In Carlos Kleiber"s life there is plenty of material to please the admirers of biographic psychoanalysis. Kleiber is the son of a great conductor, the son of a minor God, perhaps the most modem of his generation, in a time called the Golden age of conductors. It is not possible to penetrate Carlos without digging into Erich Kleiber, who has transmitted some of his genes; what is more important, Erich Kleiber was responsible for the milieu in which the young artist was developing. Could musical genius be inherited? If the answer is "yes" then is it not a reason for the father, who had made the music his lifestyle, to be satisfied? At the time when Kleiber-senior was voluntarily in exile in exile in South America he wrote a letter to a friend, saying: "What a pity that the boy has such a good ear for music." One could wonder why the father was so inclined to remove his heir from the craft that had brought him fame and fortune. Some suppositions must be made, based on oral and written evidence in order to answer that question. 
At first, the Kleibers were not as rich and famous as they became later on. During the Nazi genocide the family left the country voluntarily, though they had no kin relation with Jews. This was cause for difficulties which they suffered in South America, such as the lack of professional contracts, the miserable remuneration and the necessity to work with second-rate orchestras. But if such a great personality as Erich Kleiber had stayed in Berlin he would have unwillingly become an associate of the regime, despite the distrust and discount he felt towards it. In the hard days of exile he had often mentioned the "hunger apparition" in his correspondence with his friends - he, who was the musical director of one of the greatest operas in Europe and who had elevated conducting to the highest artistic level at that time. In spite of the privations and the inconvenience they suffered, it is true that Erich Kleiber refused more than once to make a career as a conductor, at the time his son was showing his predilection for music. Once when he got back from a tour, he found his son Carlos engrossed in playing the piano. The punishment was to close the lid of the instrument and pinch the child"s fingers. For this attitude verging on cruelty and for his attempts to mock at the presumable artistic skills of the child, a disciple of Freud might say that years later the son would take vengeance for this repression. At the height of his powers, Carlos would become the head of the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra, conducting as a perfect ceremonial master. The world was at his feet.  
Erich was a perfectionist. At Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires there is an inscription under his bust which says "Improvisation and routine are the two enemies to an artistic performance" and "Preparation is all." According to some existing evidence, we can consider that what the father feared most of all was that an inferior successor, an ordinary musician would descend from such a famous kin. The story, however, turned out different. Carlos is the only case when the son of a great conductor became even more famous than the father, though in other ways and by different means. Can perfection be inherited? Perhaps it could be learned or printed deeply upon the mind; most of all it can be reached when you imitate a beloved and adorable man. From the few things that are known, Carlos admired his father with all his heart and loved the sound of the music he conducted: the Beethoven"s symphonies, the opera Tristan, etc. Carlos Kleiber claims that he went into rapture when he watched the rehearsal of Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by his father. Is the talent to perform in a perfect way passages from such wonderful and luscious musical comedy, the essence of Viennese musical culture, genetically set? Probably no. Exactly for that reason it is amazing how the young Kleiber acquired the traditions, the sounds and the rhythms that had formed the music awareness of Erich, in spite of his father"s deprecation and his distance from the European cultural and artistic society.  
While studying the art of conducting in small theaters with German traditions, Carlos Kleiber printed in his mind knowledge that would later turn him into an example of the great art. He polished the old scores of his father and studied the craft down to the minutest detail.  
And so, years later, in the course of several consecutive festivals of the Munich Opera, he presented marvelous interpretations of Der Rosenkavalier, which mark a whole epoch, and are a precious memory for me and those who had the fortune to witness them. 

The scores of the father 

To say something about Carlos Kleiber in a definitive way is always a risky enterprise. Nevertheless, it is true that he has always worked upon his father"s musical materials with enthusiasm. Shabby scores, outwardly old but in a perfect shape and full of notes, could be seen at the time of respite between the rehearsals and the intervals of the performances. Proverbial is the fact that Carlos works with his own material without any arbitrary or false corrections, having checked all authentic documentation that could be found in archives and libraries. In the preparation for his debut in the concerts with the Viennese philharmonic orchestra in "Musikverain" in the Austrian capital, where he performed the Fourth symphony of Brahms, he used all available documents for this symphony that could be found in the Viennese and German archives.  
The few works Kleiber maintained in his repertoire are said to have composer"s scores without mistakes and supplements. It is supposed that the Maestro performs only what is written by the author. Both the father and the son had the habit to document everything about the accuracy of their musical materials. For most of his works Carlos used scores he had personally checked, and rejected the scores of the orchestras with whom he worked.  
According to what we have said up to here, it is easy, even tempting, to label Carlos Kleiber as a person who conducted his rehearsals with an iron fist and turned the orchestra with whom he was working into a machine that would reproduce the work exactly in the way he wanted. And in fact, the works conducted by Carlos are a celebration of sound, a result of his vision of the score, which could materialize only by his touch. The members of the orchestras were often stunned by the literary metaphors and poetic license he used to explain how he wanted a certain work to sound. For example, in the opera Tristan, the Maestro asked the musicians to make a hole without reducing the power of sound, in order to express through music the scent of flowers in a summer garden. Since Carlos was a great admirer of cars, he often used them metaphorically to explain how a certain fragment of a musical composition should be reproduced. For example, "How does a Rolls-Royce, moving on grass that has just been cut, sound?" And another one: "The whisper of a feather, which falls down on a layer of a scented powder". The musicians tried to understand the sounds, corresponding to these descriptions, and when they had succeeded to reproduce them, they always performed them "a la Kleiber" after that, no matter who conducted them. 

