Klemperer on Music & Otto Klemperer
Klemperer on Music:
Shavings from a Musician's Workbench
Martin Anderson,
editor - Tocatta Press
Preface by Pierre Boulez
Illustrations by Cosman, Topolski, Kirchner and 16 others
Otto Klemperer's writings, assembled for the first time in any language, on Beethoven, Mozart, Schönberg and many others, including Mahler, who was a formative influence on the young Klemperer; he also writes on his years at the Kroll Opera in Berlin, his period at Los Angeles, and much more. There is also a complete list of Klemperer's own compositions, in print for the first time ever.
246pp - Illustrated - List of Klemperer's Compositions
0 907689 13 2 hardbound; 0 907689 14 0 paperback
"Not only do his topics possess intrinsic historical interest [...]; additionally, Klemperer's own impact on the history of performance has been so strong that his views acquire historic importance in their own right." - Arthur Jacobs, The Musical Times
Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times
Peter Heyworth
- Cambridge University Press
Volume I 1885-1933 (1983; revised edition
1996) Volume II 1933-1973 (1996)
Click here for the complete text of the review by Joseph Horowitz.
An excerpt of Patrick J. Smith's review of volume 2, which
appeared in the February 17, 1997 issue of Opera News, appears below. The original review is available by direct order from the
publisher or online via electronic subscription service.
Biographies of conductors do not generally have much impact outside
the immediate musical circle, but the first volume of Peter Heyworth's life
of Otto Klemperer, published in 1983, was an exception. This was because
the man's life encompassed far more than waving a wand before an orchestra.
In the 1920s, Klemperer was the guiding spirit behind Berlin's Kroll Opera,
a breeding ground for ideas about opera staging and scenery that were still
powerful in the 1970s. But more than that was the large figure of the conductor
himself [. . .] In addition,
Klemperer's recordings produced in his later years continue to sell and
to serve as an interpretive alternative in this era of the dozen available
recordings of every core classical work.
Included are a biographical glossary and a complete discography of the
conductor's recordings -- especially valuable -- compiled by Michael H.
Gray.