Otto Klemperer conducts Beethoven's 6th Symphony "Pastoral"- The Storm

Otto Klemperer conducts The New Philharmonia Orchestra
London, Royal Festival Hall, 1970

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Otto Klemperer
• Beethoven
• Pastoral Symphony

[pitbull2005]

Nice to see Margaret Thatcher playing at 1.10

Klemperer makes Mravinsky look like Speedy Gonzalez!

[anaklasis]

amazing

[LUNROCK12]

wonderful

[U235hexafluoridedude]

God Bless Otto.

[wks1978]

@mesothorium A lot of conductors do that.

[135yearswaiting]

@mesothorium I like Abbado very much too, he certainly moves the stick around. I would love to have seen Beethoven conduct apparently he jumped around and would have made Abbado and Bernstein appear motionless. He was the same at the piano ,wild flourishes when he had finished a section. One evening two boys stood either side of him whilst he played the piano with candelabra so he could read the music ,in one floursh he knocked one boy out.The other one was left like a boxer dodging blows.

[135yearswaiting]

@ellandelachapelle Exactly, some conductors like Bernstein almost had a nervous breakdown in public to get the sound HE wanted, Klemperer when he was young was quite active waving a baton around may be not Bernstein style but quite actively. Later on he physically could n´t do this and as I wrote in an earlier comment he used his head and eyes. Watch Klemperer from the front so you can see his face rather than the back of his head and you should see what I mean.

[ellandelachapelle]

@135yearswaiting Yes watching Klemperer I´ve become convinced that conducting is really a MENTAL thing. (he often does virtually nothing. And the orchestra still sounds brilliant.)

[mesothorium]

@135yearswaiting im not denying his quality, but yeh now you mrntion his age... i kinda understand ;)

im just used at seeing abbado

[135yearswaiting]

@mesothorium Conducting is just not waving a baton in the air,  Klemperer said "One conducts with the eyes and the head" by this time he was 85 years of age he had suffered a lot, from a young age he had been a manic depressive,he had to leave Germany because he was Jewish and live in America which he hated. He survived a serious brain operation in 1939, then he nearly died from an infection. He suffered strokes, a burning, falls so at 85 he was tired and frail, but still produced great sound.

[mesothorium]

is it me or is he just waves that stick backwards and forward without giving actual directions to orchestra? :D

[anaklasis]

Two people disliked this because they are afraid of storms.