.

As it is I am an autodidact, who can never resist reading something new about music, or searching out something old, but it is a hobby. The closest I came to a close binding of my life with music was learning to play the double bass. I expected as an amateur, but I ended up getting nice freelance pro-work and teaching the instrument, because others could see more in what I had to offer than I could. When it came time to give up [due to a left hand injury] I was more relieved than sad to finish, though it was very sad to sell he instrument and not play again.

The seling of the bass enabled me to get some topline Naim kit, but that was on the rebound - an emotional comfort blanket. I did not need very fine replay to enjoy music, so I have found my level a long way off the topline after circumstances forced me to release the bass-money from replay!

Best keep one hobby pure and away from the pressure of money really, even if I am useless at anything else. Projects like the Carlton are things to stop me getting bored, though I do love that old cycle. Now it is run in after the rebuild it is something very special, but I recently bent the rear derailleur, so there is always something to sort out ...

Music is the only reason I do not spiral down into a terminal mental decline. ATB from George

George,

Thanks for the link. I enjoyed it very much.

I don't have many Klemperer discs but the ones I do have I enjoy them.

I came to realise that hIs *tempo issue* isn't an issue at all as the way he communicates forget how much of the time has passed.

I have noticed with some other recordings as well. If I like the performance or rendition, then the time is completely irrelevant. Those performance I do not care for seems to go on forever even if it times faster~!

P.S. You ought to start your own blog. And if you keep at it, in time, I bet yo can get enough subscribers.

Dear Kuma,

One slightly sad story [left out of the film] was the clash between Artur Schnabel [another Jew born like Klemperer in what is now Western Poland of German stock] when on the West coast of the USA when they played the Beethoven Third Piano concerto together.

Klemperer was leading the wonderful opening tutti [nearly four minutes long] before the solo pianist enters. Schnabel was clearly impatient with Klemperer, and stood up behind him and conducted faster.

Klemperer felt the orchestra loose ensemble and turned round. Schnabel asked him whose tempi they would take, "Yours or mine?" Klemperer replied that he was taking the composer's, to which Schnabel snapped back,

"But was that Beethoven's tempo?"

A moment of high tension, but the concert went very well!

I remember many years ago attending a performance of Elgar's The Dream Of Gerontius in Hereford Cathedral. It was a sublime, searing, white hot performance. One of those timeless moments when I was spell-bound from beginning to end. I was walking out of the Saint Johns Door [small back door away from the madding crouds escaping through the main entrance - inside knowledge is good when escaping a concert], and an elderly couple came up to me and asked if I had enjoyed it. They said that I never moved or looked up the whole performance. I said yes, but was not still back on two feet. The wife said she thought it was terribly slow. Then I came to life and responded that it was so fine that the details and speeds completely escaped me. All that came was the music! Klemperer was the most famous musician to have this ability to transcend time, but he was and is not alone. I was aware of his music making as a ten year old and almost was taken to Festival Hall concert of Beethoven by him. Sadly that was in 1972, and it never happened.

I think people often listen in a quite superficial way. When listened to - looking out for surface details - then Klemperer can come across as quite careless, but letting the music penetrate one. Well Klemperer's performances are then as piercing as a dagger in the heart!

ATB from George

PS: I doubt that I would have the courage to start a blog. Here I am mostly among friends. Sometimes people attack me personally for my subjective views. but often people are happy to share with me. That is enough - just to share something. I want nothing back ...

George,

Both Klemperer and Celibidache taught me a concept of vertical movement in music.

Let's say that the time is a horizontal movement. In this sense, neither conductor's music might not move much but I hear a lot of upward spiralling movements because there are a lot of textures, layering or finer shadings happening. And that's how they communicate the music to me.

Anyways, I have been discovering my likes and dislikes by just listening to many different *covers* and finding out that there is something cool about Klemperer's work.

P.S. Schnabel's Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 I have is a bore. (Dobrowen/Philharmonia )

He's no Richter, that's for sure.

Dear Kuma,

I used to have the Schnabel/ Dobrowen/ Philharmonia recording of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto recording. I already had the same music with Sargeant and the London Symphony Orchestra from 1933.

Between the two Schnabel recordings there is really no comparison. 

I also have Edwin Fisher with the Philharmonia [no conductor!], and Barenboim with Klemperer with the New Pholharmonia.

I have kept the good ones!

Anyway it is all nice to share some favourites like this. Back to work shortly, and I woke up early, and dared not go back to sleep in case I "over" sleep! It is half six here, and blowing a proper gale! It is going to be horrible ride to work on the cycle!

Best wishes from George

Thanks George, a very interesting documentary.

EJ

George,

Barenboim+Klemperer=

Any good?

Amazing performances! Well I love them - all the five Concertos. Good recordings too!

