Otto Klemperer in Mozart

When it comes to the great German orchestral classics — Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner — I have a distinct preference for performances conducted by the great European conductors of the past: Wilhem Furtwängler, Günter Wand, Carl Schuricht, Eugen Jochum, Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, and Otto Klemperer. They always appear to embrace a long classical tradition of performing the music, something that escaped the Italians such as Toscanini, Cantelli, Chailly or their American-based furioso imitators.

Otto Klemperer (born 1885 Breslau, Germany. Died 1973 Zürich, Switzerland) was one of the old school German conductors of the first half of the past century. In Bach and Mozart he was somewhat different from his German confrères in preferring smaller forces; he refused to record Bach's Mass in B Minor for Walter Legge, since Legge wanted him to use the full Philharmonia Choir. Klemperer recorded the Mass after Legge's departure, but with a small choir of 40 voices. The 1967 recording of the B Minor Mass by Klemperer is still my favourite. Klemperer in Mozart had no truck with “period practice” or “original instruments” (Gott sei Dank) and in this he was typical of his generation. Listening to the darker hues of the Prague Symphony (recorded March 1962) one wonders whether anyone ever conducted this more effectively than Otto; and the refurbished sound is really top class.

In the period 1956-62, Klemperer recorded most of Mozart with the Philharmonia. I cherish these recordings that show Klemperer's sense of texture, structure, and rhythm, and his insistence on a forward wind band really pays dividends in Mozart. In 2012 EMI (as it then was) began to re-master some of its enormous back-catalogue classics with a specialist team as part of a Super Audio CD project of rehabilitating the classics of the EMI repertoire. The 60 year old orchestral recorded sound comes over as excellent and a fine tribute to the late Walter Legge and Douglas Larter. Alas, the only two albums I have of these SACD re-masterings are Mozart's last six symphonies (with Klemperer) and Bruckner's 8^th and 9^th Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic under Carl Schuricht (1961, and 1963).

Soon after these remarkable SACD re-incarnations were released, EMI was sold to the American Warner company, where careful investment in back repertoire was not on the board. For the back repertoire acquired from EMI, Warner seems to have had the philosophy of “pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap” (ROI, and all that), whilst fiercely protecting its “intellectual property” against all comers such as Pristine Audio who might want to re-furbish the sounds, recordings and artists from decades before; real dog in the manger stuff. So we were offered giant Klemperer / Boult / Beecham etc. boxes from Warner with no attempt at re-masterering or re-furbishing the sound. I am eternally grateful that my two Klemperer and Schuricht albums survived the sale to the Americans.