Transcription
He was a naughty boy, always up to some kind of mischief. Time and again he said no. Time and again he first said yes, then called the next morning to say he’d changed his mind. If something didn’t suit him or he wasn’t in complete control, that was the last you saw of him. A short note: “I’m off into the blue” and that was it. I don’t know why he was so lackadaisical about his job.
Carlos Kleiber was a dictator through and through, but very, very supportive and human with it. In my view, no other conductor in the world had such high standards. Sometimes I dream of him – and they’re nice dreams. his endless arms, you know. And so handsome, a young Apollo! Look at that face, the energy it expresses. They say art is our lifeline to the divine. It was certainly true in his case, you only have to look at his face. In those really brilliant moments when he managed to communicate precisely what he was after, you could see how it inspired him, how it enabled him to breathe and feel and live with the music. It was that kind of magnetism that he has that äh that the public... they were not happy enough sometimes to hear what he was doing with the orchestra but also they want to see him. They want to see him, the expression, the äh the physical activity, the äh the unbelievable unbelievable aesthetics. His body language was highly aesthetic, not just a means to an end. It was pure music. Expression was his supreme concern, he was fanatical about it, an expressionist. Genius is the only word for it, that divine spark that no one could ever really explain. He was unique in that respect.
One more thing. Quiet, please. It’s a gesture: and then just let it run. Not this ... but... It isn’t just restless energy. There are times when he creates a moment of repose before the whole thing explodes again. Sometimes his right hand just comes slashing down, and the effect he obtains is miraculous. It’s a bad habit of mine, interrupting. I was determined to resist the temptation, but now I’ll say it anyway: You play. But you have to win that long note, you have to fight for it. Do you see what I mean? ”You have to win that long note, you have to fight for it.” Insights like that are absolutely unique in my experience. The idea that you have to fight for a long note is something I’ve never heard before. Higher, and then higher again. Take it by storm! Into the breach! Don’t wilt in the middle. Not just notes! Flesh and blood! When he was working on something, it was like a birth every time. He lost weight in the process. Of course, sustaining that kind of superhuman commitment is very exhausting. But if you don’t set an example yourself, you can’t expect it of others. Maximum tension, not just high tension, maximum tension was what he conveyed, both to the audience and to the musicians. And that takes its toll. It’s like constantly living on a tightrope. But that’s the kind of person he was, always treading the thin white line. Conducting gave him so much pleasure, it’s hard to understand why he was so eager to give it all up. He got all these invitations, say from the Vienna Philharmonic, and he accepted them. But the very next day he got into his car and left for Slovenia. People said that in Slovenia he just sat on the veranda staring at a turnip field and drinking vodka, or slivovitz, or whatever. On all those journeys from Munich to Slovenia, I believe that he must have thought long and hard about giving up conducting for good – and about whether he’d ever come back.
He had a reputation for being very difficult, but to my mind that is quite the wrong word. “Unpredictable” is equally inaccurate. There was always a definite reason for what he did, even if it was only his own uncertainty. Can I convince them? Can I get them to do what I want? The Stuttgart rehearsal shows how charming and persuasive he could be. Do you believe in ghosts? Excellent! It’s important for the overture. For the duration of the overture I want you to believe in ghosts, all right? He created a verbal image for every musical phrase. Very, very soft, please, very ghostly. „Umgebt ihn ihr Geister mit dunkel beschwingt“ “ [„Surround him, you spirits, with wings of the dark“]. That’s what it’s all about. „Umgebt ihn ihr Geister...“. He communicated those images to the orchestra so vividly that they had no choice but to play the way he wanted them to. We’re still not giving the winds the right support. It has to go coasting along like clockwork. These are very mathematical spirits. But they free you up. That’s it! Fine. The podium brought out the best in him. In everyday life he was a very different kind of person, diffident, almost inhibited, given to sudden outbursts of hilarity or even inanity, almost like an adolescent. He was truly ageless. There he is with my mother. Sweet, isn’t he? When he was small, he learned a little song: “Seagull, fly to Heligoland, and give the girl I love a kiss from me. I’m lonely and forsaken, and I’m longing to be with her.” He sang it so wistfully, that “lonely and forsaken”, although there were always dozens of people around him. My mother once said she never thought he’d survive. He was very sensitive and I did my best to protect him.
