Otto Klemperer: 20th Century Music

His enthusiasm for the art of his own time, and his desire to make a personal contribution to it, are not the least of Otto Klemperer’s qualities which have been overshadowed by the enduring image of a stern standard-bearer for tradition. Here are sprightly, quirkily personal performances of neo-classical masterpieces by Hindemith and Stravinsky, as well as a glimpse into the mind of Klemperer the creative musician, decisively influenced by his early encounters with Mahler. Otto Klemperer was born on 14th May 1885 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) and died on 6th July 1973 in Zurich, hence 2013 marks 40 years since his passing. He had had a remarkable career as a young man but it was at the age of 70 that he started a series of recordings that would not only establish him as an inter-nationally renowned conductor but provide EMI with a catalogue of recordings that became and remain touchstones. At the age of 42 Klemperer became director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin and was responsible for numerous premieres of the music by modern composers, especially Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill. It was a source of pride that he brought so many works by Stravinsky, born three years and dying two years before him, to the public and this continued even when Stravinsky and Klemperer were in America where the Symphony in Three Movements was written. Hindemith, too, was supported both in Berlin and America. Klemperer was so captivated by the Berthold Brecht/Kurt Weill Die Dreigroschenoper when it opened in Berlin in 1928 that he commissioned the 28-year-old composer to make a suite for wind instruments based on the original score. The result was the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, which was played for the first time at the annual Berlin opera ball under Klemperer’s direction. Not only a conductor, Klemperer loved to compose and three works were recorded, The first, in October 1961, was Merry Waltz taken from his opera Das Ziel (The Goal) and re-orchestrated for a larger orchestra which had originally premiered in August 1936 in Los Angeles. The second is his Symphony No. 2 which had had a private recording earlier in 1969 but which EMI then decided deserved proper session time and was released to celebrate his 85th birthday. His String Quartet No. 7 was recorded in February 1970, with the Philharmonia String Quartet for the same reason. The box set includes a musical bonus in the Overture and Dream Pantomime from Hänsel und Gretel composed by Engelbert Humperdinck. He had often conducted the opera and in 1932 his wife, the soprano Johanna Geissler, had alternated the roles of Gretel and the Witch. The set concludes with Jon Tolansky’s Sound Biography which illustrates how Otto Klemperer inspired musicians and music lovers not only with his conducting but also with his extraordinary courage, surviving extreme physical and mental adversity with remarkable stoicism. This special disc also includes two never before released items that were discovered as this feature was being prepared: a speech by Dr Klemperer at a reception for his 75th birthday, and a rehearsal during his recording sessions for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. An entire hour of rehearsal can be heard on a bonus CD that appears with EMI Classics’ reissue of the complete opera