The legendary rehearsals: fantasy and precision at closed doors

A great part of the myth of Carlos Kleiber is based on the rehearsals he led. All instrumentalists of different orchestras, as the Vienna philharmonic orchestra, Metropolitan opera, the festival in Bayreuth, the Milan La Scala are unanimous: one rehearsal with Kleiber is a gift, a unique experience that is worth as much as the studies in the Conservatoire. In the presence of orchestras of such high quality, which play on their own and often switch to automatic pilot, producing sounds without really distinguishing one from another, a conductor like Kleiber brings back their interest in a repertoire, which has such an unfading beauty as it behooves the great works of the perfect European spirit of invention. There are many anecdotes about the rehearsals of Carlos Kleiber, and most of all, about his first meetings with the orchestras. For his debut in Bayreuth, it was rumored among the musicians that something unexpected and unusual was happening in the place, hidden for the orchestra in the Temple of Wagner. As a result, at a certain moment of a rehearsal, the three orchestras, which should have changed places, turned out to be there at the same time. Those who had rehearsal were surrounded by their colleagues and all of them witnessed one of the greatest performances of "Tristan". After they had finished the rehearsals, the musicians, who were about one hundred, representatives of different cultures, burst into a spontaneous applause, hearing the sounds of nostalgia, with which a Viennese gentlewoman gave up her young lover to the wonderful girl,with whom he was in love .  
At rehearsal times, conducted behind closed doors, Kleiber demanded high intensity and asked for much more than the members of the orchestras from the great musical centers of the world were ready to give, not counting on a mere chance. But on the public appearance itself, Carlos materialized his fantasy and improvisation; he was absorbed in the stream of sounds and let this stream lead him. Meanwhile, he used to allow the orchestras a great freedom, and they understood his wishes by his look, his body movements and his elegant hands. It was prodding, not orders, that made musicians take chances in the search for the effect of beauty which reduced the intensive musical speech. A kind of music that incites the listener to feel and realize what Kleiber and his performers are playing at a certain moment by the way they apprehend the musical composition.

A magician of communication

Carlos Kleiber is a communicative man, capable of naturally attaining enthusiasm out of sound beauty and of taking pleasure in the way the music he liked sounded. He can perfectly express the universe of sounds in his mind. This way he makes the listeners to be associates of the faultless performance of the composer"s score and the outcome of his genius inspiration. (Brian Large, who is a director of TV music programs, holds the opinion that when Kleiber conducts the music comes out of himself and not out of the orchestra that plays it). A conductor that has such salient communicativeness and endures every performance very emotionally can afford to experiment in the moment of inspiration and to demand more virtuosity of his musicians. He can afford to want them to play something very difficult, using their hyper potentialities, without egocentric mastership and affectation, which are alien to the style of the composer. Then the culmination that strikes with its originality, charm and depth is obtained, and the spectators are filled with a feeling of bliss and with the thought that they have participated in a phenomenal experience. That is why, when Kleiber conducted, his concerts turned into an extraordinary events. But it would be unfair if we do not mention the fact, which goes along with every performance and in the case of Kleiber is of great importance: the legend of the genius of the baton; the legend of the most wanted and pursued from the best concert halls and theaters, who showed himself as an expensive perfume - drop by drop, and his name, taken alone, promises music of the best quality. At one of Carlos Kleiber"s last appearances in Milan "La Scala" the audience showed a great interest in him. Very rarely the spectators show such a predisposition to a performer. The Maestro triumphed in "La Scala" with anthological performances of La Boheme and Othello. The crowd had exaltedly applauded and cheered loudly his forthcoming appearance, even before he appeared on the platform. Unfortunately, we cannot say that the great musical masterpieces of the classical repertoire would preserve their charm unaffected till there exist performers who evoke such an interest and expectation because in the majority of cases they are performed routinely and that makes them insignificant.  
Between 1996 and 1997 Kleiber had just four concerts, only one of which was in Munich and the others carried out in small cultural centers. This is very surprising. Meanwhile, he had received invitations for participation from the most prestigious musical institutions in Europe, USA and Japan. Why is Carlos so indifferent to the yearning of the Berlin and the Viennese philharmonic orchestras, Metropolitan Opera in New York, Milan La Scala and the festival in Salzburg? It is true that he has lost his proud upright gait but on the platform he regained his slender, elegant and flexible figure, so characteristic of him. Nowadays, when so many mediocre conductors do not spare themselves at concert appearances and studio records dreaming of fame and fortune, Carlos lead a reticent life in his house near Munich. Karajan has said that Kleiber is one of the best in the craft but he does not like to work and does so only when he is in need, like "a lone wolf who hunts to satisfy his hunger." In this remark, which has become part of the myth about Carlos Kleiber, there is some irony of the great Maestro, and a prospective biographer-psychoanalyst would not miss to include the image of the horrible father who intimidated his son with starvation if he did not obey his will to relinquish the musical vocation. Kleiber uses the conducting as a means for satisfying his vital needs and applies the oldest method in economy - the barter. In exchange for a brand new car AUDI 8 he performed a concert in Ingolstaadt - a residence of the famous manufacturer of cars but by no means an important musical center. But he insisted on a royal fee. There is something contradictory in the personality of the Maestro regarding money. On one hand, he became the most highly paid conductor. On the other hand, however, his economic interests seem to be of secondary importance because without hesitation he rejected profitable invitations if the artistic results did not correspond to his request. It is irrefutable that he remained independent of the economic pressure under which influence is the greatest part of the famous artists.