Everyone thought that my father pressurised Carlos, emotional blackmail, that kind of thing. But it’s not true. Nothing nasty ever happened. The only thing that was really awful for us was moving around all the time, from one language to another, one country to another and so on. When Carlos was about 18, he went to see his father and said: “I want to be a conductor.” His father replied: “One Kleiber is enough,” and packed him off to Zurich to study chemistry. Carlos got up to all kinds of things in Zurich, especially with the girls, but he certainly didn’t study chemistry. A year later he went to see his father again and said: “I want to be a conductor.” This time his father said: “Well, don’t let me stop you!” My brother was conducting in Potsdam under an assumed name, Karl Keller. My father said: “He is talented, I must admit.” And right at the end of his life my father said again: “I must admit it, I must admit it.” I was in Stuttgart at the time, and the Stuttgart theatre director Schäfer had a special affection for Carlos, a kind of early veneration. Herr Doktor, how kind of you! Herr Professor, I’ll do my very best. Fine. You’re all in blue today, blue eyes, blue suit ...
Kleiber was a living legend. His incredible reputation preceded him wherever he went. Stuttgart was a crucial stage in Kleiber’s career. It was his real breakthrough. He had notched up some successes previously and done all kinds of things, but Stuttgart was the turning point. It was there that he conducted Wozzeck with Günther Rennert directing, a really big production. Then there was the Freischütz with Walter Felsenstein, an incredible success. In Stuttgart Kleiber became a star. He always sang along. And at this point you notice how much he was affected by the “death and despair” element in Freischütz. How deeply he felt those pizzicati in the basses! They made him feel just like poor hapless Max in the Wolf’s Glen. Then the stillness before the triumph. The way he sustained that stillness and suggested all the latent tragedy. Such concentration! Very self-controlled, just a tiny motion of the hand, incredible tension! And then wham! The joy is written all over his face. You can sense how he sympathised with Agathe, as if he were right there in the depths of the forest. And then all the exultation at the end! It was a magic moment in his life. Suddenly he knew, or at least sensed, that he could turn his hand to anything. There was always someone standing in the wings with a big glass of beer. If the froth had subsided a little, it was whipped up with a fork so that it looked fresh and appetising. He really enjoyed that beer. Schäfer recognised Kleiber’s genius, and he was willing to do a lot for him, at least up to a point. Mind you, on various occasions Schäfer must have been really tempted just to throw him out. I think we need to raise the orchestra. But they say it won’t work because the steps... ... We’ve had them higher before ... But then they hit their heads when they come in, so maybe we need a little sign: “Mind your head.” Heads aren’t so important in the theatre. True. But perhaps we ought to look into this properly... Schäfer did a lot of good things, like inviting Wieland Wagner to Stuttgart. He was a key figure in his day. He was even willing to humour someone as crazy as Carlos and fulfil his extravagant demands. Schäfer deserves a great deal of credit for that. Or you could take out two rows. Yes, we could always do that. Herr Mai will like the idea ... The demand for Rosenkavalier is incredible, we could have sold the performance twice over. Is that so? And now we’re taking out two rows. But there are two more performances to come. More than that.
