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20.12.2008 18:00 - A Legend in His Own Time by Richard Evidon
Автор: kleiber Категория: Музика   
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Последна промяна: 21.12.2009 12:26


With the passing of Carlos Kleiber on 13 July 2004, the world of music lost one of its most charismatic and enigmatic figures. He was known as a conductor who didn"t like to conduct: "Only when his freezer was empty did he deign to pick up the baton, reported Herbert von Karajan (who, like many of his other colleagues, called him a "genius" - they were a two-man mutual admiration society). He lavished his genius on no more than a handful of symphonies by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Brahms, and a scarcely longer list of operas by Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and the Strausses, Johann and Richard - a fragment of the repertoire conducted by his equally famous father Erich, another titan, who tried to thwart his son"s musical career (yet Carlos used his annotated scores).

A recluse who spoke six languages fluently but never granted interviews because he claimed that "when I talk, it"s rubbish", Kleiber would repeatedly leave orchestral musicians notes filled with polite suggestions (these became known as "Kleibergrams"). Players and singers respected and revered him. "He notices everything," Plбcido Domingo declared. "I try to please him all the time, not just because I want to please him but because I know he"s right."

Once his career was established, Kleiber refused to accept a permanent position and even declined the Berliner Philharmoniker"s invitation to become Karajan"s successor. He once told Leonard Bernstein that he wanted to grow old in a sun-drenched garden, only eating, drinking, sleeping and making love. Much critical ink has been spilled over the precious few engagements to which he grudgingly consented - principally with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Amsterdam Concertgebouw orchestras and at some of the world"s operatic shrines: Vienna, Munich, Bayreuth, London, Milan, and New York - reviews couched almost exclusively in superlatives bestowed on few other musicians of the late 20th century. Kleiber was truly - and for once the tired clichй is apt - a legend in his own time.

Carlos Kleiber was born in Berlin on 3 July 1930 but grew up in Argentina after his family (who were not Jewish) fled Nazi Germany in 1935. Following the war, he studied chemistry in Switzerland, but an overwhelming love for music led inexorably to his 1954 debut, conducting an operetta in Potsdam, East Germany under a pseudonym. He served as rйpйtiteur of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dьsseldorf from 1956, becoming its conductor two years later, was at the Zurich Opera from 1964-66 and first Kapellmeister at the Wьrttembergisches Staatstheater in Stuttgart for three years from 1966. He first appeared at the Vienna State Opera in 1973 conducting Tristan, the work with which he made his Bayreuth debut the following year, debuted in 1974 at Covent Garden and La Scala (conducting Der Rosenkavalier, one of his father"s specialities); he made his Berliner Philharmoniker debut in 1982 and his first appearance at the Met in 1988.

A perfectionist in extremis, Carlos Kleiber disliked recordings - he once said that "every unproduced record is a good record" - but those he made have naturally come to occupy a special place in the medium"s history. Deutsche Grammophon had the good fortune to be the label with which he was associated, a collaboration that began in 1973, when he agreed to overcome his antipathy to the microphone and travel to Dresden to record Weber"s Freischutzwith the great Staatskapelle, an orchestra that had enjoyed a close relationship with his father. London"s Daily Telegraph, typifying the praise showered on it from all quarters, described the new set in terms that could well be applied to every work this artist touched: "Kleiber ... brings such vitality, freshness of tone and buoyancy of rhythm to the orchestral score and his choice of tempi shows that he has rethought this music ... by discovering how to be faithful to the composer"s spirit without transgressing the letter."

Subsequent releases over the next several years spread the appreciation of his phenomenal gifts to an adoring international public and fellowship of music critics: Beethoven"s Fifth from Vienna in 1975 (about which one reviewer wrote that "it was as if Homer had come back to recite the Iliad"), Beethoven"s Seventh from Vienna and Johann Strauss"s Fledermaus from Munich in 1976, Verdi"s Traviata from Munich in 1977, Schubert"s Third and "Unfinished" from Vienna in 1979, Brahms"s Fourth from Vienna in 1981 and, finally, a return to Dresden for Wagner"s Tristan und Isolde (which he had conducted at Bayreuth from 1974-76) in 1982.

It is from those last three studio productions that the performances collected here have been taken. When Kleiber"s extraordinarily concentrated reading of the "Unfinished", recorded in the Musikverein"s Golden Hall in September 1978, was last reissued, the English critic Richard Osborne wrote: "The genius of Kleiber"s performance is his willingness to characterize both the music"s profound melancholy and its bustling energy: in other words, to sense its physical chronology and its spiritual one."

