Volume 43, Number 17 · October 31, 1996
Nights at the Opera
By Robert Craft
Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times
by Peter Heyworth
Cambridge University Press, 486 pp., $39.95
Most televised orchestra concerts offer close-up footage of the conductor as his musicians see him, beating time and meter, cueing, manipulating dynamic levels, emoting. Otto Klemperer, with Toscanini and Furtwängler one of the great conductors of the century, barely gestured at all in his later years, and, except through his eyes, was physically unable to register sentiments histrionically. Yet he communicated his musical meanings and drew performances from players and singers surpassing what they had thought of as the limits of their abilities. Of the many musicians quoted to this effect in the long-awaited completion of the late Peter Heyworth's two-volume biography, none ventures to say what he actually did.[1] Moreover, he himself denied the existence of a teachable art of conducting, remarking that it is 'so minimal' you could learn it 'in a minute,' and understanding that nothing can be instilled into a student that is not already there.
Review, 4204 words
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