At the time, I was first flute in the South German Radio Orchestra. When he was conducting, you felt you were recreating the music with him. Bassoon and flute, you haven’t quite got the feeling for it yet. The clarinet plays without a ritenuto, bringing it to a close, as it were. Then you start in again, caressing the melody. It’s a unique moment. You play that so beautifully, I’d like to hear it again. You won’t see or hear it so beautifully done on any other recording. The film is 40 years old. You have all those elderly grey-haired gentlemen, like something out of Michael Ende´s Momo, plus a few others in roll-neck sweaters, the embodiment of the rebellious spirit of the late 1960s. But only a few. Most of them sit there like they’re made of wood. The enthralling thing is the way he woos the players and massages their egos, although he had so little in common with them. Clarinet, that’s fine, very lovely. But don’t let it sag, it needs to be con anima. You probably ask yourself why I’m just sitting there like that. Actually, I was beside myself with rage because our first clarinet wasn’t there, only a stand-in. Almost as if ... There’s a little transition there. Yes, that’s fine. Time and again he broke off because he wanted something specific from one of the wind players. At some point, he realised that it wasn’t going to get any better, that he couldn’t get any more out of him. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a value judgment. But from then on, he just ignored him. You play that very beautifully. But I’m out here making sure everyone waits for you, so don’t just stay in tempo. Do you see what I mean? He never said: “No, that’s not good enough.” He knew how to get the very best out of people, and he really pushed them to the limits. They probably never played so well, either before or after. He was the only one who could do that. We’re beggars, we hold out our hats, and if we’re lucky we may get something. Two pence for a coffee, two pence for a coffee, you know what I mean. I never saw him as a raging tyrant. Quite the contrary. “We’re all beggars” is a wonderful image, I think it’s just brilliant. And I believe he meant what he said. Not every conductor is able to establish a good working rapport with the orchestra. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it takes time. But with Carlos Kleiber that rapport was there from the outset. I think people will only rise to their full potential if you show that you believe in them. With Kleiber that conviction was written all over his face. On the DVD of the rehearsal in Stuttgart he says: “I just want to watch you enjoying yourselves.” That sums it up precisely, don’t you think?
I’m glad so many documents have survived that tell us at least a little about him. He never gave interviews, he never tolerated cameras, he never went to official functions. I’m astounded that he let himself be filmed on this occasion. It doesn’t fit in at all with the image I have of him. He was very unapproachable, so they had to invent legends about him. Hardly anyone ever saw the man behind the mask. I refused to talk to people about the things he was doing. If he didn’t give interviews himself, who was I to stand in for him? They couldn’t get at him themselves, so they tried to persuade me to act as a go-between. But I said: “I can’t do it. My brother won’t give interviews, and I certainly won’t. What do you expect of me?” He said that one shouldn’t leave traces in life - an ancient Chinese homily. Leave no traces. It’s a saying by a Chinese philosopher, Zhuāngzǐ. I’ve got it here somewhere. My brother loved that book. It was a present I gave him and he always had it with him. It became his bedside book, he was very fond of it. He once gave me a book, and because I knew you were coming, I’ve looked it out. I don’t know who it’s by, because he took the cover off before he gave it to me. He said he often read it in the bath, and it really is very tattered, full of passages heavily underlined. It must be Indian, I think, homilies and conversations of some Indian yogi. If you relate it to Carlos’ life, there really are some astonishing parallels. “We all know of the fearsome emptiness lurking behind the way we live. Convictions give life the content we desire. Work becomes an indispensable drug. For its sake we accept all the deprivations and disadvantages, and every illusion is welcome.” When he had started on his career, he once phoned me and said: “I’m fed up with conducting. What can I do next? I’ve had enough.” I said: “You could start writing.” He said: “What could I write about?” “Anything you like,” I answered, “it doesn’t matter. Whatever you write will be good.” Then he rang off, and that was the end of it. He carried on as before. He often had bouts of depression if he was unhappy with what he was doing. You could always tell.
