Missing Klaus
OrchestrasIt’s 25 years since Klaus Tennstedt died.
He was the most naturally gifted conductor many of us have ever seen – Kurt Masur admitted to a lifelong envy – and we had two decades in which to marvel at revelatory performances of Bruckner, Beethoven, Wagner and Mahler.
Beyond mere skill, he inspired love in all who had the good fortune to spend time in his company.
Stricken by throat cancer, he was 71 when he died.
We will never see his like again.
That Mahler 1 with Chicago video is pure magic
I remember putting that on as a reading background, and completely drawn into the music after 15 minutes. That brass, oh man…
His Mendelssohn Italian Symphony recording with the Berlin Philharmonic is my absolute favourite of that work, the Berlin Philharmonic play with such verve.
He was a great, no doubt about that.
“I find him a very likeable conductor,” wrote Carlos Kleiber after seeing Klaus Tennstedt in a video.
“Body language without show, it’s all there! In short: finally someone to admire.”
(This was in Mahler 1 with the CSO…)
Apart from the emotional intensity and concentration, what strikes me is the freedom and genuine independence of his arms.
If someone told me that’s Alfred Brendel at the piano in that photo, I’d believe it.
Can only agree. I remember so many wonderful emotion-wrought Mahler evenings, at a time we were fortunate enough also to be enjoying the very different approach of Sinopoli. His studio recordings do little justice to the magnificence of his performances.
Twenty-six years, surely. He died on 11 January 1998.
Yes. I was there and part of it in the LPO.
With the greatest respect Patrick, I think you had left by the time of this “Rienzi”, as had I…
what orchestra is he conducting
London Philharmonic….
He was principal guest here in Minneapolis for a few years in the 80s. I will never forget his Mahler. His devoted followers called themselves the “Klauskateers.”
He was an excellent conductor. The idea that there will none in the future strikes me as unduly pessimistic.
Yes, I feel the same will be said about Kirill Petrenko. He’s something else!!
If you look at videos of the mighty Klaus conducting you often are left thinking “this shouldn’t work, but it does”. Not always much in evidence of a conventional baton technique, but he truly got under the skin of the works he loved. Better heard live than via studio recordings, for sure. Lacking any star showiness, he brought his mercurial genius to so many works. Forever missed.
One of my two great classical music regrets was not going to see him live in Philadelphia when I had the chance. I was still fairly new to classical and hadn’t caught the Mahler-Bruckner bug yet and didn’t know when guest conductors to seek out. To think I could have been present for some of the great performances I’ve heard on CD or via download kills me. (The other regret is starting my concertgoing just a couple years too late to hear what the Orchestra sounded like with Ormandy on the podium.)
Mahler 6th symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1991, at Schauspielhaus (Philarmonie was under renovation)…
33 years after, it is still the greatest concert I ever heard.
Missing KT more than Abbado
I recall seeing Klaus Tennstedt and the London Philharmonic Orchestra performing Mahler 2 in the Royal Festival Hall back in the 1980s and I’ve never forgotten the impact it had on the younger version of myself already in love with Mahler’s music and remembering how I eagerly awaited release of the vinyl LP recordings of his cycle of Mahler symphonies with the LPO, which were eventually replaced by CDs. I agree with another comment on here that the Chicago Mahler 1 DVD is brilliant, as is the accompanying Mahler 8 with the LPO. The Wagner DVD – referred to in this article – with the LPO is also fantastic. I agree …. we will never see his like again, along with Haitink, Solti, Bernstein, Bohm, and many other conductors of the same era and before. Today’s lot don’t seem to have the same gravitas.
With fond memories of concerts in the 1980s in Minneapolis of Mahler and Bruckner (Minnesota Orchestra) and Brahms (a touring London Philharmonic).
Had the opportunity to work with Klaus on many occasions with Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. Happy to see the love, but Steinberg and Zinman were bigger giants. Don’t seem to hear much about those forgotten gems. The depth of their music making is unsurpassed.
Kleiber was an admirer of Tennstedt and the former seldom said anything at all about colleagues.
He says plenty about colleagues in Charles Barbers book “Conversations with Carlos” a lot of it not very nice…..e.g. Bohm “sack of potatoes” Kubelik “no rhythm” . He did admire Stokowski though..
You’re thinking of Celibidache.
See above…
His 1981 ‘live’ Royal Albert Hall performance of Mahler’s 6th with the LPO (happily available on their own label, LPO Live) is absolutely devastating in its emotional force – a truly, truly great rendition of Mahler’s great masterpiece.
So sadly ruined by that idiot missing the point at the end – an evening utterly ruined I recall.
Until that moment / what a performance!
Who can forget his Fidelio at the Met? Absolutely thrilling!!
Remember his Dvorak 8 in Haifa, Israel 1979, about – my first time hearing this work, and him – astounding. Then Mahler 7 in Edinburgh – as well. His recordings (Bruckner 4,8, Mahler) are with me all the time.
Yes, Tennstedt was exceptional. He had an uncommon ability to galvanize an orchestra to play over their heads. As suggested by P Garvey in London and, as I recall from a previous thread, by Max Raimi in Chicago, there must have been few, if any, routine run-throughs with Tennstedt anywhere. On his first visit to Boston, at a rehearsal break the BSO players burst into applause for him.
His performances galvanized audiences as well, and they looked forward to his return engagements. George W mentions the “Klauskateers” in Minneapolis; in Boston there were the “Klauskateers” as well, and they would ask, when is he coming back?
A Tennstedt performance could be hair-raising. I did not find his slow movements as penetrating or having the innigkeit of Furtwangler’s, among others, but the outer movements could be stunning. He showed that a performance could be not just a well-manicured procession of notes but a life-and-death experience.
Alas, as with Bernstein, smoking cut short his career and life.
A few of his best recordings:
– Wagner overtures with BPO
– Bruckner 4 with BPO
– Mahler 1 with CSO (live)
– Beethoven 7 with LPO (live)
Was mostly ironic in the 90’s but we had this neologism, ” bouldhum” which was contraction of “bouleversant d’ humanité”. That’s Tennstedt, he would upset the audience by the full humanity we could hear in his music making. Bit like Bruno Walter, for different results of course.
Good to see. I heartily share the sentiments.
I saw him live just three times, including that Fidelio at the Met. Masur once told me in the green room in Cleveland, “He is fire when I am water.”
I had the privilege of hearing him many times, sitting behind the orchestra at the Festival Hall or in Philadelphia and Carnegie hall after I moved to the US. He wasn’t “on” all the time but he was a lot of the time and when he was “on” he was absolutely tremendous. His Mahler was nonpareil (or at least on a par with Bernstein and very much in the “all the nerve endings out” manner they both had). A Mahler 6 with the NYPO was absolutely harrowing. The Met Fidelio was sensational. A conductor you could fall in love with (as opposed to just admire – think Maazel for example). We LOVED KT and I miss him every time I hear someone else conduct Mahler or Bruckner.
May I commend to you Georg Wubbolt’s recent biography of KT “Klaus Tennstedt – possessed by music”