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Kleiber"s combination of talent and reclusiveness made him a magnet forspurious legend. Even his death on July 13, 2004, wasn"t widely known until more than a week later. One thing is undisputed: He"d have been the greatest conductor of our time had he simply conducted more than once in a while.Over the last two decades, his appearances were few, his cancellations many, and his repertoire shriveled to practically nothing. His admirers - and how could any music lover who ever heard him not be one? - hoped he"d come to hissenses and finally deliver the great Beethoven"s Ninth or Mahler symphonies we all knew he was capable of.
Yet when hearing the bad news, some colleagues asked, "Was it suicide?" No.Though known to be a tortured individual, Kleiber reportedly suffered an extended illness and was buried in Konjsica, Slovenia, on Saturday, next to his wife, who died in December 2003. He hadn"t faced a symphony orchestra or an opera company in the last five years.
Who knows if he knew or cared that a newly released live performance of his Beethoven"s Symphony No. 6, taped in 1983, had the music world rhapsodizing once again. He rehearsed and performed intensely, but wasn"t one to rescue his only Beethoven"s Sixth from a moldering Munich radio archive. Only because his son, Marko, had a well-preserved cassette dub of the performance - in better shape than the master tape - was it released on the "Orfeo" label in May 2004.The performance is vintage Kleiber. It"s one of the fastest recordings of the piece ever made, though the speed feels completely different from asimilarly fleet Arturo Toscanini. Kleiber tempos were exuberant rather than merely brisk. There"s a succulence in his music-making that comes from the symphony"s moving parts bristling with independent muscle without taxing the cohesion of the whole. The fourth movement"s storm music arrives with an explosivenessthat"s no less surprising for being typical of the volatile Kleiber.
He was essentially a classicist, but one for whom the checks and balances ofthat interpretive stance didn"t subvert individuality. Sometimes called a nenfant terrible, he was such a smiling, joyful figure on the podium that you had to be baffled as to why he didn"t conduct more frequently.
There was a time when he was a consistent presence, working his way up the conducting ladder with provincial positions in Potsdam and Dusseldorf, finally settling in Munich, where he appeared frequently at the Bavarian State Opera and with the Bavarian State Orchestra.
His hallmark was energizing warhorses that were long ago driven in to fatigue, reminding generations of music lovers that Johann Strauss" seemingly frothy "Die Fledermaus" contains some of the best music written in the 19th century. Ditto for "La Boheme", with which he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1988, inspiring Luciano Pavarotti to give some of his most controlled, profoundly artistic performances. Kleiber"s recording of Beethoven"s Fifth and Seventh symphonies are among the few, clear-cut standard setters of that repertoire made in recent years. Though soprano Barbara Bonney swore she was burned out on singing "Der Rosenkavalier", she said she"d always make an exception fo Kleiber.
His reclusiveness started in earnest in the early 1980s, when he walked outon a Vienna Philharmonic rehearsal, leaving a note saying that he was going for... a Sunday drive. Also during that period, he broke with Deutsche Grammophon, with whom he made a series of extravagantly honored recordings. It"s hard to say what external circumstances prompted that behavior, since Kleiber refused most interviews, and never really defended his mercurial behavior.Some say, that he didn"t conduct regularly because he didn"t have to. Legend had it that he kept a pile of money on his desk, and when the pile grew small, he made a few phone calls and gave concerts. More likely, Kleiber"s actions - or inactions - were motivated by fear. He had typical phobias, such as fear of flying and fear of death, which meant even the shortest flights warranted a bottle of Jack Daniel"s (a frequent companion on other occasions). Most of all, he seemed to have lived in profound terror of never measuring up to the legend of his father, Erich Kleiber, who was also one of the great conductors of the century.
Kleiber was encouraged to study music as a boy when the family was waiting out World War II in Argentina, yet the elder Kleiber disapproved of his son"s interest in conducting and insisted he study chemistry. That"s why the young Kleiber conducted under the pseudonym of Karl Keller in 1955. Decades after his father"s death in 1956, Kleiber confessed to being driven by his invisible specter. He wasn"t dogged by an unattainable perfectionism, but by never feeling good enough about his work. This may not have been pure neurosis. Live recordings from Argentina by the elder Kleiber have surfaced in recent years, and they"re like thrilling musical tornados.