He always tell me, you know, “So, Placido, you are exactly the opposite of me.”, he said. “You work as much as you can, you know, and äh, and you are happy that way.”, he said. “And I am very happy to work as as less as I can, you know?” “The behaviour of the ego is appallingly monotonous.” Four exclamation marks, heavily underscored. He would accept engagements if the location was very beautiful or if there was a lot of money involved. For him, the money side of the deal was like a gauge of his own importance. We always said that if the money was right, you could bribe him into doing almost anything. His last trip to Japan was with Rosenkavalier, I believe. His fee was astronomical. He could have lived for years off the money the Japanese paid him for that. I believe Rosenkavalier was the production he conducted most often in Munich, and it was the one he cared most about. For Kleiber the Bavarian State Opera was very important, not least as a way of earning a living. Hence all those Rosenkavalier performances, for instance. He conducted Rosenkavalier on countless occasions. He earned millions with that opera. In the make-up room I have a monitor so that I can see the stage. But I can also switch to a view of the conductor. With Kleiber, of course, I did that all the time. I was always sorry for the audience because they couldn’t see his face. They got a back view. Only the singers could see the expression on his face. When he came to Munich for Rosenkavalier, he was in on the act right from the first stage rehearsals. He got on like a house on fire with Otto Schenk, and in no time at all it was “one for all and all for one”. At a Rosenkavalier rehearsal, he once said: “I won’t conduct that bit.” It was the passage where the Marschallin sings: “Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night …”. He just set the metronome, left it ticking, put down his baton and said: “I couldn’t conduct it any better than that.” His awesome assurance on the podium was something no singer could emulate. Sometimes we would get little notes on visiting cards in the dressing-room: “How could you do that to me?” And then we said: “Good heavens, Carlos, we didn’t do anything to you, it just happened. Do you think I fluffed on purpose?” In a Strauss opera someone always fluffs somewhere. But when things were really going well up there on the stage, he was the happiest man in the world.
Once we flew to Japan together for a Rosenkavalier production with the Bavarian State Opera. The flight was endless, and we sat next to each other for a long time on the plane. On that flight he told me a lot about himself. We both came from families where the father was an overpowering figure, and he must have suffered a great deal. At least that was the impression I got. Whenever he did something my father had done before him, he always said: “I’ll never do it as well as he did.” But then he did it anyway, and it always turned out fine. His father did Rosenkavalier and Figaro with the Vienna Philharmonic, and he always felt that they were benchmark performances. He imitated many of his father’s nuances, right down to the last detail, almost bar for bar. He had this blind veneration for his father. I spent hours telling him what I thought he did better than his father, but it was all to no avail. He wouldn’t budge an inch in his adulation. He sent me this recording with a letter saying: “Dear healer and friend! This is the Rosenkavalier, unmatched, uncut, FABULOUS, unique, stupendous, echt Viennese down to the last demisemiquaver and the last word! And the waltzes! Unbeatable! Weber and Jurinac are absolutely sensational! We’ll never see its like again! Hope you are all well, affectionately, Carlos Kleiber.” One major reason for the fanatical dedication to his work was to be as good as his father, if not better. He never conducted anything for which he did not have either the score or the parts that Erich Kleiber had used, or else a recording he had made. The people who worked with Erich Kleiber said later that he could be very tough on his singers. He was an absolutely uncomprising perfectionist, but not always tremendously kind or supportive to singers. That is definitely not true of Carlos. It starts with the way you stand there, they way you look at them and say “Good morning”. Erich was notorious for hardly saying “Good morning” at all. He just barked: “Beethoven!” Absolutely straight, no frills whatsoever. Very undemonstrative. The impetus and elegance you find in his performances were never the product of his stick technique. I know Erich Kleiber’s recordings well. But if you listen carefully, there definitely is a difference, and that difference is in fact very big. Carlos Kleiber’s ability to transform the human and emotional side into sound was something that largely eluded his father.
