Otto Klemperer: Volume 2, 1933-1973: His Life and Times

This second volume of the definitive life of the great German conductor, for which British musicologist and critic Heyworth finished most of the research and writing before his death four years ago (the work was completed by his colleague John Lucas), is likely to be of far more interest to American readers than the first. For one thing, Klemperer (1885-1973) spent the first 12 years, so painstakingly documented here, in the U.S.; and the many recordings with London's Philharmonia Orchestra, which dazzled American music lovers, came from his last 20 years, a golden autumn crowning an exceptionally hard life. After a conventional start, gradually rising through German opera houses and concert halls, but with a more than usual instinct for new music, Klemperer fled the Nazis in 1933 and went to California. For several years he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, beginning to make a name with his sturdy performances of the classics and his remarkable power over orchestras. But, a manic-depressive, he seems to have been thrown into overdrive by a brain operation in 1939, and for much of the war years was in a manic phase, staying out all night in bars, behaving with wild eccentricity--at one point the police even threw him in jail--and seeing a major career slip away. Virtually unemployable by 1945, he took refuge in Budapest, where he revived postwar musical life until the Communists drove him away. A small American record company used him with scratch orchestras until powerhouse Walter Legge of Britain's EMI took him on as principal conductor of his fine new orchestra--and the rest is history. Klemperer's dramatic story, full of wrenching reverses, is told with a wealth of absorbing detail, and there is a wonderfully complete discography. Illustrated. (Feb.)