Otto Klemperer: Beethoven - Fidelio, ‘Overture’

Otto Klemperer (14 May 1885 - 6 July 1973) was a German-born American conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century. Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), as a son of Nathan Klemperer, a native of Prague, Bohemia (today's Czech Republic). His parents were Jewish. Klemperer studied music first at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, and later at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin under James Kwast and Hans Pfitzner. He followed Kwast to three institutions and credited him with the whole basis of his musical development. Klemperer went on to hold a number of positions, in Hamburg (1910-1912); in Barmen (1912-1913); the Strasbourg Opera (1914-1917); the Cologne Opera (1917-1924); and the Wiesbaden Opera House (1924-1927). From 1927 to 1931, he was conductor at the Kroll Opera in Berlin. In this post he enhanced his reputation as a champion of new music, playing a number of new works, including Janáček's From the House of the Dead,Schoenberg's Erwartung, Stravinsky's Oedipus rex, and Hindemith's Cardillac. In 1933, once the Nazi Party had reached power, Klemperer, who was of Jewish descent, left Germany and moved to the United States. Klemperer had previously converted to Catholicism,[5] but returned to Judaism at the end of his life. In the U.S. he was appointed Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He took United States citizenship in 1937. In Los Angeles, he began to concentrate more on the standard works of the Germanic repertoire that would later bring him greatest acclaim, particularly the works ofBeethoven, Brahms and Mahler, though he gave the Los Angeles premieres of some of fellow Los Angeles resident Arnold Schoenberg's works with the Philharmonic. He also visited other countries, including England and Australia. While the orchestra responded well to his leadership, Klemperer had a difficult time adjusting to Southern California, a situation exacerbated by repeated manic-depressive episodes, reportedly as a result of severe cyclothymic bipolar disorder. He also found that the dominant musical culture and leading music critics in the United States were largely out of sympathy with his taste for modern music from Weimar's Golden Age, and he felt he was not properly valued. After World War II, Klemperer returned to Europe to work at the Budapest Opera (1947-1950). Finding Communist rule in Hungary increasingly irksome, he became an itinerant conductor, guest conducting the Royal Danish Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra,Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Philharmonia of London. In the early 1950s Klemperer experienced difficulties arising from his U.S. citizenship. American union policies made it difficult for him to record in Europe, while his left-wing views made him increasingly unpopular with the State Department and FBI: in 1952 the United States refused to renew his passport. In 1954 Klemperer again returned to Europe, and acquired a German passport. A severe fall during a visit to Montreal in 1951 forced Klemperer subsequently to conduct seated in a chair. A severe burning accident further paralyzed him, which resulted from his smoking in bed and trying to douse the flames with the contents of a bottle of spirits of camphor nearby. Through Klemperer's problems with his health, the tireless and unwavering support and assistance of Klemperer's daughter Lotte was crucial to his success. One of his last concert tours was to Jerusalem, a couple of years after the Six-Day War, at which time he was awarded an Israeli honorary passport. Klemperer died in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1973, aged 88, and was buried at Zürich's Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zürich... en.wikipedia.o...
A link to this wonderful artists personal website: www.allmusic.co...
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