In December 1979 the German critic Peter Cossй was in the Musikverein when Kleiber conducted Brahms"s Fourth Symphony at the Wiener Philharmoniker"s subscription concerts. "One experienced the four movements,У he wrote, "as a great concentrated Passion of compositional logic and integrity and, in the same moment, as a network of emotions and images, whose richness and atmospheric ambivalence seemed to find a miraculous sense of consolidation or, more precisely, reconciliation in the final Passacaglia.У CossŽ happily found that the "fascinating details and solemn splendour of the interpretation were captured without any loss of tension or spontaneity" when Deutsche Grammophon recorded it three months later, between 12-15 March 1980.

And, finally, the Dresden Tristan. Kleiber was dead set against a live recording, with - as DG"s then Head of Production Hans Hirsch recalled - all its imponderables, such as the dangers of singer fatigue and inevitable compromise solutions in the final takes that would disadvantage the orchestra (seated, incidentally, with violins divided left and right, violas half-left behind the first fiddles, cellos half-right behind the seconds, and basses in a reduced half-circle behind the seconds and cellos). Kleiber"s demands were extreme and unprecedented, even for him: 10 full orchestral rehearsals beginning in August 1980 in Dresden"s Lukaskirche, 20 sessions in October with the whole cast present at all of them, recording the work in sequence from beginning to end (with, as is customary, the preludes to Acts I and III left to last).

Perhaps the only surprise in casting was that of Margaret Price in a role she was never to sing on stage, but this turned out to be pure inspiration: the youthful freshness, ardour and lyricism (as well as flawless German diction) of the Welsh soprano"s Isolde, as Hans Hirsch notes, dovetailed with Kleiber"s conception of the work, and indeed, by general consensus, the part has not been sung on record before or since with such sheer, unremitting vocal beauty.

Kleiber"s nerves were famously exposed whenever he made music, and, inevitably, in an undertaking as gruelling for him as committing Wagner"s Tristan to disc, they frayed - sadly - towards the end of the sessions. In the midst of Renй Kollo"s recording of Tristan"s delirium in Act III, the conductor stormed out, and the passage had to be synchronized later, though no trace of that would be apparent to listeners. Presciently, his producer Werner Mayer had let the tape machines run during rehearsals of the preludes in August. Carlos Kleiber never entered a recording studio again...



Carlos Kleiber: "Genius Wrapped In an Enigma" by NICHOLAS KENYON

Carlos Kleiber: Enigma, maverick or genius? Opinions about the most mercurial conductor of his generation range widely: He is unpredictable, unwilling to commit himself to future projects and reticent in dealing with the world at large. Many artists say they hardly ever give interviews; Mr. Kleiber has never been known to give one. But the musical verdict is overwhelming: ""He makes other conductors look like fools,"" said one musician who did not wish to be named for fear of the future of his career under lesser conductors. ""He is a genius, an extraordinary man,"" said the conductor Bernard Haitink. Placido Domingo has called him ""a wizard.""

The central fact about Carlos Kleiber - who triumphed in New York last season conducting ""La Boheme"" and will conduct the premiere of the new Franco Zeffirelli production of ""La Traviata"" at the Metropolitan Opera tomorrow - is that he has no career as the commercial musical world today understands it. He conducts only when he wants to, and everyone wants to know what exactly makes him want to. Herbert von Karajan told the British writer Richard Osborne (in their book of conversations, soon to be published by Oxford University Press): ""He has a genius for conducting but he doesn"t enjoy doing it. He tells me, "I conduct only when I am hungry." And it is true. He has a deep-freeze. He fills it up, and cooks for himself, and when it gets down to a certain level then he thinks "now I might do a concert." But he is someone I have the greatest admiration for.""

Peter Jonas, who was the manager of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when Mr. Kleiber made his only American orchestral appearances there, puts it another way: ""Some conductors only do things when they want. But with Carlos it"s not the normal question of what he wants, but what he feels, and that is a very difficult matter. Every piece of work he undertakes is born of a struggle.

""One very unusual thing about him as a conductor is that he is very interested in a whole range of interpretations. We corresponded a great deal about Wagner, especially about Reginald Goodall"s performances, for instance, and discussed Brahms as conducted by Boult. And when he came to Chicago, I had been playing him recordings of English music conducted by Boult and he decided he would like to do Butterworth"s First English Idyll. It was an idiom so completely unfamiliar to the orchestra that at the first rehearsal our great first oboist Ray Still started the melody at double speed. Fortunately, Carlos was amused.""

