Interrupted Melody: Otto Klemperer, Lohengrin, and Budapest

EVERY recording of a live performance inherently carries a special significance. It captures the fleeting moment, preserves the work of interpreters giving their creative best (one hopes), and enables listeners to discover, enjoy, assess, hear, or re-hear the performance. Clearly, the historic value of a live operatic recording depends on the quality of the voices and on the work of the conductor, chorus, and orchestra. Going beyond the obvious, some occasions take on a special dimension because of the presence of one or more famous participants and, once in a while, for capturing something unusual.

The live recording of the complete Hungarian State Opera production of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin conducted by Otto Klemperer in the autumn of 1948 has enough distinguishing marks to elevate it above the ordinary. ¹ What give it special importance are the contribution, artistry, and (one has to admit) shenanigans of its conductor. The number of Klemperer's complete opera recordings—studio or live—are few, and apart from BBC broadcasts of a Covent Garden Fidelio and a Royal Festival Hall concert of Der fliegende Holländer, the broadcasts preserved in the Hungarian capital city of Budapest are the only surviving examples of what this maestro could do in the opera house with Beethoven, Offenbach, Mozart, and Wagner. Even among them, his only complete Lohengrin is an unusual musical document.

Artistically footloose in postwar Europe, Klemperer had no set plans about where to turn next. By sheer coincidence, an unusual opportunity came his way through the Hungarian music critic and musicologist Aladár Tóth. They first met in 1933, soon after Klemperer was forced to flee Germany, within months after the Nazi takeover. Klemperer conducted the three-year-old Budapest Concert Orchestra, both in Budapest and Vienna. In the Austrian capital his soloist was Béla Bartók, performing his recently completed Second Piano Concerto. Tóth interviewed him and, according to his report, Klemperer, looking for an artistic home, hinted that he would gladly take over the orchestra on a permanent basis even without remuneration. Nothing came of the idea, but his performances with the Concert Orchestra laid the foundation of Tóth's high esteem for his abilities.

Tóth and his wife, the pianist Annie Fischer, had weathered the war years in Sweden. They renewed their acquaintance when Klemperer gave a concert in Stockholm in March 1946. The Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven program "had proved to me anew," wrote Tóth, "that the true genius through his trials reaches new heights in his art. . . . Because, if that was possible, Klemperer's inner artistic freedom had grown, its deep humanity and elemental force had grown even more powerful since his illness." ² Soon after, Tóth returned to Hungary and, as a politically acceptable and respected man of music, was appointed director of the Hungarian State Opera House. His first objective was to attract guest conductors of international stature, and he invited Fritz Busch, Bruno Walter, and, remembering the Stockholm concert, Otto Klemperer. Due to other commitments, of the three conductors only Klemperer was in a position to accept the invitation. Initially engaged for a dozen performances, the offer was renewed and extended, and in the end Klemperer remained as the principal guest conductor of the Hungarian Opera House for three years.

**Journal Title vol.iss, season/month 2002

Contents

• Contributors

Articles

**Journal Title vol.iss, season/month 2002

Contents

• Contributors

Articles

Title of Journal 1.1 (2002)