Uncertainty and a passionate yearning for perfection

Carlos Kleiber once shared to Leonard Bernstein (another great genius) his desire to be a plant, and in that way not to worry about his existence. Shortly before his death, the great American musician said about his Austrian colleague (Kleiber became an Austrian citizen in 1980) that it was impossible for Kleiber to conduct with few movements. He did not spare himself at all when he performed, as if every time he took the baton he risked his life. Probably it is sensible for him to devote himself so passionately to his interpretations, but his devotion goes along with the fear he felt not to make a mistake and to achieve the yearned perfection. It is not surprising then, that he tormented himself every time he took an engagement. That is why his art is so exhausting. And so we reach another characteristic feature of Kleiber - his intense timidity and lack of faith in himself. A psychoanalyst would ask the question if this is a result of his father"s repression and humiliations. Carlos himself have told a story about the fear he felt in Milan La Scala when he met Placido Domingo and Franco Zeffirelli for the first time, at the first performance of the opera Othello. Who would have known that in the near future both the tenor and the stage director would turn into faithful admirers of Kleiber"s art and would spread everywhere their opinion about the superiority of the maestro, based on their work together?  
On the concert in Las Palmas, after the performance of the Fourth Symphony of Beethoven which was accepted well, but not very enthusiastically by the public, Kleiber said: "They did not seem to like it very much. What a pity! I am sorry!" An artist, as popular and pretentious as him, does not accept the indifference towards his performance. Many people think that he is exquisite but he is often said to be fastidious and whimsical. And that is why, he falls an easy prey to hysterical irritation.  
His opponents, among the most famous and bitter of whom is Celibidache (who inherited him in Stuttgart), censure his insolent actions and his panic desertions of the sound-recording studios when, because of one mistake only, he used to take the first flight home, leaving in front of the piano a famous and universally recognized artist (as Michelangeli, for example) or even a whole orchestra. Kleiber did not sign contracts in order to have the freedom to reject an engagement. He said more than once that one of his conditions to accept participation was to be able to contract out unilaterally if he did not achieve the quality he wants. He easily canceled his performances in Berlin and New York without a warning. That is the reason why musicians and impresarios are always on the alert about the possibility of an unexpected escape (this is the effect of so many canceled engagements when the maestro avoided a situation that seemed unbearable to him). Proverbial is the attention paid to him by the musical institutions. They satisfy all his desires in order not to fail this precious event - to make music with Kleiber. There is something unhealthy in Kleiber"s clear emotional instability, in his uncertainty, in his most jealous preservation of his personal life from the raids of fans and reporters who want to peek into the intimate and artistic thought of the mythical personality of this legendary conductor. But let us leave the search for possible Oedipus complexes to the adherents of psychoanalysis. They should find out whether in his subconsciousness there are any defensive instinctive impulses against the aggressive father figure, who is at the same time so loved and admired by Carlos. Kleiber junior refuses to give interviews because he does not trust the press and is not sure what will be published, due to an incident with reporters at the festival in Salzburg. But it is also possible a part of this phobia to be a result of his wish not to be introduced as the son of Erich Kleiber, and of his fear that the interviewers might be interested not in himself but in his family name only. Many years ago, when the name of Carlos had just appeared in the music media, a famous Spanish conductor said that with this family name his career was half done. And that is exactly the opposite of what Carlos has always thought. He shared more than once that it is a great burden to be the son of whom he is.