On other occasions he has not been so amused. There are stories of his walking out of rehearsals with the Vienna Philharmonic when some picturesque description he made to the players was sniggered at. He is reported to be a very verbal conductor, offering similes, metaphors and pictures. When he did ""La Boheme"" at Covent Garden, the orchestra had just recorded it under Colin Davis. Mr. Kleiber asked for six full orchestral rehearsals, but no one was bored: his allusions when rehearsing ""Otello"" ranged from Charles Chaplin (the pattering footsteps) to the rumble of subway trains (when Otello comes in through the secret door). These pictures he supplements with copious notes written on postcards to his players and left on their music stands.

The conductor Claudio Abbado has said: ""There"s no limit to how well one can know a score, and Carlos just knows it better than anybody - though he always thinks he doesn"t know enough."" When the Carlos Kleiber magic works, it works to unbeatable effect. The pianist Alfred Brendel says, ""What is astonishing for a man who does so little conducting is that every technical matter is in place: there is no problem with the beat, with adjusting every little matter of balance and detail. He"s amazing, as if a pianist did not practice for months but was still able to play perfectly.""

Even so, Mr. Brendel has given only one concert with him, back in the 1960"s: ""We did Beethoven"s Fourth Concerto, and six months before he telephoned me with his phone on the piano and said, "I"ve just listened to 24 records of the concerto and I think this detail should go like this," and plays the piano. He had very definite ideas . . . well, in the end the performance was good, I think, because we met halfway. But I wondered whether I should spend my life accompanying conductors.""

Mr. Domingo agrees: ""Carlos is not the sort of conductor who accompanies you,"" he has said in an interview, ""but in my experience there"s nothing in musical life better than a rehearsal with him. You can learn so much.""

Mr. Kleiber"s preparation for each performance is immense. He studies scores that he is never likely to perform - the Mahler Symphonies can be found on his shelf, and he will discuss minute points of detail in them - and those works he does perform he knows with passion. Facsimiles of the autograph scores are likely to be in his dressing room when he conducts an opera.

Over Mr. Kleiber"s whole musical life, those who know him agree, looms the shadow of his father, the conductor Erich Kleiber. Born in July 1930, Carlos had a difficult childhood in Buenos Aires: His father, who had settled there in 1935, was apprehensive about his son"s musical tendencies and forced him to study chemistry. Though he showed musical promise at a very early age and was composing by the age of 9, his father was worried that he might become a musician, and he was allowed to make a European conducting debut only in 1954 in Potsdam, but, it has been said, under a pseudonym so as to avoid family embarrassment. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he made his debut in La Plata, Argentina, in 1952. Mr. Brendel recalls an early concert which included Mahler"s ""Lied von der Erde"": ""It was too early, but you could tell what gifts he had.""

It was only in 1956, with the death of his father, that Mr. Kleiber began his musical activities in earnest. He had already worked at theaters in Munich and Vienna as a coach, but by 1958 he was appearing as a conductor in Dusseldorf, and took on a very wide operatic repertory. The repertory has become smaller, and more like his father"s, as the years have gone by. He does no Mozart and little Wagner.

He conducted ""Tristan"" in Vienna in 1973 and Bayreuth in 1974 to huge acclaim, but it was not until 1980 that he finally agreed to record it for Deutsche Grammophon. The record company had to wait over a year before he approved the tapes, and rumors of rows with singers proliferated, but as DG diplomatically put it, Mr. Kleiber ""did not want to express himself satisfied with the first of the "best" final versions. He wanted to exploit the new 16-track technique down to the last inaudible [ sic ] detail. For a long time he took the liberty of critically - indeed self-critically - withholding his assent.""

That recording turned out to be a triumph, but his record company also had the notion of putting together two of the most volatile personalities on their roster, Mr. Kleiber and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, to record the five Beethoven piano concertos. The idea overcame the first hurdle - rousing Mr. Kleiber"s enthusiasm - but fell at the second fence: after only one day"s recording and the clash of two determined artistic wills, Mr. Kleiber locked himself in the conductor"s room and refused to come out until the producer enticed him with the promise of dinner with oysters. The oysters were eaten, but the recording was never finished.

This is the Kleiber paradox: a man of genius who apparently is unsure of his talents and unwilling to compromise. One observer puts it this way: ""Every artist is torn between the ego that makes him get up and perform, and the total insecurity about what he"s doing. But most of them keep working and don"t stop long enough to think about the insecurity. Carlos stops and thinks, and realizes all the problems."" Another friend comments: ""Even when he comes on stage, he looks awkward, as if he"s apologizing for being there. But once he raises his baton all the doubts go away. Then the magic starts...""

Oct.1989






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1. kleiber - Making copies for non-commercial use is permitted!
06.12.2009 15:36
Making copies for non-commercial use is permitted!
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Автор: kleiber
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