Otto Klemperer

Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concert-hall conductor.

A protégé of the composer Gustav Mahler, Klemperer was appointed to a succession of increasingly senior conductorships in opera houses in and around Germany. From 1929 to 1931 he was director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin, where he presented new works and avant-garde productions of classics. The rise of the Nazis caused him to leave Germany in 1933, and shortly afterwards he was appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and guest-conducted other American orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and later the Pittsburgh Symphony, which he reorganised as a permanent ensemble.

In the late 1930s Klemperer became ill with a brain tumour. An operation to remove it was successful, but left him lame and partly paralysed on his right side. Throughout his life he had bipolar disorder, and after the operation he went through an intense manic phase of the illness and then a long spell of severe depression. His career was severely disrupted and did not fully recover until the mid-1940s. He served as the musical director of the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest from 1947 to 1950.

Klemperer's later career centred on London. In 1951 he began an association with the Philharmonia Orchestra. By that time better known for his readings of the core German symphonic repertoire than for experimental modern music he gave concerts and made almost 200 recordings with the Philharmonia and its successor, the New Philharmonia, until his retirement in 1972. He became widely considered the most authoritative living interpreter of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and other German symphonists, and also of Mahler. His approach to Mozart was less universally liked, being thought by some to be heavy.

Life and career

Early years

Otto Nossan Klemperer was born on 14 May 1885 in Breslau, Province of Silesia, in what was then the Imperial German state of Prussia; the city is now Wrocław, Poland. He was the second child and only son of Nathan Klemperer and his wife Ida, ''née'' Nathan. The family name had originally been Klopper, but was changed to Klemperer in 1787 in response to a decree by Emperor Joseph II aimed at assimilating Jews into Christian society. Nathan Klemperer was originally from Josefov, the ghetto in the Bohemian city of Prague; Ida was Sephardi, from Hamburg. Both parents were musical: Nathan sang and Ida played the piano.

When Klemperer was four the family moved from Breslau to Hamburg, where Nathan earned a modest living in various commercial posts and his wife gave piano lessons. It was decided quite early in Klemperer's life that he would become a professional musician, and when he was about five he started piano lessons with his mother. At the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt he studied the piano with James Kwast and theory with Ivan Knorr.Heyworth, Peter and John Lucas
"Klemperer, Otto"
Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 17 July 2014 Kwast moved to Berlin, first to the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory and then to the Stern Conservatory. Klemperer followed him at each move, and later credited him with the whole basis of his musical development. Among Klemperer's other teachers was Hans Pfitzner, with whom he studied composition and conducting.

In 1905 Klemperer met Gustav Mahler at a rehearsal of the latter's Second Symphony in Berlin. Oscar Fried conducted, and Klemperer was given charge of the off-stage orchestra. He later made a piano arrangement of the symphony, which he played to the composer in 1907 when visiting Vienna. In the interim he made his public debut as a conductor in May 1906, taking over from Fried after the first night of the fifty-performance run of Max Reinhardt's production of '' Orpheus in the Underworld'' at the New Theatre, Berlin.

Mahler wrote a short testimonial, recommending Klemperer, on a small card which Klemperer kept for the rest of his life. On the strength of it he was appointed chorus master and assistant conductor at the German Opera in Prague in 1907.

German opera houses

From Prague Klemperer moved to be assistant conductor at the Hamburg State Opera (1910–1912), where Lotte Lehmann and Elisabeth Schumann made their joint débuts under his direction."Dr Otto Klemperer", ''The Times'', 9 July 1973, p. 16 His first chief conductorship was at Barmen (1912–1913), after which he moved to the much larger Strasbourg Opera (1914–1917) as deputy to Pfitzner. From 1917 to 1924 he was chief conductor of the Cologne Opera. During his Cologne years he married , a singer in the opera company, in 1919. She was a Christian; he converted from Judaism.Keene, pp. 790–791 He remained a practising Roman Catholic until 1967, when he left the faith.Heyworth (1985), p. 62 The couple had two children: Werner, who became an actor, and Lotte, who became her father's assistant and eventually carer.

In 1923 Klemperer turned down an invitation to succeed Leo Blech as musical director of the Berlin State Opera because he did not believe he would given enough artistic authority over productions.Heyworth (1985), pp. 63–65 The following year he became conductor at the Wiesbaden Opera House (1924–1927), a smaller theatre than others in which he had worked, but one where he had the control he sought over stagings. In the same year he visited Russia, conducting there during a six-week stay. He returned there each year until 1936. In 1926 he made his American début, succeeding Eugene Goossens as guest conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra. In his eight-week engagement with the orchestra he gave Mahler's Ninth Symphony and Janáček's Sinfonietta their first performances in the US.Montgomery, Paul L
"Otto Klemperer, Conductor, Dead at 88"
, ''The New York Times'', 8 July 1973, p. 1

Berlin

In 1927 the authorities in Berlin decided to establish a new opera company to complement the State Opera, highlighting new works and innovative productions. The company, officially Der Staatsoper am Platz der Republik, was better known as the Kroll Opera. Leo Kestenberg, the influential head of the Prussian Ministry of Culture, proposed Klemperer as its first director. Klemperer was offered a ten-year contract and accepted it on condition that he would be allowed to conduct orchestral concerts in the theatre, and that he could employ his chosen design and stage experts.Cook, p. 2

The conductor's biographer Peter Heyworth describes Klemperer's tenure at the Kroll as "of crucial significance in his career and the development of opera in the first half of the 20th century". In both concert and operatic performances Klemperer introduced much new music. Asked later which were the most important of the operas he introduced there, he listed:

In Heyworth's view, the modern approach to production at the Kroll − contrasting with conventional representational settings and costumes − exemplified in "a drastically stylised production" of '' Der fliegende Holländer'' in 1929 was "a decisive forerunner of Wieland Wagner's innovations at Bayreuth". The production divided critical opinion, which ranged from "A new outrage to a German masterpiece ... grotesque" to "an unusual and magnificent performance ... a fresh wind has blown tinsel and cobwebs away".