When you drive through it, it’s not a very welcoming neighbourhood. He built a semi-detached house for himself, where he lived like some modern-day hermit. It was anything but gemütlich. It’s odd, because he liked things to be gemütlich. He loved featherbedding. At home, his wife played a rather odd role. She was a somewhat austere, very dignified figure who only appeared on the margins. But she was the sheet anchor in his life. She was a dancer he met somewhere where he was conducting. He asked her: “Would you go out with me?” and she said: “Sorry, not interested.” Of course that spurred him on to all kinds of exploits, and finally they got married. She was a great source of stability for him. He once asked us round to their house to meet his wife. It was a rare distinction. There was no fuss, nothing in any way remarkable between the two of them. The only odd thing was that you felt as if he was a visitor there as well. He was a great ladies’ man, a womaniser par excellence, and I’m sure he had lots of affairs. A fervent admirer of the fair sex! Fidelity is perhaps not the right word. But the loyalty was there, and the marriage was indissoluble for both of them.
No big crescendo after the fermata, please. “Yearning” is the operative word. I hope you know what I mean, it’s been a long time since I felt that way myself – at least three weeks. The little opera house I came from never did Wagner. Then I moved to Munich, and I thought, what’s all this fuss about Wagner? It’s beyond me. So he grabbed a score, sat down with me and told me what Tristan was all about. Now I can’t hear it without the tears coming to my eyes, it was so incredible the way he explained it to me. Today, of course, I love Wagner more than anything else, and I went to Bayreuth to hear his Tristan. The only sad thing about it was that you couldn’t see him. Unforgettable for all the singers lucky enough to work with him were his arms, his hands. They had a very special aura. “I maestri non cantano,” maestros don’t sing any more. But Kleiber did. A little more girlish, please. Isolde feels like she did at her first communion. For her dying is a beautiful experience. Only the audience weeps. She finds it wonderful. He lives this music as he conducts it. It’s something unique, something new, something happening right here and now. “Systematic striving for a particular goal can drive the mind to suicide. But death is not quiet, death cries out much more loudly than life.” – He underlined that as well. In that respect we were very similar. We couldn’t come to terms with dying, above all with other people dying. And finally he didn´t manage to cope with his own death either. What new works could I do? Do I still have something to say? He must have asked himself that question every time he left Munich or Salzburg and drove through Austria to Slovenia. Everybody, everybody wondered why he was not doing more. How dearly I would have loved to hear him conduct a great choral work, the Verdi Requiem, say, or a Mahler symphony, or a violin concerto or a piano concerto. So many things it’s too late for now. There was something in him that could not keep pace with his genius. I was in complete despair. The fact that he was so selective in his choice of works also indicates that he knew where he was really good. But that’s the great thing, this universal knowledge and ability, the refusal to specialise. And then that conscious self-restriction, caused either by scruples or self-criticism or simply personal preference, the decision only to do the things he could identify with, one thousand percent.