The opinion of his fellows

Few are those who would consider Kleiber a historical figure but some of the most famous conductors, opera singers and performers are among his admirers. Carlos is the best of all musicians and has the honor of being admired by his fellows - the elite of the music world. There is quite a lot of evidence about this, and it can be said that there exists an unanimity among the opera theaters, the orchestras and the performers of the highest quality, who define him as a genius, as an exceptional and extraordinary musician.  
In the beginning of 1990, during the queer performances in Covent Garden, when Kleiber conducted several performances of Othello as if the whole music community of London were present in the theater to applaud the Maestro whenever he appeared on the stage, the public saluted him with drowning ovations, enjoying his so passionate, brilliant and fantastic performance. The orchestra and the singers enthusiastically joined the applause, and in this way expressed their sincere admiration, not just kindness.  
From everything we have said until this point, we can define the great maestro as a charming and highly educated personality with a great sense of humor.  
Kleiber was a polyglot and one could communicate with him with ease in Spanish, German and English (his mother Ruth studied in an English college in South America). After one of his great performances of Tristan in the Milan La Scala, Kleiber said that it would be very interesting for him to conduct a zarzuela in Madrid featuring his great friend Placido Domingo.  
Carlos loves reading and shows a great interest in literature. His letters to his friends are remarkable for their elegant style. I keep in my mind a unique memory: almost 25 years ago I informed Kleiber about some comments which I had written on his performances in Munich and the Milan La Scala. On his way out of Covent Garden, after the performance of Elektra, I had the opportunity to congratulate the maestro, who suddenly asked me: "Are you the man who wrote that?" Brigit Nilsson (who had worked with both the father and the son) also took part in that performance. She said that this had been her greatest performance of a Strauss composition. The long conversation that I had with Carlos Kleiber, while walking down the empty streets that surround the London Theater, was filled with his subtle sense of humor.  
Many statements of his can confirm this. Let us take for example the well-known article on the statements of Celibidache that appeared in a famous German weekly magazine. The Romanian maestro made these at the time when he became the head of the Munich philharmonic orchestra, with his usual ignorance of the conductors from the generation of Kleiber senior. Nevertheless, it is a curious fact that Celibidache strongly criticized Carlos"s performance of the symphony of Beethoven and adored his father"s performance of the same composition. Celibidache is highly appreciated in Spain, where Kleiber"s genius is also an acknowledged fact, despite his inclination to quick, even too quick tempos. It is not serious to claim that the loss of depth in the Seventh Symphony of Beethoven is due to the quick tempos. First of all, Kleiber searched not for hypothetical and metaphysic depth, but for the sensitive beauty of the sounds, the expressiveness of the emotional power and the surprise by the virtuosity of the performance and the inspiration brought by the musical speech. And, most of all, the terms quick and slow are relative: there is music that goes in time, and time that seems to come out of music, created in the sound interval. Kleiber creates and modifies the musical time, and his conducting lacks the passing of time indicated by the clock. His technique has nothing to do with the metronome. When he conducts, we see the baton standing still leaned on his waist and then suddenly cuts the air flexibly coming back afterwards, as if the sharp point of an elegant rapier gracefully describes perfect filigree. At the same time his left hand draws an arc and leads and perfectly organizes the crest of the sound wave. We can accept that what the Maestro is searching for is not within the capacity of every performer, and it would be difficult even for some listeners to catch the whole exquisiteness, with which the musicians masterfully reproduce in real sound what the conductor transmits by gestures. But the result is gorgeous and stirs and deeply touches the listener.  
How will the legend about Carlos Kleiber continue now that his time is gone? Most likely, the official version will be that an unsuccessful experiment had been made: how did genetics and culture create an artist of a great conductor talent, who did not want, nor was unable to find his place in music history by conventional means. Carlos did not found a school of followers and did not teach young performers and orchestras. He did not expand his repertoire and did not devote his time and talent to make a mark of his own in the music institutions. He is a lonely genius who has achieved supreme performances only with half a dozen operas and a few symphonic compositions. Kleiber, himself, shared with the musicians during one of the rehearsals in Las Palmas that he was a "useless luxury" to music; a luxury to a profession that created minor Gods for the "Olympus of all arts". Carlos Kleiber is a luxury, inherited by a minor God. But to me, he is a luxury that has enriched my life...