Carlos Kleiber News
German-born Austrian conductor
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Commemorations 2024 (Death: Carlos Kleiber)
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2024-03-18
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2024-02-19 16:02:25
Alban Berg, Part III, 2024
[…] By then the Naxis were in power and the cultural situation had changed dramatically. Berg’s position was difficult on two accounts: first, because of the kind of music he was composing (by now not just atonal but 12-tonal) – the Nazis considered it “Entartete,” that is “Degenerate.” And secondly, he was a pupil of a famous Jewish composer, Schoenberg, and that, in the eyes of the regime, tainted him even more. Wozzeck was banned (Erich Kleiber conducted the last performance of the opera in November of 1932), practically none of his music was being performed, and Berg’s financial situation was precarious. In January of 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg a violin concerto; financially, that was of great help and the concerto, dedicated to the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, who died of polio, became one of Berg’s most successful compositions. Understanding that […]
2024-02-12 15:35:19
Alban Berg, part II, 2024
[…] is having an affair with the Captain, murders her, and then drowns. Berg started writing sketches soon after he saw the play but had to stop in June of 1915 when he was drafted. He continued composing while on leave in 1917 and 1918, finished the first act in 1919, the second act two years later, and completed the opera in 1922. It premiered at the Berlin State Opera in December of 1925, with Erich Kleiber conducting. Wozzeck created a scandal, which is understandable, given that it was the first full-size opera written in an atonal idiom, unique not only musically but also in its emotional impact. What is more important (and somewhat surprising) is that the premier was followed by a slew of productions across Germany and Austria. Wozzeck was staged continuously in different German-speaking cities for the next eight years, but also internationally: in Prague, Philadelphia, and even […]
2024-02-03 12:46:00
BPO/Gatti - Schoenberg, Strauss, and Wagner, 2 February 2024
[…] That second part flowed as if against the most inviting of tides, until enveloped by them. ‘Sind es Wellen sanfter Lüfte?’ Why choose? This was a miraculous lightness of being – and non-being – unbearable, doubtless, were it forever, yet for the moment exquisite and necessary beyond words. I have yet to hear Gatti conduct Wagner’s drama in the theatre, but on this evidence it would be a Tristan to rival those of Barenboim and Kleiber—and his own Bayreuth Parsifal.
2023-12-14 04:30:00
Is It Time for New Classic Recordings?
by Bill HeckAll right, I admit it, I confess: I'm spoiled by modern digital recordings by amazing musicians. Many readers of Classical Candor have been around long enough to know about the "classic" recordings of classical music, the ones on any number of "recommended performances" lists. Whose collection of recordings would be complete without, say, the Reiner / Chicago recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, the Kleiber / Vienna Beethoven 5 and 7 pairing, or Beecham’s conducting of anything by Delius? I'm speaking here of stereo recordings, which puts us after the mid-1950s or so. There are specialists, as well as the more curious among us, who want to hear Toscanini's Beethoven symphony cycle, or Schnabel's set of the piano concertos, recordings of Rachmaninoff playing his own works: the list goes on and on, and for those folks, even bad recordings are better than no recordings at all. But […]
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