Karajan’s pet critic has died

Karajan’s pet critic has died

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norman lebrecht

June 15, 2016

In the decades that Herbert von Karajan bestrode Berlin, Salzburg and the music industry, he could always be assured of a warm review from Klaus Geitel, who has died at the age of 92.

And not just a newspaper review and broadcast effusion. Geitel often wrote Karajan’s record blurbs. He published a fawning iconography of the image-obsessed conductor and was hostile only to those who dared to suggest that his idol might be infallible. Even in the old man’s half-crazed final showdown with the Berlin Philharmonic, he unerringly saw the world through Karajan’s eyes.

Although he called himself a journalist, Geitel belonged to an old-world genre of stage-door Johnnies and cocktail-hour hangers-on who were happiest when posing for camera with their idols.

He was, equally old-world, unfailingly polite to sceptics like myself. May he rest in peace.

karajan geitel

Comments

  • Hilary says:

    The word infallible occurs in this perceptive piece of writing on Richter:
    http://sviatoslavrichter.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/kairos-or-supreme-moment-klaus-geitel.html

    • Marc says:

      Geitel writes that “infallibility is dull”, which is exactly the reverse of what he writes about Richter!

  • Konstantin says:

    He was 92.

  • DESR says:

    Nil nisi bonum….

  • SDG says:

    “…was hostile only to those who dared to suggest that his idol might be infallible.” “…might not be infallible…” presumably.

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