Otto Klemperer
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Otto Klemperer (May 14, 1885 – July 6, 1973) was a German-born conductor and composer. (He took United States citizenship in 1937 and Israeli citizenship in 1970.) He is widely regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century.
Above all, his fame rests on his interpretations of Germanic repertoire, of which he generally gave austere and grand performances (whether live or on record), in later years often with notoriously slow tempi.
He was the father of Hogan's Heroes actor, Werner Klemperer, and was the cousin of Victor Klemperer.
Career
Born in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), he studied music first in Frankfurt, and later in Berlin under Hans Pfitzner.In 1905 he met Mahler while conducting the off-stage brass at a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection). The two became friends, and Klemperer became conductor at the German Opera in Prague in 1907 on Mahler's recommendation.
Later, in 1910, Klemperer assisted Mahler in the premiere of his Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand.
Klemperer went on to hold a number of posts, including conductorships in Hamburg (1910 – 1912); in Barmen (1912 – 1913); the Strasbourg Opera (1914 – 1917); the Cologne Opera (1917 – 1924); and the State Opera in Wiesbaden (1924 – 1927).
From 1927 to 1931, he was conductor at the Kroll Opera in Berlin. In this post he enhanced his reputation as a champion of new music, playing a number of new works, including Leos Janacek's From the House of the Dead, Arnold Schönberg's Erwartung, Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, and Paul Hindemith's Cardillac.
In 1933, once the Nazi Party had reached power, Klemperer, who was Jewish, left Germany and moved to the United States. There he was appointed conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; there, also, he began to concentrate more on the standard works of the Germanic repertoire that would later bring him greatest acclaim, particularly the works of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. He also visited other countries, including England and Australia.
Following the end of World War II, Klemperer returned to Continental Europe to work at the Budapest Opera (1947 – 1950). Finding Communist rule in Hungary increasingly irksome, he accepted the conductorship of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and stayed there from 1950 to 1953, before moving to London and becoming the first principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1959.
He also worked at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, sometimes stage-directing as well as conducting, as in a 1963 production of Wagner's Lohengrin.
Klemperer is less well known as a composer, but he wrote a number of pieces, including six symphonies, a Mass, nine string quartets, and an opera called Das Ziel. He seldom performed any of these himself, and they have been almost entirely forgotten since his death.
Late in his life, Klemperer suffered from partial paralysis which had largely been brought on as a result of surgery in 1939 to remove a tumor on his brain; surgery which also made his bipolar disorder rather more prominent.
A severe fall he suffered during his Canadian residence worsened matters. Despite this, and largely due to the support of his daughter, Lotte, he continued conducting until his retirement in 1971.
He died in Zürich two years later, aged 88, and was buried in the Israelitischer Friedhof — Oberer Friesenberg in that city.
Further reading
- Peter Heyworth, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (ISBN 0521565383).
- Raymond Holden, The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005. (ISBN 0300093268).
Discography
Klemperer made many recordings, and some have become classics. Worthy of note are:- Bach: St Matthew Passion
- Bach: Mass in B Minor
- Beethoven: Symphony cycles
- Beethoven: Fidelio
- Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
- Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem (with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau)
- Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 in A Major
- Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (with Christa Ludwig and Fritz Wunderlich)
- Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor "Resurrection"
- Mahler: Symphony No. 9
- Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 25-41
- Mozart: Don Giovanni (live version issued on Testament)
- Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
- Stravinsky : Petrushka
- Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
- Weill: Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
External links
- [Beating Time: a play by Jim Grover about Klemperer]
- [The Stanford Collection. A comprehensive film archive, collected by Dr Charles Barber]
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