Anthologizing Otto Klemperer

Cover photograph for the box set being discussed, showing a portrait of Otto Klemperer (from the Amazon.com Web page)

Readers probably know by now that I have taken a great interest in anthology releases of conductors from the twentieth century. The most recent of these is Otto Klemperer, who will be represented by a two-volume Warner Classics Remastered Edition. The first of the volumes will be devoted to recordings of symphonic works. It will be released one week from today, and Amazon.com is taking pre-orders through the Web page for the above hyperlink. The second volume will deal with opera recordings.

As in the past, I shall deal with the new anthology in a series of articles. These will be organized according to either individuals or related collections of composers. My intention is that the articles themselves will be roughly chronological.

Because his family was Jewish, Klemperer was fortunate to leave Germany, where he had been born, before it was too late. His departure led him to Los Angeles, where he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1933. While I was not born until 1946, I have a curious bit of history associated with this period. Klemperer’s duties involved presenting children’s concerts, as well as the “adult” subscription series. My mother was taken to at least one of those children’s concerts. When I brought home my first album of a Klemperer performance, she told me how much he hated performing for an audience of children that clearly wanted nothing to do with “proper concert behavior!”

Klemperer’s experiences with recording date back all the way to 1924. However, most of his legacy comes from the recordings he made in England with the Philharmonia (and later New Philharmonia) Orchestra. Those recordings make up the lion’s share of the content that Warner has now remastered; and, in the interest of chronology, I shall begin with an account of the relatively modest number of recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

That modest number is six. Two of the CDs account for the six “Brandenburg” concertos. The other four present two different performances of the orchestral suites, the first made with the Philharmonia in 1954 and the second with the New Philharmonia in 1969. It should go without saying that none of these recordings involve “historically informed performance.” Rather, there is a somewhat solemn nod to Bach as an “ancient master,” which we also encounter in recordings made by Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan.

That solemnity is a product of overloaded instrumentation and almost minimal attention to passages intended for solo performance. To be fair, however, that was how Bach was played before musicians began to turn their attention to more “historically informed” interpretations. Nevertheless, there are more than a few occasions on these CDs when it seems as if Klemperer aspired to provide a lighter touch than his contemporaries has pursued. Fortunately, when his recorded repertoire moves “beyond Bach,” things start to get a bit more interesting. Watch this space for further developments!