I`d like to express my admiration for Otto Klemperer-direct, at times harsh as seen here, bipolar, afflicted with health issues as obvious, intellectual and all-in-music with his energy- unpretentious, except a justified intellectual vanity...a solitaire. I am greatfull I found some records of Beethoven and Mozart recordings in my parents collection when I was a boy-my first introduction to the great conductor.
During the first rehearsal of an unusual as well as difficult modern piece, which did not go very well, Klemperer knocked off and shouted at the musicians (who played from the sheet): "The white is the paper, and the black is the music!"
@Augbo She was something of a sainte. We owe her a lot. Klempie was able to continue working indeed (well, most of the time) exactly because he had Lotte. Not many women nowadays can afford/are willing to this sacrifice. Plus, he obviously liked the job. Being conductor is "one of those professions". Difficult to imagine the same story here with a teacher, bricklayer or a 9to5 clerk.
@Augbo Well, and the tumor wasn't really one as I recall. His bipolar streak existed already before the operation as the singer Elisabeth Schumann later said; but most probably it did worsen it.
@ktimene82 Very good... he does look like his son but may favourite is still Schultz who in real life was an Austrian jew but i know nothing NOTHING!!!
I didn't say I am more important than Klemperer. That would be absolutely inappropriate. I just wanted to illustrate that nowadays this would not work any more and that even the best conductors (Klemperer surely was one of them) make some mistakes or don't solve every problem the best way. I would do it in a different way (as I have already described). How would you do it then? Are you also a conductor?
The bows he "gave them" are absolutely crap. As a conductor I can judge that and no single violinist in the whole world would do it the way he does it. Just look at the second violins, that's exactly how you have to do it: With a down bow on the second pitch, with that technique you can show the "sarabande"-like style of this episode which I think is absolutely cruxial in this ouverture.
I am a conductor and what Klemperer shows them is the bowing he wants them to do. And the second subject of the ouverture is composed as an allusion to the baroque "sarabande" style. So why don't you just shut up...?
