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A genuine passion
There was, in fact, only one guiding force in his life -- music -- and he gave himself to it with almost supernal passion and intensity. Every concert and opera performance he conducted was a genuine event, and not simply because he conducted so seldom. His painstaking preparation, his abhorrence of routine, his fanatical musical idealism made it so. "Difficult" was the word most commonly used to describe the Berlin-born Austrian conductor, who was the son of another famous conducting Kleiber, Erich. But Carlos Kleiber was only difficult to those who failed to understand who he really was -- a completely free spirit. The man who refused engagements if the conditions weren"t right, who walked out on rehearsals and recording sessions if he didn"t get what he wanted, who gave managers ulcers and drove opera directors to exasperation was sending out a message: "I am doing my utmost to meet the music 1,000 percent. You must go the same distance with me." If a Kleiber performance was like nobody else"s, he was a seemingly paradoxical interpreter. Few conductors were as closely bound to the score"s details yet so wondrously free of their tyranny. He took what was printed on the page and made poetry out of it. Having fully assimilated the music down to the minutest detail, he was free in the performance to let the music take wing spontaneously. This unpredictability was an essential feature of his art, the reason why every Kleiber performance felt fresh and different. You felt you were hearing familiar music through reawakened ears. Peter Jonas, the outgoing general director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the former artistic administrator of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra who persuaded Kleiber, a close friend, to make his U.S. debut with the CSO in 1978, told me this about him at the time of his second and final concerts with the orchestra, back in 1983: "Carlos has this great kind of inhibition, combined with a desire to scrupulously seek some kind of perfection," he said. "The hassles, the demands, the non-signing of contracts, these are all part of an effort to create a framework in which he can make truly sincere artistic statements -- on his terms. He is not concerned with amassing great wealth or a power base -- his ego doesn"t function that way. In fact, he has very little ego to speak of." No one lucky enough to have heard Kleiber"s concerts at Orchestra Hall is likely to ever forget them. They turned out to be the only symphonic concerts he would ever conduct in America. Before coming to Chicago to direct Mozart"s Symphony No. 33 and the Brahms Second Symphony in 1983, he sent meticulously detailed instructions to the orchestra librarians as to bowings and dynamic markings. These instructions were written in the form of "Kleibergrams," typical of the handwritten notes he liked to prepare for musicians before and after rehearsals wherever he appeared. Attached to these instructions was a postscript addressed to Jonas: "You know how diffident, apprehensive, shy, kind and peaceful I am, but I assure you I will leave the Windy City on the spot if the librarians do a bad job with the material. -- C.K."
A revelation
Both series of Kleiber programs here were revelations, to the orchestra members as much as to the audience. Without doing anything out of the ordinary, without distorting the composer"s intentions, Kleiber made utterly fresh pieces out of those Germanic warhorses, the Beethoven Fifth Symphony and Brahms" Second. In my Tribune review of the 1978 concert, I called his Beethoven "one of the most electrifyingly kinetic Fifths" I had ever heard. In the Brahms, "the warmth of his phrasing was always combined with a firm sense of underlying pulse, so that the lyrical content carried with it a feeling of marvelous expectancy. A stirring coda to the season." Yet, for all his questioning intelligence and masterly control of musical architecture, Kleiber in rehearsal often worried he would not be able to convey his mental image of a score properly to the performers. "Is it going all right? Is my beat not clear enough? Forgive me, but it"s not quite right yet, is it?" he once asked a CSO musician during a rehearsal break. In Chicago, as in other cities where Kleiber conducted, musicians learned to take his fretting only half-seriously. They knew of his insecurities but they also knew his beat and gestures were absolutely right for the flowing, buoyant, infinitely shaded musical line he sought and usually did achieve. More than once Kleiber"s pungent, self-deprecating sense of humor rescued a CSO rehearsal that had become bogged down in minutiae. He was a shrewd enough psychologist to know when being disarming to musicians could work to the advantage of the finished performance. Jonas said it best: "You get a strong moral sense with Kleiber. He does what he thinks is right artistically, regardless of obstacles or what anybody else thinks. It is a way of working that is absolutely his own. If there"s just one person left who can make music this way, it"s good for us all." Now that person has left the building. And the music world has suffered an immense loss.
BBC News, July 22, 2004.
