Otto Klemperer, a German conductor and composer, was born into a Jewish family in the Silesian city of Breslau on May 14, 1885. He was the middle child of three in a Jewish family. His father, a native of Prague, was a merchant. Thanks to his mother, an amateur pianist, Otto was introduced to the art of music from a young age. His mother taught him the art of playing the piano. Having succeeded in this, by the time he graduated from high school, he contemplated a career as a pianist. He went to Frankfurt am Main and enrolled in the Hoch Conservatory as a pianist, and then followed his teacher James Kwast to the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. In 1905, he met and befriended Gustav Mahler. Klemperer himself recalled:
“All this time, I had no idea that I might have conducting abilities. I became a conductor by chance when, in 1906, I met Max Reinhardt, who offered me the opportunity to conduct performances of his newly staged Orpheus in the Underworld by Offenbach. Accepting this offer, I immediately achieved such significant success that I caught the attention of Gustav Mahler. This was the turning point in my life. Mahler advised me to fully dedicate myself to conducting, and in 1907 he recommended me for the position of chief conductor of the German opera theater in Prague.”
The next places in his musical career were the Hamburg City Theatre (1910–1912) and Bremen (1912–1913). From 1914 to 1917, he was the deputy director of the municipal theater in Strasbourg and the chief conductor of the Strasbourg Philharmonic. Klemperer recalled:
“At the beginning of World War I, I was a fervent German nationalist and firmly believed in the victory of German arms. But in 1918, I was able to go to Switzerland and in Zurich, I met Busoni [Ferruccio Busoni – an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, music teacher, and musicologist]. He told me, ‘Stay here in Switzerland for a couple of weeks, and then you will change your mind.’ He was right. Defeat was approaching. Then came the so-called German Revolution. The Kaiser abdicated the throne, and the German rulers lost their crowns. I was very pleased with that. To some extent, I became a socialist.”
By the end of World War I, after Germany’s defeat and the November Revolution of 1918, Klemperer, increasingly radicalized, became a staunch supporter of the new Weimar Republic. He moved to Cologne and officially converted to Catholicism in 1919. From 1917 to 1924, he worked as the conductor and then as the general director of the Cologne Opera.
From 1927 to 1931, Klemperer conducted the Kroll Opera in Berlin. Here he earned a reputation as a champion of new music, as he included works by Janáček, Schönberg, Stravinsky, and Hindemith in his repertoire.
In Germany, Klemperer was called the “black devil” not only for his enormous height, black hair, and the burning gaze of a fanatic, but also for the volcanic temperament and truly overwhelming stream of psychic energy that acted on the orchestra and the audience like mass hypnosis.
Klemperer once recalled his meeting with the German composer Richard Strauss. In 1932, opera singer Paulina Strauss sang in her husband’s opera Intermezzo in a small town near Garmisch. The composer was present at the concert. Klemperer wanted to get his advice on conducting two of his operas. At the end of the conversation, Strauss asked him, “What will happen if all the Jewish conductors are dismissed?” The conductor replied, “Everything will continue as before.” Strauss’s wife angrily intervened: “I tell you, Dr. Klemperer, if the Nazis try to do anything to you, I will show them.” To this, the composer, one of whose librettists was the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, acidly added: “That would be just the occasion to take on the role of a Jew.”
In 1850, Richard Wagner published an anti-Jewish, racist article Judaism in Music. A few days after the Nazis came to power, on February 13, 1933, on the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death, Klemperer conducted his opera “Tannhäuser” at the Berlin State Opera. Klemperer’s conducting of the opera by the Nazis’ favorite composer was met with anger and was perceived as a desecration of Wagner’s memory. This incident accelerated the conductor’s departure from Germany in April 1933. Klemperer recalled: “Back in February, after the Reichstag fire, I couldn’t believe that the German government would set fire to its own parliament. Then a law was announced prohibiting people of non-Aryan race from holding public office. As the conductor of the State Opera, I was a civil servant and could no longer work in Germany.” Klemperer fled to Austria. He left his wife and children in Germany—they were supposed to join him later when a safe place to live was found. He moved to the USA, where he was appointed conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In the USA, he began to focus more on classical works from the German repertoire, and later it was these that brought him the greatest fame, particularly his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler.
After World War II, Klemperer returned to Europe. From 1947 to 1950, he worked at the Budapest Opera and toured with various European orchestras. In the mid-1950s, Klemperer primarily worked with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1959 until the end of his life, Klemperer was the principal conductor of this orchestra, with which he made a number of outstanding recordings.
The Soviet conductor, educator, and composer of Jewish descent, Gavriil Yudin, described Otto Klemperer as follows: “The maestro’s unusual, attention-grabbing appearance was memorable: his enormous height, thick black hair, and the intense gaze of a fanatic—there was some devilish frenzy, obsession, and complete dedication to music, along with an uncompromising demand for the same level of sacrifice from all the orchestra members. Klemperer was like Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give it to people.”
In the early 1950s, Klemperer, who enthusiastically welcomed the creation of the State of Israel, wished to perform with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; however, he was not accepted by them because he had converted to Christianity. In 1967, Klemperer underwent the ritual of returning from Christianity to Judaism, and in 1972, he accepted Israeli citizenship.
Klemperer died in 1973. He is buried in the cemetery of the Israelite Cultural Community in Zurich.