Klemperer on Music. Shavings from a Musician's Workbench

Book Summary

Otto Klemperer's conducting career covered nearly three-quarters of the twentieth century. Although he was not chiefly a man of words, he wrote frequently on music during the course of his long life, and the writings assembled in this book date from 1906 until 1971. Klemperer writes here about musicians he knew and worked with, dwelling with especial interest and respect on Gustav Mahler, who was a formative influence on the young Klemperer. There are pieces on composers from Bach and Beethoven to Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, and on colleagues from Beecham and Toscanini to Ewald Dülberg and Max Reinhardt. He also documents his own career, discussing his conducting, his battle to save the Kroll Opera in Berlin, his period at Los Angeles, his return to Germany, his compositions, and much more.

A great deal of the book has never been published before in English, and some sections appear for the first time in any language.


CONTENIDO:

Preface, by Pierre Boulez
Editorial Introduction
Acknowledgements

One: On Himself
Two: On Composers
Bach
Bartók
Beethoven
Berg
Bruckner
Busoni
Gluck
Hindemit
Krenek
Mahler
Mendelssohn
Mozart
Pfitzner
Schoenberg
Shostakovich
Sibelius
Strauss
Stravinsky
Tchaikovsky
Wagner
Zemlinsky

Three: On Other Musicians
Beecham
Oskar Fried
Lotte Lehmann
Toscanini
The Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra

Four: On Music
The Public and Opera
On New Music
Music Today
On Contemporary Music
On Conducting
By Memory or with Score?
Music in Crisis?

Five: On the Theatre and Friends
Ewald Dülberg
Walter Felsenstein
The Moscow Children's Theatre
Max Reinhardt
Natalia Sats
Georg Simmel
Konstantin Stanislavsky

Appendix: The Compositions of Otto Klemperer

Index