We get to know each other so well and for instance äh in the monolog of Othello, when I had out of nothing the phrase “– o pianto, o duol! – m`han rapito il mirragio”, we have finished something and my eyes they were just close and we just have to start the phrase and it was amazing because we always have this same second to depart, to depart together. With just one gesture he could give the music the lift it required. When he sensed that the music needed greater flow, he could suddenly send it soaring with just one motion of his hands. Of course I like very much to sing legato, but with him it was no other way but to sing even more legato than ever, because you see, you see his arms, you know. So, endless, endless, endless line of beauty. This music is in 2/4 time and you can conduct it this way... [he sings] Or you can conduct it in one... So either I indicate every beat, one-two, one-two... [he sings] or I do it this way ... [he sings]. And what did Carlos Kleiber do? Neither the one thing nor the other. He just took the melody and shaped it with his hands. And everyone understood. He did once admit that he used to practise in front of the mirror. I mean, he wasn’t a poser, but he did know how to execute a gesture so that it looked good. There was always something dance-like about it, very aesthetic. He was very precise about his gestures, he would rehearse them almost choreographically beforehand. But that clarity of purpose was not just a matter of stick technique or timing. It was much more a question of expression. You can see from the photos whether he’s conducting Johann Strauß or Beethoven. I can tell by his expression. Look at the incredible jubilation on his face here. This is Fledermaus. Boundless enthusiasm! Here’s one where you can see quite clearly that it’s not a lilting Strauß waltz but something by Beethoven. Here he’s more restrained. This is Bernstein visiting Kleiber. I’m very proud of this one because it’s the only photo of the two of them together. They were both absolutely charming. They let me join them for a moment, a very unusual favour. This is Pam Coburn. She made her debut with Kleiber in Munich as Rosalinde in Fledermaus. It was a wonderful experience for her. And here he is at very close quarters with Pam in her dressing-room, completely bowled over by her performance. Here are the two of them with Bernd Weikl in the same Fledermaus production. The happy three. The rehearsals were always high-powered affairs, everyone was very keyed up. The great thing for the staff of the opera house was that there were loudspeakers in all the offices. They all stayed in their rooms to listen to the rehearsals. Fledermaus, please! I love Viennese music, and I know how hard it is to make it sound light and vibrant while respecting the traditions. To my mind, Carlos Kleiber did not merely go through the motions and repeat what he had learned from his father. He had a genuine feeling for the music. The best bit is where he says: “I can’t conduct that, you have to play it yourselves.” Of course, that’s straight from page three of the psychology manual. This passage around figure 14 is very difficult. I can’t conduct it. There are other things I can’t conduct, but this bit is completely beyond me. Nice, of course, though you’d have to be a bit naive to fall for it. But on the subject of stick technique, some of my colleagues suspected that he couldn’t beat time very well because his gestures were so flowing. But he could be very precise when he needed to be. Just watch the end of his baton! I want at least five percent of you to play a super staccato, a genuine staccato. – Try playing a little further down the bow. A proper staccato, okay? This is the first time he gives them technical instructions. He did that very rarely. That is staccato, but it’s not staccatissimo... Like a percussionist! – His feeling for rhythm was absolutely unerring, and it was very, very important to him. ...but it has to be airy... That sounded like a practice session, a bit dutiful... Staccato is very difficult! Staccato specialists for this bit, please! Always “please” and “thank you”, though what he really meant was “Get it right, or there’ll be trouble”! But everyone did their best for him because he just swept them off their feet. He holds the baton like a circus director. That’s not meant to be derogatory, not at all! He knew exactly what to do to get an airy staccato. With a downward gesture like this it could never succeed, the effect would be too lugubrious. A downward gesture is always a little despondent and melancholy. An upward gesture is much sharper, and he was fully aware of that. He had a wonderfully humorous, theatrical side. On carnival Tuesday, there was always a performance of Otto Schenk’s Fledermaus, and in the interval before act three he changed into fancy dress. His disguise was a well-kept secret. Everyone wanted to know beforehand what it would be, but it all happened behind locked doors to heighten the suspense. At the beginning he said: “Why are you all so grumpy, what’s wrong with you?” Then he went out to conduct the first act. In the interval he complained that the audience was too reserved, that they weren’t letting themselves into the spirit of the thing. So I said: “Why don’t you do something? Why do we always have to be the life and soul of the party?” That got him thinking. “What can I do?” he asked. “Put some make-up on!” I said. “All right,” he said. “But it has to be good. Really good.” I said: “Of course it has to be good.” Here he is as Boris Becker. He was a marvellous impersonator. He had a tennis ball in his hand for the rest of the evening. Sometimes he threw it up into the air, and he conducted with a tennis racquet. His body language and the expression