For many, conductor Otto Klemperer will be remembered as the steady and reliable champion of classic repertoire, but in his youth the German was a dashing advocate of the new, writes Andrew Green
Otto Klemperer
Do you scowl, as I do, at the phrase ‘Based on a True Story’? So, the movie or TV company warmed to a real-life narrative sufficiently to want to bring it to the screen, but only if ‘enhanced’ by made-up stuff? Well, if any musical life-story offers more than enough by way of unvarnished, gripping truth to satisfy even the pickiest screenwriter, it’s the one navigated by conductor Otto Klemperer.
The action would get under way (I reckon) in 1941, with Klemperer observed sneaking out of the New York psychiatric institution where he’s long been held as a patient. He’s been suffering from severe bipolar-related depression (a lifelong affliction), possibly triggered by the removal of a life-threatening brain tumour in 1939. A frantic search ensues. Klemperer is found, safe, two days later in New Jersey.
Severe damage has been done to Klemperer’s career. His contract as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra is cancelled. Precious little other high-level work is on offer. The scene is being set for, eventually, a ‘Triumph Against All Odds’ denouement in the shape of Klemperer’s remarkable partnership with the Philharmonia Orchestra after World War II.
With Klemperer’s struggles both with lifelong medical issues and professional setbacks, any movie-maker could keep the threat of imminent disaster in the dramatic equation as the plot unfolds. To start the gradual build-up of tension, though, requires a ‘dissolve’ flashback to the days when ‘it all seemed to be going so well’.
Born into a musical family (in 1885, in an area of Prussia now in Poland), Klemperer received nothing but encouragement to make music his life. After piano and composition studies, he entered Mahler’s orbit at the Vienna Court Opera in the early years of the 20th century. Impressed with his talents, Mahler wrote a testimonial which helped Klemperer gain a foot in the door as a conductor at the New German Theatre in Prague. ‘He was so kind and helpful to young people,’ was Klemperer’s verdict on Mahler, ‘although to the older generation he often seemed bad-tempered, and that’s why they hated him.’
Klemperer worked his way through a range of conducting posts at German opera ho