It should be quite low price in the latest very fine EMI remaster on CDs.

The LPs were good too! I had the full set on full priced HMV LPs in the 1970s.

ATB from George

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmJ-mz7qqQI

The first part of the youtube films. Beethoven Third Piano Concerto with Barenboim as noteworthy soloist! 1967 Abbey Road recording ...

ATB from George

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6EQtu7eYY4&feature=related

And even more amazing is this live performance from 1970, when Klemperer was eighty five, of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

It makes me wonder how marvelous not only were many of the performances from his extreme old age, but also those from when he was younger and befallen fewer physical disasters!

ATB from George

Thanks George.

I'll locate one. I see that record all the time at the record shop. I have been avoiding Barenboim recording because the ones I have heard weren't to my liking particularly him conducting.

One of the worst performance I have is Barenboim's Beethoven's Concerto for Piano in D major. ( Op. 61a ) he plays as well as conducts. It's a stinker of a tune to begin with so I should not blame on him but...

Generally he's better at playing piano than conducting tho. So, I'll give a shot with Klemperer.

Maybe I'll learn something new.

Dear Kuma,

I have just watched the film again. The thrid time now. I was given the HMV recording of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony by Klemperer for my tenth birthday, and so forty years and a month ago began my admiration and more for this astounding musician ...

I really hope that you enjoy the records you buy.

Best wishes from George

Dear Jeremy,

One thing strikes me about the man is that he had two parallel blessings. Immense mental determination, and the constitution of an ox. What happened to him in his long life would have driven most to the asylum, or killed him physically several times over. I think his vocation strengthened him, so that every setback was overcome, till old age overtook him, and no amount of spiritual determination can beat that one.

I think this inner strength is very clear in his performances. Not sentimental, but so full of a deeper sentiment that runs like volcanic lava, sometimes on the surface, but mostly below the surface, but ever ready to erupt.

It seems to me that he knew when he was through with a situation. More than oce, when presented with an impossible situation as he said humself, "I left." Of course that kind of lack of supple compliance would never make him popular with the managements at orchestras and opera houses. But he seemed to posess that certainty that there would always be another door opening as the old one closed.

Even at the end of the film when he was talking down the phone to the record producer, he is unbowed, "And what have you got to say for yourself?" Amazing response!

Or saying much earlier to one of the Wagner familly, "Sit down and be outraged!" Also his completely unself-conscious commentry on his failures and successes! Here was clearly an artist who recognised human frailty not only in other, but just as much in himself. You can see how after a decade and a half with the Philharmonia, they had grown past fear, through respect, and ultimately to a great affection, but it was not affection courted for its own sake, but rather the true affection that comes from mutual respect.

His recordings may well not be to everyone's taste, but there is no ignoring their significance.

For me, the more I know of his life and work, the more he is a hero with little in the way of clay feet. And where he was wrong about this or that, he completely unforced agreement about this or that failure does rather tend to make me see him as being a great human, as well as one of the greatest of musicians.

I just wish I had once attended one of his concerts in the Festival Hall. I would love to have been there for the performance of Haydn's Oxford Symphony, which I have the studio recording of, and which there are two extracts of his rehearsals in the film. It could just have happened in the time line. But going to London from Worcester in 1972 with a ten or eleven year old was probably considered too much even then, though the idea was in the air. No doubt my father vetoed the idea for the cost as well. I had already picked up the strength of Klemperer's musicianship as a ten year old.

As it was we had a musical appreciation lesson every Saturday morning at school, and I had a brand new LP of the Choral Symphony under Carl Schurictch [I think]. Of course we had the school library LP recording from Klemeperer, but it had a bad scratch on it. The music master [who really grew to hate me and bullied me through out my four years at that school] asked me if he could borrow my new LP for the music appreciation sessions, and of course I agreed, but asked him why.

I said that the scratch on the school record was nothing compared to the way that Klemperer so brought out the music! The master replied that I could hardly know that, but as a ten year old I had not yet learned to fear him, and I replied that I knew it from a long study of the score which was also in the school music library.

So you see I had an early connection with this master musician! And an early disconnect with my music master, who from then on was gunning for me at every chance!

ATB from George

Dear George,

Very interesting thoughts in your writing.  There is much truth in it and I cannot help thinking about a comment you made in your opening post.

          "His friendships with all the greatest Germanic composers of the time."

It seems to me that Klemperer's greatest blessing was "when" he was born and "where."   One can have every gift or advantage in the book but when you change these two factors, most often one lives and dies in relative obscurity and is never heard of (despite the fact that one has every other thing going for them). 

It never hurts to have someone like Gustav Mahler behind you as well as countless others.  

Best Regards,

Doug

Quite right about having Mahler as a backer! But Mahler would not have backed a dolt for sure.