on his face were absolutely spot-on. It was incredible. He really must have studied Boris Becker. For his Boris Becker act he must have practised for days, if not weeks. In some of the more rollicking passages he started tossing a tennis ball around. We were afraid it would end up bouncing around in the cello section, but he knew exactly how far he could go. His was so incredibly gifted that he could afford to take the mickey out of the conductor’s job. He was a born actor, and basically it was a demonstration that a conductor is not there just to beat time but to convey the spirit of the music, if necessary with knitting-needles and tennis balls. Excuse the vulgar expression, but he was fabulous at taking the piss out of other people. It was incredible what he did to them. I have it right from the horse’s mouth. For example, he told me how in Vienna he just walked out, on more than one occasion. He did three rehearsals or so, then he just vanished into thin air. And there was a lot of money involved, including a tour of Japan plus TV and recording contracts. But he just upped and left. “I couldn’t stand it any more,” he told me. “But then I decided to go down into the hotel lounge and see what was going on. If they were all there waiting and if they went down on their knees and begged, then I might relent. I would have gone through with it, and we’d have done the whole thing after all. But there was no one there. Mind you, I did leave by the rear exit.” But even after that incident he still came back many times. Perhaps he sensed that in Vienna time really has stood still to a certain extent. It’s a city where you can still feel the presence of the great masters: Bruckner, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, Dvorák. He could have been Chinese and it wouldn’t have made any difference. He had a very special affinity with Viennese music, with Austrian music, so he was very good at catching the spirit of it. The infectious gaiety and the profound sadness of a great Viennese waltz, including the waltzes in Rosenkavalier, were very close to his heart. That was his music. He was a master of rubato. He could mould the transition from gaiety to melancholy in such an elegant and sophisticated way that you keep asking yourself how he does it. Well, he does it by switching imperceptibly from a perky tempo to a more restrained tempo. Suddenly the mood is quite different from what it was before. „Oh je, oh je, wie rührt mich dies, oh je, wie rührt...“ The side-drum has to just edge its way in. It’s has to very conspiratorial, a schizophrenic back-and-forth between sentimental and rumbustious. Whatever he’s doing, you have to listen out for the linking passages. They are absolutely unique. On very rare occasions Furtwängler was able to manage transitions like that. With Kleiber they always work. He was a master of transition. His conducting always sounded so God-given, so utterly natural. I have absolutely no idea how much conscious effort he put into it.
I’m very slow on the uptake, but now I know what’s wrong. The quavers are too low on nicotine. They need a little bit more tar, they have to be a bit more venomous. He always sounded a little breathless, as if his speech couldn’t quite keep up with his thoughts. It’s like being drunk. Not so drunk that you can hardly walk, just drunk enough that you can still drive a car. The quavers more venomous, a little more nicotine. Just the quavers, okay? And fortissimo this time, please. The first time it’s just forte, but here we need a real fortissimo. Bad recordings of the work are full of lumbering ritardandi, really awful! With Kleiber they’re there too, but they’re spot-on, absolutely meticulous. We’ll play it right through to the end without interruption. Oh yes, please! He was lucky enough to be tall and slim, at least in his prime. Most conductors are small, so they act like sergeant-majors to compensate. That’s good! Yes! Wonderful! Fantastic, how the, the speed at the, you know, to the, to, to the piccolo. It´s difficult to say, the, the phenomenal speed, but he obtained it, he, he obtained what he want´s, you know. For me that is a revelation. You can do it differently, of course, but you definitely can’t do it better. – Actually, I don’t even think you can do it differently. He always refused to conduct at the Salzburg Festival. I think he hated all the fuss, all the hype, he just didn’t like stardom or elitism. He turned up in running shoes with a plastic bag in his hand, went to the Café Tomaselli and sat down in a back room. They have a separate little room at the back where he had breakfast and read the papers. For a while he came almost every two weeks. He was a regular visitor. The remarkable thing was that whenever he came to Salzburg he visited Karajan’s grave as soon as he arrived and just before he left. Sometimes he drove home in the night, but he always went to the cemetery first and paid Karajan a visit on his way home. He revered two musicians more than anyone else: his father, whom he really idolized, and Karajan. Karajan was like a father to him. And he understood that Carlos was still striving for recognition from the real father he had lost so early. That was one of the things, that you can be a little sure, that you will find Carlos Kleiber, when Karajan was doing a recording or a rehearsal. There was always something a little masochistic about those sessions. Normally people call it veneration. I don’t believe a word he said in that respect, though of course in the last resort it probably was veneration. And as for those visits to Karajan’s grave, I don’t know whether he had a guilty conscience or whether he did it out of nostalgia. Usually he preferred not to think about death. He didn’t like people dying.