Living amid such a dichotomy meant, that he could be charming and devastating - simultaneously. Alison Ames, who headed Deutsche Grammophon"s U.S.operations, recalls meeting Kleiber backstage after a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. Standing in a sweaty T-shirt (that he promptly pulled off), he smile dradiantly while holding both her hands. But upon being told she was from Deutsche Grammophon, he said in German, still smiling, "Scheiss Firma" (comparing the company to excrement). And when she returned the following concert, he said, "You"re back for more!"
As was everybody. Along with cellist Jacqueline du Pre and soprano Maria Callas, Carlos Kleiber was a musician whose work transcends conventiona lopinions about taste and judgment. He redefined music without remaking it. Artistry on that level trumps all - easily and happily...
Carlos Kleiber is a conductor with an unrivalled international reputation, yet he performs only rarely, makes few recordings and never gives interviews. Placido Domingo talks with Martin Kettle in 1989:
Is he, I tentatively asked Placido Domingo, the best? "Without any doubt," came the great tenor"s instant reply. "What can I say?" Bernard Haitink once told another interviewer, "He is an extraordinary man, above all the others." "Carlos," says Mark Elder "is the head and shoulders above the rest of us. He"s the best conductor in the world. And I"d have said exactly the same while Karajan was alive."
Superlatives attach themselves naturally to Carlos Kleiber . Yet, even today, Kleiber is still more a highbrow cult figure than a household name. The explanation is not hard to find. The man of whom musicians speak with such awe and adoration has refused to play ball with the international music business. He won"t take a permanent orchestral appointment, though if he did, Placido Domingo says, "He could turn it into the greatest ensemble in history. It would be a dream."
He refuses to be at the beck and call of the record industry or the opera and concert managements who bombard him with offers. Even an admiring Herbert von Karajan himself was unable to tempt Kleiber to take a date with the Berlin Philharmonic, an engagement which any other conductor in the world would have grabbed without a second thought.
The reason, according to Karajan, was that Kleiber does not really enjoy conducting. "He tells me, "I only conduct 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". He is like a wolf."
Kleiber has few of the airs of a man who can probably command at least 20,000 Pounds (pds) for a single performance. In London last week a tall grey haired man walked in unannounced off the street in jeans and anorak carrying an old plastic bag to see a friend. "My name is Mr Kleiber. I"m from Munich," he announced to the receptionist.
Twelve months ago this morning Carlos Kleiber "s name suddenly became known to millions, as he marched briskly on to the platform of the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein in Vienna to conduct the traditional New Year"s Day concert of waltzes and polkas which is nowadays televised to all corners of the globe.
As he stood on the rostrum, his head slightly bowed so that he seemed to be smiling to himself rather than to the cheering audience, Kleiber was not just giving the concert which had preoccupied him for months. When he launched the Vienna Philharmonic into Johann Strauss"s Accelerationen Waltz, Carlos Kleiber was coming as close as he will probably ever come to offering himself to the world at large.
The Vienna concert was a stupendous success. Pieces of music which are often encrusted with performance cliches and sloppy interpretation were served up fresh, sharp and ravishing. On the BBC, Richard Baker was moved to remind listeners of the reaction of a local critic to Kleiber"s Vienna debut fifteen years earlier. "It was as though Homer had returned to recite the Iliad in person," the critic had written of his performance of Beethoven"s Fifth Symphony. Not surprisingly, Vienna now wants a second helping and Kleiber has provisionally agreed to return there in 1991.
No one can say if he will in fact do so. For Carlos Kleiber is a law unto himself. The repertoire of works he will perform is very restricted. He gives few performances, most of them in the opera house, and fewer still in the concert hall. His list of recordings is tiny. He never gives interviews and dislikes having his photograph taken. He is loathe to commit himself far in advance and, although he imposes strict conditions for his appearances, he rarely signs contracts.
At the end of this week, Kleiber is due to conduct the first of four performances of Verdi"s Otello at Covent Garden, with Placido Domingo as the Moor. Earlier Kleiber/Domingo Otellos in 1980 and 1987 have been among the supreme events in Covent Garden"s recent troubled history, and the new performances have been sold out for weeks. Time and again in researching this profile, contacts have given warnings not to put the Otello at risk that to publish this or that fact could endanger patiently and laboriously constructed working relationships with Kleiber and provisional agreements with him over future work. He is a celebrated canceller and, it is said, an avid reader of the newspapers.