Celebrated conductor Carlos Kleiber, described by Luciano Pavarotti as a "genius", has died at the age of 74.
With a reputation for rarely performing, Austrian-Argentine Kleiber refused to join a company, preferring to take guest conductor roles.
He died on 13 July and was buried in Konjscia, Slovenia, on Saturday.
"The greatest living conductor has left us," Ioan Holender, director of the Vienna State Opera, told the Austria Press Agency.
The son of conductor Erich Kleiber, the family fled Nazi rule and settled in Argentina.
Carlos Kleiber was considered one of the great conductors of the late 20th Century, mentioned alongside Leonard Bernstein and Georg Solti.
But he was surrounded in mystique because of his refusal to give interviews and the relatively few performances he gave. He largely retired from the scene in 1994, but gave a final series in Spain and Italy.
"Carlos Kleiber was a musical genius beyond words," Pavarotti said in a statement.
"Music-loving audiences the world over were deprived of the privilege of experiencing him in public in more recent years, but he was a unique conductor and an extraordinary interpreter and the music world has suffered a tragic loss."
"Empty freezer"
He was also known to be a difficult performer, often cancelling performances at the last minute.
German conductor Herbert von Karajan once commented: "Kleiber only goes on stage when his freezer is empty."
Kleiber originally studied chemistry in Switzerland but his musical talent won over and he made his conducting debut in Potsdam, Germany.
He made his US debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1978.
He conducted at New York"s Metropolitan Opera 19 times over two years, but later refused to conduct again in the US.
Kleiber has been buried next to his wife, who died in December.
What follows is a translation of “Un Genio Che Incantava: Zeffirelli Ricorda Kleiber” by Valerio Cappelli. It was published in AMADEUS, no. 184, March 2005, pp. 42-44.
[Prefatory paragraph to article]: Franco Zeffirelli, one of the greatest Italian directors, student of Luchino Visconti, after having spent his life staging performances and shooting film in every part of the world, started to write the most significant memories of such a tumultuous and exciting existence, then gathering them in a book published in the English language. However, this collection does not by itself suffice to contain the memories of an artistic and human event so dense in encounters, facts, and intellectual excesses which has been that of Franco Zeffirelli. For this reason, the Florentine director has continued to draw from his own past and to write new chapters of his long history, lived on stages and in private relationships. This memory of Carlos Kleiber, of whom he was the stage director [regista] of choice, is the first chapter of a new series dedicated by Zeffirelli to those encounters, a truly interesting memory for those who have known and loved the genius German director deceased several months ago. It is irreplaceable for understanding something of his sensibility and of his mysterious psychology. For this reason we offer it to our readers as a precious document.
“A Genius Who Enchanted”
by
Valerio Cappelli
“For we who had the good fortune to work with him, it was an experience that marked us forever. The first time that I met Carlos Kleiber was for a great appointment…” Franco Zeffirelli is in Paris to promote “Jesus of Nazareth” when they proposed to him to open the season of La Scala, 7 December 1976, with Verdi’s “Otello.” The protagonists are Placido Domingo, Mirella Freni, Piero Cappuccilli. On the podium, the great Kleiber. And then the mastery of Zeffirelli. They are all the premises for a legendary evening. But in ’76, Kleiber was “only” a star, had not yet entered into legend, his more brilliant fame belated, only reaching it with silver hair. “I hadn’t heard him speak; years before I had already listened to the father, Erich Kleiber, when he often came to direct in Florence,” relates Zeffirelli. He is the stage director who worked more with Carlos than did any other. They shared together four productions: “Otello,” “La Boheme,” “La Traviata,” and “Carmen.” A record for an artist who worked by subtraction as Kleiber did, limiting his talent to a few titles, always those. Over time, the two became friends. The director spent a lot of time in Zeffirelli’s villa in Positano and, far from music, the character of the man revealed itself. In the summer of 1989 Zeffirelli was witness to an “historic” meeting: in his home, on the Amalfi Coast, as guests, were Leonard Bernstein and Carlos Kleiber, two of the greatest [massimo] artists of the twentieth century.
Now, for the first time, the celebrated stage director tells who Carlos Kleiber was to him. “He was the kindest [gentilissimo] man, likeable, and he didn’t make you suspect anything of his magnificence...
Translation by Robert McGinn