Post by Johannes RoehlPost by KerrisonPost by wkasimerPost by KerrisonJust as a matter of interest, where in all these Klemperer boxes are
his recordings of any of the works of Elgar, Sibelius, Shostakovich,
Verdi, Rachmaninov, Holst, Saint-Saens, Bizet, Vaughan Williams, etc.
etc.? Talk about a one-trick Teutonic pony.
Right - we'd have been much better off if Klemperer had conducted (and
recorded) lots of music in which he had little interest.
If you want musical gluttony, there's always Karajan or Solti...
Yes, and if you want the same old Austro-Germanic stodge, Klemps is
your man, churning it out in ever slower recyclings until his tempos
verged on the grotesque. You'd never believe from this pathetic
performance on You Tube that the Beethoven 7th finale is marked
It seems quite unfair to judge Klemperer mainly for the EMI recordings
he did while in his 70ties and 80ties, often in ill health. I think it
is nothing short of amazing how good many of them are, considering his
age and frailty.
I just want to add my unnecessary cents to this and say that the view
above is obviously a pretty major caricature. Mr. Kerrison probably
just had a bad day...
And as you say, Klemperer can be very good, even in his slow
recyclings. Of all that "teutonic stodge" repertoire. :)
Unfortunately (or fortunately), it's kind of hard to get around the
idea that, without the "stodge", there would be a pretty serious hole
right in the middle of the repertoire. So afaic, one might as well
just go ahead and call this period of classical music the age of
teutonality... :)
It's not even that long an era, in the wider view of things. So those
opposed to the Great Teutonic Stodge can console themselves by
thinking of all the wonderful -- though also pretty stodgy :) --
French/Flemish repertoire that ruled the earth only a few centuries
earlier...
(I'm not sure who to blame *that* stodge on. For now, I think I'll
blame it on all French, Dutch and Belgian citizens individually and
collectively. :) )
L.
.
Post by Johannes RoehlThere are not many earlier recordings, but certainly his repertoire was
far wider than "teutonic" stuff in the '20ties and '30ties. t the "Kroll
Opera" in Berlin he was conducting mainly contemporary music and even
from the fifties there are some broadcast recordings of works that were
far from mainstream back then (like Janaceks Sinfonietta). An Mahler
wasn't mainstream either in the '50ties.