Placido Domingo has worked, gloriously, with Kleiber on Otello, La Traviata and Carmen. He would also, he said in London last week, like to sing for Kleiber in Don Carlos, Fidelio, Tristan and Tannhauser and hopes - "my big, big dream" - to record Otello with him too.
"I admire his total involvement in a score," Domingo explains. "He knows it so much better than anybody else. He has studied the meaning of the music like no one else. To hear him explain these things is incredible. Carlos can describe everything. It is just amazing. Very few people have this gift.
"He is just like a magician," Domingo continues. "He always has a trump card up his sleeve. He never repeats. Other conductors do everything the same way. But just watch the total independence of Carlos"s hands. With one hand he can give the idea of a big long line beaten in four, while with the other he is beating in twelve with total independence.
"With him in charge I just feel that the music and I are absolutely as one. We feel it all the same way. I have never had any better moment in any musical experience than when he accompanies me in the "Doi, mi potevi" monologue in act three of Otello. He notices everything. I try to please him all the time, not just because I want to please him but because I know he"s right.
"One of the sad things is that Carlos doesn"t work more. He chooses his work with such care. That"s marvellous in one way, but it means the world misses so much. It"s a pity he"s the way he is."
Carlos Kleiber is a deeply private man, hugely devoted to his family, who loves to read, study and write. His witty handwritten letters are the delight of his close acquaintances. He has tried his hand at stories and novels - he is a great lover of Saki - though none has ever been published. He is easy, unpretentious and delightful company. He watches a lot of television, smokes, eats a lot while remaining thin, and is extremily interested in politics. His sympathies are left of centre social democratic and, while no admirer of General Noriega, he has been ardently critical of the American invasion of Panama. He doesn"t need to work more often than he does. And why not?
Kleiber has in fact conducted in Britain far more than in most countries. His relationship with Covent Garden dates from his 1974 debut conducting Richard Strauss"s Der Rosenkavalier. He was back in 1977 for Elektra, in 1979 for La Boheme and in 1980 for Placido Domingo"s first London Otello. Seven years then passed before he again worked at Covent Garden, once more in Otelle with Domingo, in the production which he revives this month.
In the whole of that 15 year relationship with Covent Garden, though, Kleiber has conducted just a solitary orchestral concert in this country. The story of that concert - perhaps the single most controversial London concert hall event of the 1980s - goes a long way to explain why people in the music business are so sensitive about press comment about the conductor.
In 1981, the London Symphony Orchestra"s ailing president, Karl Bohm, was forced to cancel a long awaited Festival Hall date. Kleiber was hastily contacted and agreed to deputise. The surge of public interest was enormous. When the concert took place, on June 9, 1981, the audience was studded with famous musicians and the atmosphere was electric. At the end of the programme of Weber"s Freischutz overture, Schubert"s third symphomy and Beethoven"s seventh, the reception was tumultuous.
Next morning came the reckoning. With the exception of the Observer"s Peter Heyworth who thought it "one of the most marvellous concerts I ever heard", the reviews were devastatingly hostile. The Daily Telegraph"s Robert Henderson called it "a disastrously unhappy affair" adding that the concert was "bewildering in its coarseness and insensitivity." The Guardian"s Edward Greenfield felt that "at no point with such aggressive exaggerations and idiosyncracies was it quite possible to dismiss the suspicion that here was a conductor determined at all costs to do things differently, to attract to himself rather than to the music."
Kleiber was furious. He is said to have vowed never to conduct a London concert ever again. "It was desperately unfair and terribly stupid of the critics," recalls an LSO musician. Despite the reviews, the LSO remains in close touch with Kleiber and managing director Clive Gillingson believes "Carlos wants to work with the band again." But not in London, unfortunately.
Carlos Kleiber has lived a restless life. He was born in Germany, grew up in South America, had an English governess, became an Argentine citizen, knows Cuba well, went to college in New York, studied chemistry in Switzerland, lives in Bavaria, is now a naturalised Austrian and has flirted with emigrating to Australia. His sister Veronica is now an Italian citizen who lives in Milan, while his wife Stanka is a Yugoslav (the Kleibers have a son Marko and a daughter Lilian.) He speaks six languages fluently, including Slovenian, and his excellent English was learned from his American mother Ruth and at English boarding schools in South America in the 1940s.
