Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times.

Roberts, Kenneth B.

The British music critic Peter Heyworth was asked by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to interview the great but complicated conductor Otto Klemperer beginning in 1969. Out of these and follow-up interviews, Heyworth published several interview transcripts, newspaper columns for his London paper, the Observer, and radio shows. With this material, it was natural that he would turn it into a biography, the first volume of which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1984, about a decade after Klemperer's death (reviewed in Notes 42 [1985]: 63-64). That volume took the subject from birth through apprenticeship and the famous era of the Weimar Republic when he headed the Berlin Kroll Opera, all of which changed abruptly when the Nazis were elected in 1933. The first volume was received with adulation, for it not only covered a glorious period in music history, dealing with one of the major players in that era, but was written in a magisterial way, placing it among the finest biographies of any musician ever.

The concluding volume did not appear in the years following. Then we read of the death of Heyworth in October 1991. We assumed that there would be no follow-up volume. To our utter amazement, Cambridge University Press announced volume 2 for publication in 1996; when the volume appeared, it stated that Heyworth had completed all but the final chapter (indeed his interviews had covered the entire life of Klemperer) and during the period of the 1980s, when suffering with an illness that eventually killed him, he had asked a colleague on the Observer, John Lucas, to see the final volume through to publication. Thus the volume is truly Heyworth's work, checked and edited by Lucas with the help of the conductor's daughter, Lotte, who had acted as an intermediary all through the interviews. Lucas gets little overt credit - his name does not appear on the cover or title page - but we are in his debt for finishing this wonderful saga of one of the great conductors of the century - present at the creation of so many important works of the century - and, in volume 2, chronicling the presence of Klemperer in North America and in the European musical scene after World War II.

I detect no change of style; the writing is Heyworth's own informative style. (One can check events as they were printed in the Conversations published in 1973 [London: Gollancz] and revised and published again in 1985 [London: Faber and Faber].) How much of the final chapter is Heyworth's and how much is Lucas's is not clear, nor is it relevant, as it is a short account of the final years, based on the daughter's account from her caregiver's position. The second volume is accompanied by a detailed discography and film listing, as well as a biographical glossary. The acknowledgments read like a who's who of twentieth-century music-organization executives.

The saga of this physically large German exile reads like a modern day story of Job. Thwarted by the manipulative Arthur Judson, Klemperer was constantly kept from getting the best conductorial posts (New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, guesting at the Metropolitan Opera) or even leading in the New World the important works he had led in Europe (Gustav Mahler's, whose assistant he had been, for instance). The details are all there for the reading; the book is important in order to understand the American music business in the first half of the twentieth century. Of special interest and detail is the account of musical life when Klemperer first came to the United States to head the Los Angeles Philharmonic; he was one of the first German exiles to that then backwater. ("Please do the Tchaikovsky Pathetique but ending with the loud movement.")

The incredible physical and mental illnesses that afflicted Klemperer are also spelled out: concussion from a fall from a podium and a connected brain tumor and resultant surgery, the bipolar personality disorder and his bizarre behavior stemming from this, the fracture and long convalescent period from a fall in Montreal (where he did much to train that orchestra, a tale little known until now), and the terrible burns from a fire set by smoking in bed at his Zurich home - all of these are set forth for the reader. One wonders how the man went on, but it is truly a story of the will to conquer, for nothing seemed to quench the life spirit in that huge frame. No wonder few managers wanted to deal with him. After the 1945 peace he had a long period doing opera in Budapest, as well as a lively production with Walter Felsenstein at his Komischeoper in East Berlin. These were not major places for someone of his talent. We missed ranch by not having Klemperer conduct opera after 1933.

The beginning of the current malaise of the recording industry is also seen in the tale of Klemperer's final years featuring Walter Legge, EMI, the Philharmonia Orchestra, how repertory is chosen, and unmusical and immoral behavior. There is very little information about relations between Klemperer and Herbert yon Karajan (for whom that London recording orchestra was created), but there are marvelous accounts of relations between Klemperer and the other giants of Berlin, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber, and Bruno Walter.

This is an important and magnificent book. We are in debt to the Heyworth estate, to Lucas, and to Cambridge University Press for fulfilling the author's vision, which completes the view of the full lifespan of this incredible human who somehow continued to come back after being cut down or blocked off. It is an uplifting story, and I rejoice that it is in print.

KENNETH ROBERTS Williams College