I am going to talk about conductors in the next few posts. This post is about Otto Klemperer. Klemperer was born on May 14,1885 in Breslau. He began music studies early and rose to conduct many important orchestras in the 20th century. He was widely recognized as one of the great conductors of the 20th century. Here he is conducting the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is the only comedy among Wagner’s mature operas and is also unusual among his works in being set in a historically well-defined time and place rather than in a mythical or legendary setting. The overture to this opera is often performed as a stand alone piece, and it is one of Wagner’s great works, in and of itself.
Otto Klemperer
May 4, 1885 – July 6, 1973
Klemperer’s father was a businessman and his mother a piano teacher. When he was four-years-old, the family moved to Hamburg, where he was educated at the Realgymnasium des Jochaneum, subsequently entering the Hoch Conservatory at Frankfurt in 1901 to study piano with James Kwast and music theory with Iwan Knorr.
With the support of his parents, Klemperer dropped out of secondary school to study music in Frankfurt, several years later moving to Berlin to continue his studies at the conservatory. By the end of the World War I, with the defeat of Germany and the drama of the November Revolution, Klemperer, increasingly radicalised, had become a faithful supporter of the new Weimar Republic. He moved to Cologne, and formally converted to Catholicism in 1919. In the mid-1920s he returned to Berlin, a centre of musical innovation in Weimar Germany. It was there that he held probably his most significant post, as conductor of the Kroll Opera, where he was a vocal advocate of composers like Ernst Krenek, Kurt Weill and Schoenberg. However, the increasingly conservative atmosphere of Germany, along with the severe economic depression, claimed him as an early victim, and he lost his position at the Kroll in 1931. Instead, he was offered a position working at the Prussian State Opera, where he was conducting when Hitler came to power.
Klemperer emigrated to the US in 1933. Between 1933 and 1939 Klemperer was the chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, appearing also with the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras as well as assisting with major changes at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra during 1937 and 1938. He was partially incapacitated in 1939 when he underwent surgery for a brain tumor. This left him semi-paralyzed unable to hold a baton and conducting only infrequently. After the end of World War II, Klemperer returned to Europe, conducting as a guest in France, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland as well as in London in 1948, appearing here for the first time with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Between 1947 and 1950, he was chief conductor of the Budapest Orchestra, but relinquished this post following political interference in Hungary and a successful tour of Australia in 1950
During the early 1950s, Klemperer had made several highly influential recordings for the Vox label, which clearly demonstrated his stature as a conductor of the traditional repertoire and of the music of Bruckner and Mahler in particular, but the most significant event in his recording career came in 1954, when he signed a contract, negotiated by Walter Legge, to make recordings for EMI with the Philharmonia Orchestra: he was to be closely associated with this label and orchestra for the rest of his life. Klemperer’s discography with EMI was very large and much of it has remained consistently in the catalog. He was appointed the Philharmonia Orchestra’s principal conductor for life in 1959, and when following Walter Legge’s decision to disband it, the orchestra was reorganized as a players’ cooperative in 1964 under the name of the New Philharmonia Orchestra, he became its president. Klemperer made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1961, conducting and directing Fidelio. he returned there to conduct legendary productions of Die Zauberflöte (1962) and Lohengrin (1963). Despite increasing frailty, not helped by a succession of accidents, Klemperer continued go conduct in public until 1971, often with the most minimal of gestures but with huge personal authority. His laconic sense of humor and international stature were both well epitomized by his comment towards the end of his life, “I am the last of the classical school – when Bruno Walter died, I put my feet up”. Following his death his large recorded legacy has resulted his reputation remaining secure within the pantheon of truly great twentieth-century conductors.
As an interpreter, Klemperer was less interested in beauty of sound than in forceful projections, clarity of texture, and a cumulative power that stemmed from an unwavering sense of rhythm. His feeling for musical form and architecture was complete, while his conducting style was noticeably unflamboyant. These characteristics gave his readings of the music of composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner an epic quality that during Klemperer’s lifetime defined for many people the essential character of these composers. In the evocative words of the American critic, Joseph Horowitz “Kelmperer’s most characteristic performances, rigorously projecting outward design, amassed a magisterial poise and weight”. His interpretations of the music of Mahler were completely without sentiment, in stark contrast at times to those of another distinguished Mahler assistant, Bruno Walter, raising the interesting question of whether there might be any authentic Mahler style.
After the World War II, he resumed an impressive international musical career. He became known as one of the best living conductors of the classical German repertoire, particularly of works of the Viennese school and his early idol, Mahler. The conductor died in Zurich in July 1973.
Taken from A-Z of Conductors, by David Patmore