He only conducts when he needs the money. That’s what people said in those long last years. Total rubbish! I believe he was just incredibly self-critical and over-scrupulous. It’s probably true that he thought he could no longer live up to his own legend. Carlos Kleiber was a little more corpulent, a little less sprightly, his face was a bit puffier. Perhaps some people did start asking themselves how much longer he had to live. But the final concert with the Vienna Philharmonic definitely came much too early. First there was a long interval, then came a concert I was involved in, I think it was in Ingolstadt. I didn’t really want to go because I had this idealistic image of him and I didn’t want it to be spoiled. The concert was still excellent, but you did notice a difference. The rapport wasn’t as effortless as it was before. At that time he conducted a concert for the family, just for fun. I don’t know what he conducted in Ljubljana, probably the usual repertory, Coriolan and Brahms Four. Later, his illness was one of the physical reasons why he had trouble conducting a long opera or a full-length concert. But another reason why he withdrew from the concert circuit was that he felt he could no longer live up to his own standards. He will have had his reasons for his withdrawal, but he was a very inscrutable person. We’ll never get to the bottom of it. We can speculate about him, because he’s so eternally fascinating. But we’ll never really know. I believe that his real roots were in Slovenia. He was always talking about the place, and he went there whenever he could. For me he was unparalleled, and for many others as well. At the summit of his career he said: That’s it. It can’t get any better. And that’s fantastic, of course, if you can bring yourself to do it. In the last resort I don’t really know what he meant. He always said: “I’m much too old, I just can’t do it any more.” He had a prostate disorder. Riccardo Muti and others told him that it was relatively easy to deal with these days. They gave him the addresses of their doctors, but he just shrugged it off. He wouldn’t face up to it, he stuck his head in the sand. He was not prepared to suffer, that was the last thing he wanted. He gave up on himself. He felt he was already on the other side, that only a part of him was still here and only for a little while longer. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it was. Maybe he could no longer live up to his ideal of beauty. Normally, that’s no reason to end your life, of course, but it obviously was for him. He had given everything, said everything, done everything. Life had nothing more to offer. That mountain village was very much the right place for him. Choosing it as his last resting place was a very good decision. I think he just went there to die. He felt that his life had come full circle, and he may well have been right. His wife was very religious, very Catholic, and in the end he became very mystical as well. Things that were absolutely unimportant for my mother and me suddenly became important for him. I think it was his wife’s influence more than anything else. I believe that he would have lived on if she hadn’t died. The loss of his wife was a crippling shock for him. He wrote me a letter saying that Mother Courage (he meant Stanka) was no longer there and that it was a huge loss for him. I heard that he took his wife’s death very hard. I think she died six months before he did. So I assumed that his death was caused more by that loss than by any illness. One of his children arrived, saw how tranquil he looked and said what a blessing it was that he no longer looked so harassed. But he was dead.
What he left us, it was unbelievable and what he left us also is that tremendous emptiness of losing a friend, and a genius. He was a magician who managed to fascinate people with his intensity and his personality. I really wish that I’d had a chance to thank him for that. If he were here, I would start going on at him again for not having conducted much more. But I’d probably just get on his nerves. Are you happy? Do you sometimes think of us, all the people who loved you so much, who adored working with you? “My poor brother,” Elsa says in Lohengrin. And Carlos always said: “You see? That’s me. Your poor brother.”