CARLOS
KLEIBER (1930-2004)
The
death of Carlos Kleiber at the age of
74 (and characteristically, his death
on 13th July took almost
a week to become public) ends perhaps
the most infuriating career of any of
the great conductors of the last century.
His last public concert – with the Bavarian
Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1999 – came
some years after his last studio recording;
and of all the great conductors he had
by far the most limited repertoire.
Like Sergiu Celibidache – whom Kleiber
recalls in many ways – his was a career
which was unsatisfactorily incomplete.
Yet,
however incomplete it may be there exists
a considerable artistic legacy, although
a certain blindness to Kleiber’s greatness
can have the effect of clouding some
of his real achievements. So much, for
example, has been written about his
recording of Beethoven’s Fifth with
the Vienna Philharmonic that it is often
overlooked that Kleiber doesn’t actually
get the first bar’s four note motif
right. Nor is he a persuasive conductor
of the Prelude to Tristan where
Wagner’s tempi are all but sublimated.
Yet, forget these technical details
and the performances that Kleiber gives
us were as musically perfect as any.
His conducting technique was so expressive,
so flexible, that at times he seemed
as if he was improvising. Like Furtwängler
no two performances were ever the same
and like both his father, Erich, and
Fritz Busch, the clarity given to the
grand line of a work was seamless. There
were few mannerisms – though Kleiber
did have a tendency to over-emphasise
crescendos to the point of starting
them earlier than written – and at times
one was less aware of dynamics in a
performance of a well known work than
with other conductors. Yet, at his best
Kleiber was an incandescent re-creator
of great music and a conductor of such
virtuoso brilliance that it seemed impossible
to be excluded from his music-making.
Such
greatness – effortless as it was – belied
the preparation that Kleiber put into
his performances. Rehearsals were intensive
and - like Celibidache and Wand – he
demanded, and got, the rehearsal time
he wanted. It was this search for perfection
that made Kleiber so hysterically unreceptive
to bad reviews. One of the most notorious
of these ‘bad press’ incidents happened
in London in 1981 when the LSO persuaded
Kleiber to conduct a performance of
Beethoven’s Seventh and Schubert’s Ninth
(a repeat of a concert Kleiber and the
orchestra had given in Milan days before).
Edward Greenfield’s negative review
ensured Kleiber never conducted an orchestra
in London again. Kleiber forbid the
BBC to broadcast the concert and the
tapes were destroyed. Incidents such
as these were few and far between, but
it was characteristic of Kleiber to
be so vulnerable to negative publicity;
he never gave an interview, thus perpetuating
the myth of his reclusivity.
Kleiber
was born in Berlin on 3rd
July 1930 but moved to Argentina soon
after when his family left Nazi Germany.
Kleiber almost instinctively knew what
his vocation would be – to the extent
that his father expressed displeasure
at the young Carlos’ unfortunate interest
in music – and so it was that the young
Kleiber took the then conventional route
of working his way up through European
opera houses, first in Düsseldorf
and then in Zurich. Stuttgart played
an important part in Kleiber’s operatic
life in the mid 1960s, as did Munich
later – and his special relationship
with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
became a natural extension of operatic
Munich. The early 1970s saw his debuts
at the Vienna Staatsoper, Bayreuth,
La Scala and Covent Garden. It was only
in the late 1980s that Kleiber made
his debut at The Met, although he had
regularly conducted the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra throughout the previous decade.
Kleiber
never held any post with a symphony
orchestra, preferring instead to guest
conduct those orchestras who could most
meet his demands. The Berlin Philharmonic,
Vienna Philharmonic and Concertgebouw
all secured his services (the Berliners
even electing Kleiber to succeed Karajan,
only for him to turn down the job.)
Kleiber negotiated all his contracts
personally – often with a handshake
rather than in any written form – and
never had any agent to deal with managers
on his behalf. This sometimes led to
odd payment arrangements – one of his
last concerts involving payment in the
form of a sport’s car rather than cash.
But
it was the sheer sparseness of the concerts
that he gave that is astonishing for
such an important conductor. Between
1978 (in Chicago) and between that final
concert in Cagliari in 1999 Kleiber
gave just 157 concerts with eight different
symphony orchestras, an average of seven
a year. Some works – such as Beethoven’s
Sixth – he conducted just once (1983)
whilst other works he conducted merely
a handful of times - Ein Heldenleben
(twice) and Butterworth’s English Idylle
(five times.) Only Beethoven and Brahms
were conducted with any regularity.
In stark contrast, Kleiber conducted
over 520 opera performances over a 35-year
period, the majority of those having
been with the Bavarian State Opera.
At Covent Garden there were fabulous
performances of Elektra and Rosenkavalier
and at Bayreuth he conducted Tristan
for the three years between 1974 and
1976.
That
Elektra, released some years
back on Golden Melodram (a Slovenian
label, and Kleiber was buried in Slovenia)
still has the capacity to electrify,
even though the sound is poor (this
was an in-house recording). It’s an
important document of Kleiber at the
peak of his powers – has Strauss’ score
ever sounded more violent and more turbulent
than it does in this 1977 performance?
It’s also important because it demonstrates
those essential characteristics of a
Kleiber performance – crystalline textures,
subtle dynamics and absolute control
at all the pivotal moments. Yet, perversely,
the recording demonstrates a constant
throughout Kleiber’s operatic career
– his inability to cast productions
completely successfully. Gwyneth Jones’
Chrysothemis is poorly sung, and a similar
problem exists with his casting of her
as the Marschallin in both a 1977 Munich
production of Rosenkavalier and
another one in 1979. Marion Lippert
in a 1971 Elektra from Stuttgart
is also uncomfortable as Chysothemis,
yet that is slightly offset by a wonderfully
sung Klytemnestra from Martha Mödl
and a powerful Aegisth sung by Windgassen.
When it came to Tristan there
could also be controversial casting
choices: Catarina Ligendza – a regular
Isolde for Kleiber at Bayreuth, Vienna
and Stuttgart – never really settles
into the part but perhaps most controversially
was his insistence on Margaret Price
as his Isolde for his studio recording
of the opera done with the Dresden Staatskapelle.
The most sumptuously lyrical Isolde
on record, Price is either to your taste
or she is not.
One
could argue that Kleiber’s judgment
when it came to the suitability of releasing
some of his live recordings was also
defective at times. The recent Beethoven
Sixth on Orfeo is extraordinary
is some ways (notably for some really
beautifully judged orchestral playing)
but in others – its extremes of tempi
especially – it seems not to represent
Kleiber at his best. On the other hand,
Kleiber forbid Sony to release a 1983
performance of Ein Heldenleben
with the Vienna Philharmonic because
he was unhappy with it: listen to the
performance and one wonders what Kleiber
could object to. It is incandescent,
and as perfect an example of ‘clock-time’
being meaningless as in any recording
of the work I know. At less than 38
minutes it is fast - but it never sounds
it – and the architecture of the work
has never appeared so convincingly done
as it does in this performance.
And
that is the colossal scale of Kleiber’s
life and death. There exist some of
the greatest recorded performances of
symphonies and operas anywhere in the
catalogue (are there many people who
would deny that his Der Freischütz
is the greatest opera recording ever
made?) Kleiber does what every great
conductor does – he brings to a work
something personal and unique. There
is little – if any - Kleiber that remains
to be discovered but the legacy we have
is as important, and in many ways more
important, than some of the legacies
of great conductors who performed and
recorded with a considerably greater
degree of vicissitude than Kleiber did.
His death is a significant loss, but
given Kleiber’s rejection of music in
his last years not one that should be
mourned because of what he did not conduct.
Marc
Bridle