Werner Klemperer News
German-American actor and musician
- violin, voice
- baritone
- Weimar Republic, United States of America
- television actor, film actor, opera singer, violinist, conductor, stage actor, pianist
Last update
2024-04-25
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2024-04-02 16:24:00
St Matthew Passion, Deutsche Oper, 29 March 2024
[…] belief or inclination. Members of the Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper carry the Cross onstage in the monumental opening chorus. I have heard it both more and less monumental. This was not, thank God, a dogmatic performance, De Marchi showing himself commendably pragmatic: all too much a rarity, alas, in today’s ‘authenticke’ world. If its tempo was fast, at least to my ears, it was not absurdly so; nor was there whining rigidity. Klemperer’s approach would, after all, neither have suited the occasion and forces, nor doubtless the conductor’s inclination, any more than something more objectionable. Once past a little discrepancy between orchestras – eminently forgivable in the circumstances – one felt drawn in to the greatest of all (music) dramas: visually, aurally, aesthetically, and yes observantly. Children act out the Passion, with overtones of Oberammergau, as it is musically enacted by the adults, the Evangelist in particular […]
2024-01-14 14:18:00
Die Zauberflöte, Deutsche Oper, 11 January 2024
[…] of the cuts sometimes made motivation and even straightforward action unclear. Many will have known what to fill in, but many in such an audience also will not. No one need be bored in a largely German-speaking audience by a little more pertinent spoken content. The other major problem was Giulio Cilona’s conducting. We all, of course, have different conceptions of the work and how it should ‘go’. Not everyone responds as I do to Klemperer, Böhm, or Furtwängler; nor do I expect everyone to do so. In any case, the question is largely irrelevant since none of them is with us, and no one conducts Mozart quite like any of them any more. (Having heard Colin Davis several times in this and other Mozart operas, I have surely had my share of good fortune for a while, perhaps even for a lifetime.) Disconnection between pit and stage can happen […]
2023-12-23 13:03:00
Argerich/BPO/Barenboim - Beethoven and Brahms, 20 December 2023
[…] pianist, as conductor, and as both, I do not think I had heard him conduct the BPO in Beethoven. Even with him, it offers a different sound from the Staatskapelle Berlin, but needless to say, there was absolutely no rebarbative faddishness to it, whether in tonal quality or tempo. Instead, the opening tutti spoke in a heart-rending beauty of tone in direct line from Mozart, and owing as much in its fundamental harmonic rhythm to Klemperer as to Furtwängler (as has generally been the case in Barenboim’s Beethoven of the last decade or so). Every note mattered—and meant: as noble as the Fifth Symphony or Fidelio, though with requisite lightness of touch. Argerich responded in kind, though not without (quite rightly, as soloist) a certain wresting of initiative that yet always furthered collegial, chamber-music give-and-take. The piano part sang and scintillated, Barenboim and Argerich both bringing particular, complementary gifts to […]
2023-12-14 04:30:00
Is It Time for New Classic Recordings?
[…] satisfying as those gems from the past. I yield to no one in my admiration for the achievements of legendary conductors, orchestras, chamber groups, and soloists from the time when I was a mere pup. But to suppose that their artistic achievements never will be equaled is a poor bet. Fritz ReinerSo by all means, check out the acknowledged masterworks from the heyday of analog stereo. You deserve to hear how Szell, Munch, Klemperer, and Mravinsky conducted** or how Rubinstein, Horowitz, and Fleisher played. I also admit, quite cheerfully, that some of my go-to recordings still are those classics, ones on which the virtues of the performance are so amazing that they outweigh any other considerations. But the number of those "matchless" classics keeps shrinking as I discover alternatives. For all of us, there should come a time when we start updating – or let's say "evolving" – […]
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