When Carlos was born in Berlin in 1930 his father Erich Kleiber was musical director of Germany"s most important opera house, the Berlin Staatsoper, where he had conducted the world premiere of Berg"s Wozzeck in December 1925. When Carlos was five, Erich Kleiber resigned in protest against Nazi interference, leading his family from temporary home to temporary home, before settling in Buenos Aires.
The young Carlos quickly showed musical ability. He began composing at nine. Famous father was apparently no best pleased. "What a pity he is musical," Erich Kleiber wrote in a letter from Lima. But the conducting bug was too strong and in 1954 he made his debut in Potsdam, appearing under the name Karl Keller so as to avoid attention. Apprentice years followed, as an assistant opera conductor in Dusseldorf, during which he performed a much wider repertoire than is nowadays associated with him, before his appointment from 1966-68 as Kapellmeister at the Stuttgart Opera. It was the last fulltime job he ever held.
The modern Carlos Kleiber , the hugely sought after but unpredictable conductor with the unparalleled international reputation, dates from this time. Over the last 20 years, he has confined his appearances mainly to opera, chiefly in Munich, Milan, Vienna and London, interspersed with occasional concerts, mainly with the Bavarian State Orchestra, and increasingly rare forays into the recording studio.
His studio recordings, indeed, now seem to have entirely dried up. The first, an electrifying version of Weber"s Der Freischutz, was produced in 1973. The last, a searing and extraordinarily underestimated interpretation of Wagner"s Tristan und Isolde, was made in 1982. In between came La Traviata, which he almost abandoned midway, and Die Fledermaus, as well as an acclaimed handful of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert symphonies with the Vienna Phlharmonic. There have been other projects, including a Ring for EMI, but nothing has come of them. His few subsequent recordings have been taken from live concerts, like the Vienna New Year"s Concert and his Munich Beethoven Fourth of 1985.
The smallness of Kleiber"s performing repertoire remains a perpetual enigma. Yet it masks the extent of his scholarship and sympathies. "He studies a great deal," says a friend. "He knows everything. He knows every goddam piece. I know he does. I"ve seen the scores." He once told the English National Opera"s general manager Peter Jonas that he would like to conduct The Mikado, and when Jomas was in charge of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra he even persuaded Kleiber to perform George Butterworth"s first English Idyll.
His detailed preparation of the pieces he does perform is the key to the intensity and fluency of his interpretations. "When I work with him," says Placido Domingo, "I feel that he knows somehow why the composer wrote every note, treated every phrase." The LSO cellist Francis Saunders says: "He has a very clear picture and he knows exactly what he wants - but he also has the skill of making you create within it."
Kleiber"s ability to communicate imaginatively is what most impresses the musicians who work with him. This is partly a physical gift. "His stick technique is very clear, but he uses his body terribly well too," says Saunders. It is also psychological. "He has this tightly drawn temperament which gives him this extraordinary ability to impart trust to an orchestra," says Mark Elder. "He makes them feel they can do it."
But Kleiber also gets his way by wit, language and diplomacy. "Violins - please put some butter on it," he once upbraided the Covent Garden orchestra in a Rosenkavalier rehearsal. On the same occasion, when striving for a special interior quietness during the Marschallin"s Act One monologue, he suggested: "Only those people with psychic tendencies please play this chord."
He thrives on creative tension. He demands intensive rehearsals, but every performance is a fresh discovery. Jonathan Summers has sung Marcello in La Boheme for Kleiber in several theatres and has been impressed by this quality. "I remember once during rehearsals he must have thought we were going through the motions a bit, because he suddenly threw down his baton and shouted: "No, no. Do something different. Give me something to do." That"s what he likes. He really listens to you and if you try to do something different he responds."
His performances, which are often very fast, are renowned for their hyperaware intensity. They are minutely expressive and dizzyingly dangerous. He takes risks and asks for similarly audacious striving from his fellow performers. About his performances, suggests the writer Helena Matheopoulos, there is a Dionysioan divine madness. Certainly Kleiber performances are unforgettable and he inspires a rare fanaticism in his admirers. Yet perhaps his truer project, like Prospero"s, is simply to please.
Of course Kleiber is a complex figure. But there is no law that requires a genius to run here, there and everywhere on the say-so of record company moguls, corporate sponsors and agents. Kleiber"s music making is supreme, but there are, perhaps, other things in life. As he once told Leonard Bernstein: "I want to grow in a garden, I want to have the sun, I want to eat and drink and sleep and make love, and that"s it."..
