Otto Klemperer is often associated with the great classical-romantic repertoire (and the impressive compilation album published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his death, discussed in these same pages last October, amply explains why), but the beginnings of his career were closely linked to the world of opera and new works. A letter from Gustav Mahler facilitated his first contract as assistant conductor at the German Theatre in Prague, and then came more or less prolonged stays at theatres in Hamburg, Wuppertal, Strasbourg, Cologne and Wiesbaden, in line with what remains today the best way to gain experience in the pit and learn a trade that has always been at odds with precocity. But it was his years at the Krolloper in Berlin, which became the first truly modern opera house and where he offered, together with Ewald Dülwerg, groundbreaking and visionary productions of titles such as Fidelio by BeethovenThe Flying Dutchman by Wagner, Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky, Cardillac of Hindemith or The happy hand Schönberg, who made Klemperer’s name transcend German borders. His avowed intention was not, however, to transgress but simply to offer “good theatre.” The coming to power of the Nazis abruptly interrupted the blossoming of these “experimental Judeo-Marxist” productions and forced him to undertake what – in the manner of his beloved Goethe – could well be described as his long years of pilgrimage.
The new flowering of his talent would take more than two decades, until Walter Legge placed the newly founded company in his hands. Philharmonia Orchestrawhich Klemperer would mould in his own image and likeness until it became the main architect, under his direction, of some of the greatest interpretive prodigies of the 20th century. Now there are far fewer reissued records (95 then compared to 29 in this second installment) and a variety of repertoire, but from the outset we are already rediscovering the main hallmarks of Klemperer’s genius, while regretting that some of the now reissued recordings could not have been made many years before the physical faculties – but never the mental one – of the German giant were seriously impaired by numerous mishaps and illnesses.
It is easy to find fault with Klemperer’s Bach or Handel, but in the years in which he made his recordings (in 1960-1961 the St. Matthew Passionin 1964 the Messiah and in 1967 the Mass in B minor) the historicist interpretations that predominate today were still in their infancy and were just beginning to stutter their new aesthetic proclamations. If, however, one compares it with the Bach of Furtwängler or Mengelberg, Klemperer’s sounds decidedly modern for the time, since it incorporates his characteristic objective prism, stripped of aesthetic mannerisms or spiritual ecstasies, and, above all, it displays his characteristic architectural sense. If his Messiah (with a Pifa that seems to have arrived from the Champs Elysees) has been worse affected by the passage of time, its Mass in B minorwhich he considered “the greatest and most exceptional music ever composed”, and his St. Matthew Passion They remain an essential milestone of 20th-century Bach interpretation. As usual, Walter Legge had the best voices at his disposal: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Walter Berry for the Passion; Agnes Giebel, Janet Baker, Hermann Prey, Franz Crass and again Gedda for the MassAnd, as can be seen time and again when listening to these discs, they were all transfigured and gave their best alongside the old master, and this can be extended not only to the colossal Philharmonia Choir (led by Wilhelm Pitz) but also to the BBC Choir in its finest recorded performance.
It is true that – and this is another well-known hallmark of the late Klemperer – the tempos are sometimes almost inconceivably slow, although they are almost never an obstacle to the Breslau conductor’s overwhelming musical logic, and only exceptionally (Figaro’s Wedding and, to a greater extent, So do you alltwo quasi-swansongs from 1970 and 1971) become a hindrance to transmitting the essence of the work. Even so, how can one resist Lucia Popp’s Despina, Elisabeth Söderström’s Countess or Teresa Berganza’s Cherubino? However, when all the pieces fit together, the flashes give way to a blinding light: this is the case of The magic Flutewith a very young Lucia Popp singing the best Queen of the Night ever heard and many of the usual suspects (Gedda, Berry, Schwarzkopf, Ludwig, Crass or the almost volatile Pamina of Gundula Janowitz) in unsurpassed musical and psychological creations. Singspiel Mozart under the wise eye of Klemperer has it all: tenderness, depth, delicacy, comic flair. Don Giovanni (from which a very revealing disc of outtakes and rehearsal fragments has been released) is another unattainable marvel, with Nicolai Ghiaurov as an omnipotent seducer and an immaculate Mirella Freni as Zerlina, plus — once again — Gedda, Ludwig, Berry and Crass touching the sky in their respective roles. It didn’t matter that Suvi Raj Grubb and Peter Andry took over from Walter Legge, or that the Philharmonia Orchestra moved into the New Philharmonia: it was Klemperer’s personality and his immense authority that brought about a kind of collective catharsis.
A careful listening allows us to glimpse the total control that he exercised at all times from the podium, no matter if it was in A German Requiem by Brahms—structurally overwhelming—or in the smooth and granitic Flying Dutchman Wagner, from whom an extraordinary first act is also collected The Valkyrie (Janet Baker would have been Fricka if the recording could have been completed.) But, to highlight one primus inter pares In the midst of so much brilliance, it is necessary to conclude with the Fidelio (one of the operas whose modernity he enthroned in his Berlin years and which Klemperer would record in 1962) and the Solemn Mass Beethoven, the most difficult and elusive composer, but with whom his compatriot seemed to have direct communication. The opera sounds perhaps stripped of the emotional immediacy that Wilhelm Furtwängler knew how to infuse into it, but in exchange it is overflowing with abstraction and a powerful allegorical charge. And the Mass is, even today, an incomprehensible miracle: the “New Objectivity” clothed —paradoxically— with the greatest transcendence and with a human, fiercely human aftertaste.
Otto Klemperer
The Warner Classics Remastered Edition. Operas and religious works
29 CD
You can follow Babelia in Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#transfigured #voices #Otto #Klemperer