Yes the other blessing Klemperer had going for him was to be born in his time and his place - fancy as a little boy seeing Mahler walk to work in Hamburg! No doubt his lack of compliance with authority would have left him in obscurity in modern times. The skills needed to climb the greasy pole of modern success were not the ones he was blessed with for sure.

ATB from George

I found it interesting that Siegfried Wagner did not like the Kroll productions,.. since they would become de rigueur at Bayreuth 40 years later.  In fact, it seems that what they accompllished there was nothing less than the invention of the modern opera company.  The spare modernist sets, the eclectic repetoir balancing old forgotton master works (line Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte) with modern twelve tone works (like Di Gluckiche Hand), is also now accepted,.. as is the more spare naturalistic acting, and of course, topping it all off Klemperers architechtural and unsintimental view of the music.  Anyway this is my uneducated impression. It's been a while since I read the first volume of Justin Hayworth's biography.  Hayworth spends a lot of time on the Kroll opera and it was indeed revolutionary. Klemperer's' musical integrity no doubt helped make the likes of Schoenberg, Stravinsky,Hindemith, Weil, ect household names..

I don't know if he ever conducted Wozzeck or the works of Webern, but it would have been nice if Klemperer had made recordings of some of the more daring music he played in his younger days.  Not that I am unhappy about what he did record.  Perhaps he thought he'd done enough and played the martyr for these causes at the Kroll and that he no longer considered he owed a debt to modern music.

Dear BB,

Klemperer wanted to record a much wider repertoire than he was allowed to. EMI were always careful to balance much mainstream activity with a much smaller selection of uncommercial projects. Even so Klemperer was allowed to record music from the Beggar's Opera, Stravinsky's Petruchka and Pulcinella, and other out of the way music [considering this was the 1960s], but he was not totally over-joyed at being asked to make multiple recordings of Beethoven symphonies, when he considered [rightly as it happens] that he did not necessarily make better re-recordings than had already been captured, albeit in less advanced recording techniques earlier in his Philharmonia time.

Though not in the film it was an interesting admission that he avoided the Rite Of Spring, because he said that he could not beat the rhythms! Though in his younger days he arranged it for piano and played that.

He never lost his admiration for some twelve tone music though, but late in his life it tended to get even fewer performances than when it was new music. I doubt if by then he had the energy to push for it in the way he had in his young days in Weimar Germany. Most people retire before the age he was when first engaged on a contract to conduct the Philharmonia in London in 1954, so he could be forgiven for a more conservative repertoire than he had favoured in his younger days.

But he continued to advocate Mahler, and Bruckner at a time when the music was much less fashionable than now, as well as making remarkably trenchant, original, and very well played performances of music from Berlioz, Dvorak, and Tchaikowsky, which is not the kind of repertoire which is generally associated with him nowadays. He was a master of Chopin as well which seems an unlikely choice by now!

He was once asked to chose an English piece to perform at the opening concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. He selected the Elgar Enigma Variations, being aware that there is a significant part for pipe organ in it. It became clear that the organ could not be prepared in time for the concert so Brahms' Haydn Variations were substituted at the last moment! When asked if he chose the Enigma Variations on purpose, so that he could drop the piece in favour of the Brahms' he smiled coyly without answering!

ATB from George

As a result of this thread a friend phoned me to ask me if Klemperer ever made performances of less serious music, and I was a bit stuck for an answer!

But here is an example - blessedly available in much better quality on CD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcFAvOjPel0&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL8727D79FCBD341B3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os-hbc4i_IM&feature=autoplay&list=PL8727D79FCBD341B3&lf=results_video&playnext=2

Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto with that most estimable of English French-horn players, the late Alan Civil.

Clearly this is both serious and full of joy! An example of how refusing to rush, but keeping clarity and room to phrase in a clear but elastic rhythmic framework allows for all the inner life in the music to emerge. Civil chose Klemperer as accompanist. They were very much on the same wavelength ...

For GML ...

ATB from George

PS:  Funny story about Civil.

He went into a quiet carriage on a train journey, but carrying his Fench-horn in its case. Sittting near was a young girl with those ear pieces listening - VERY LOUD - to some rhythmic tizzy pop music. All about were getting annoyed, but Civil, being the character he was, went over and asked her if she would turn it down. She refused, so he got out his horn and sat opposite her on the table and started practicing arpeggios at a forte!

She then complained that she could not hear the music, to which Civil replied that no one else could hear themselves think! She left for another carriage and he got a round of applause! [From a Daily Telegrapgh obituary].

I may not have proof of God, but here is proof of Bach!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2XUaCWezRY&feature=fvst

I shall not gloss the moment, but Christa Ludwig is the mezzo, and the conductor is Otto Klemperer.

ATB from George