In 1929 Klemperer made his British début, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the first London performance of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony. Not all the British music critics were convinced by the symphony, but the conductor was widely praised for "the power of a dominating personality", "masterful control" and as "a great orchestral commander". One leading critic called for the BBC to give Klemperer a long-term appointment in London.

The Kroll Opera closed in 1931, ostensibly because of a financial crisis, although in Klemperer's view the motives were political. He said that Heinz Tietjen, director of the State Opera, told him that it was not, as Klemperer supposed, anti-Semitism that had worked against him: "No, that is not so important. It's your whole political and artistic direction they don't like". Klemperer's contract obliged him to transfer to the main State Opera, where with such conductors as Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Leo Blech already established, there was little important work for him. He remained there until 1933, when the rise of the Nazis caused him to leave for safety in Switzerland, joined by his wife and children.

Los Angeles

In exile from Germany, Klemperer found that conducting work was far from plentiful, although he secured some prestigious engagements in Vienna and at the Salzburg Festival. He was sounded out by an American visitor influential in music in the US about becoming conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in succession to Artur Rodziński, who was leaving to take over the Cleveland Orchestra. The Los Angeles orchestra was not then regarded as among the finest American ensembles, and the salary was less than Klemperer would have liked, but he accepted and sailed to the US in 1935.

The orchestra's finances were perilous. Its founder and sponsor, William Andrews Clark, had lost a substantial proportion of his fortune in the Great Depression. Despite box-office constraints, Klemperer successfully introduced unfamiliar works including Mahler's '' Das Lied von der Erde'' and Second Symphony, Bruckner's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, and works by Stravinsky.Heyworth (1985), pp. 89–91 He programmed music from ''Gurrelieder'' by his fellow exile and Los Angeles neighbour Arnold Schoenberg, although the composer complained that Klemperer did not perform his works more often. Klemperer insisted that the local public was not ready for such advanced music; Schoenberg did not bear a grudge and, as Klemperer always aspired to compose as well as to conduct, Schoenberg gave him composition lessons. Klemperer considered him "the greatest living teacher of composition, although ... he never mentioned the twelve-tone system".Keller, p. 56 The musicologist Hans Keller nevertheless found "tonal varieties of the Schoenbergian method" used "penetratingly" in Klemperer's compositions.

In 1935, at Arthur Judson's invitation, Klemperer conducted the New York Philharmonic for four weeks. The orchestra's chief conductor, Arturo Toscanini, was in Europe and Klemperer took charge of the opening concerts of the season. The New York concertgoing public was deeply conservative but despite Judson's warning that programming Mahler would be highly damaging at the box-office, Klemperer insisted on giving the Second Symphony. The notices praised the conducting – Virgil Thomson wrote that the performance was the best he had heard since Mahler conducted the work in New York in 1906 – but the ticket sales were as poor as Judson had predicted, and the orchestra had a deficit of $5,000 from the concert. When Toscanini resigned from the orchestra the following year, Klemperer hoped to be considered as his successor, but realised that "after this affair of the Mahler symphony I wouldn't be engaged again".Heyworth (1985), p. 97 Nonetheless, when the little-known John Barbirolli was announced as Toscanini's successor, Klemperer wrote a vehement letter to Judson protesting at being passed over.

Having returned to Los Angeles, Klemperer conducted the orchestra's concerts there and in out-of-town venues such as San Diego, Santa Barbara, Fresno and Claremont. He and the orchestra worked with leading soloists, including Artur Schnabel, Emanuel Feuermann, Joseph Szigeti, Bronisław Huberman and Lotte Lehmann. Pierre Monteux was conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and he and Klemperer guest-conducted each other's orchestras. After a concert under Klemperer in 1936 ''The San Francisco Chronicles music critic hailed him as one of the world's greatest conductors, along with Furtwängler, Walter and Toscanini.

1938 to 1945

The governing board of the Pittsburgh Symphony approached Klemperer in early 1938, seeking his help in reconstituting the orchestra – an ''ad hoc'' group since 1927 – as a permanent ensemble. He held auditions in Pittsburgh and, more fruitfully, in New York, and after three weeks of intensive rehearsal the orchestra was ready for the opening concerts of the season, which he conducted. The results were highly successful, and he was offered a large salary to remain as the orchestra's chief conductor. He was contractually committed to Los Angeles, but contemplated taking on the direction of both orchestras. He decided against it and Fritz Reiner was appointed as conductor in Pittsburgh.

In 1939 Klemperer began to suffer from serious balance problems. A potentially fatal brain tumour was diagnosed and he travelled to Boston for an operation to remove it. The operation was successful, but left him lame and partly paralysed on his right side. He had long had bipolar disorder (in the parlance of the time he was "manic depressive") and after the operation he went through an intense manic phase of the illness, which lasted for nearly three years and was followed by a long spell of severe depression.Heyworth (1985), pp. 99–100 In 1941, after he walked out of a mental sanatorium in Rye, New York, the local police put out an alarm, describing him as "dangerous and insane". He was found two days later in Morristown, New Jersey

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