Klemperer Conducts Klemperer (and others)!

My final article about the Warner Classics Remastered Edition of recordings of the conductor Otto Klemperer will account for twentieth-century works by composers other than Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Ironically, the composer that receives the most attention is Klemperer himself! This did not come as a particularly big surprise to me, since I remember that, during my student days, classical music stations took a liking to his “Merry Waltz.”

However, two of the three “bonus” CDs are devoted entirely to his compositions, most of which are multimovement works. These include a second recording of his second symphony (the first having been on a CD that did not have “bonus” status), along with recordings of his third and fourth symphonies. In addition, there are recordings of the “Philharmonia String Quartet” (presumably members of the New Philharmonia Orchestra) playing Klemperer’s third and seventh quartets. That makes for a fair amount of Klemperer. I must confess that I am still getting my head around these recordings; and I am not surprised that I never encountered any of them on the radio, let alone in a concert hall!

On the other hand, I was glad to have my memory of “Merry Waltz” revived. It took a bit of chutzpah to assign it to the final track of a CD that began with three of the best-known compositions by Johann Strauss. However, these selections were separated by Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, the instrumental suite of music from The Threepenny Opera. Apparently, Klemperer got along very well with Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya. I remember reading an article by Lenya about the two of them encountering Klemperer in a hotel lobby, asking (at the top of his voice) “Is here no telephone?” (a quotation from the libretto for Weill’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which involved one of two texts written to be sung in English).

Only one other twentieth-century composer receives more than a single CD. Like Weill, Igor Stravinsky found his way to the United States; but they ended up on opposite sides of the continent. While Weill continued his career in New York, both Klemperer and Stravinsky escaped from the Nazis and World War II by going to Los Angeles. Klemperer’s Stravinsky recordings consist of the complete 1947 score for the ballet “Petrushka,” the suite extracted from the ballet “Pulcinella,” and the “Symphony in Three Movements.” (This was Stravinsky’s last symphony, and he provided the title.)`

The only other composer in this collection is Paul Hindemith, who also had to flee from the Nazis. (His wife was part-Jewish.) He is accounted for through “Nobilissima Visione,” a three-movement suite extracted from his score for the ballet “Saint Francis.” The CD also includes a previously unreleased recording of the first movement of the 1949 horn concerto with the solo taken by Dennis Brain.

This amounts to a rather modest account of the twentieth-century repertoire, but one can still appreciate the effort that Klemperer summoned to make sure that each of selections is worthy of attention.