Otto Klemperer

Otto Klemperer was born on May 14, 1885, in Breslau, Germany—now Wrocław, Poland—into a musical Jewish family with modest means and big dreams. From the beginning, music was not just a calling, it was his compass. His mother gave him his first piano lessons when he was barely old enough to reach the keys, and by the time he entered the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, his path was clear. The young Klemperer followed his mentor James Kwast to Berlin, studying both performance and theory. There, he came under the influence of Hans Pfitzner and eventually Gustav Mahler—a meeting that would change everything. 

 

Mahler recognized something in the young man and wrote him a glowing testimonial in 1907. With that endorsement, Klemperer was hired as assistant conductor at the New German Theatre in Prague. That was his first real break, but far from his last. The years that followed were filled with stints at German opera houses in Hamburg, Cologne, Wiesbaden, and Strasbourg. He had a knack for balancing musical discipline with a nose for innovation, and he was not afraid to take risks. In Cologne, he married Johanna Geisler, a soprano who had sung under his baton. He converted to Catholicism for the marriage, but it would not shield him from the storms to come.

In 1927, Berlin offered him the most adventurous post of his early career: director of the Kroll Opera. Backed by the Weimar Republic, the Kroll was meant to represent a new, modern Germany. Klemperer took that mission seriously. He championed the avant-garde with productions of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Janáček, and even reimagined older works in daring new stagings. Some critics howled. Others cheered. But no one ignored him. Still, the bold experiment could not last. By 1931, under pressure from cultural conservatives and suffering from financial strain, the Kroll Opera shut down. Klemperer knew that politics, not just economics, had closed the curtain.

In 1933, the real darkness arrived. With Hitler now in power and anti-Semitism codified into law, Klemperer fled Germany with his wife and children. His Jewish birth rendered his Catholic conversion meaningless to the Nazis. He arrived in the United States hoping to rebuild. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, not yet the world-class orchestra it would become, offered him a position. He accepted. There, he introduced American audiences to Mahler, Bruckner, and Stravinsky. He also developed a complicated relationship with fellow exile Arnold Schoenberg, who gave Klemperer composition lessons and saw in him a capable musical mind.

But Klemperer faced demons that had nothing to do with ideology. In 1939, doctors discovered a brain tumor. Surgery saved his life but left him partially paralyzed and triggered a cascade of mental health issues. Bipolar disorder haunted him, and a manic phase culminated in his disappearance from a New York mental institution in 1941. Found days later in New Jersey, he was labeled unstable. His contract in Los Angeles was terminated. He had gone from Mahler’s protégé to a man who could barely find work. During those years, his daughter Lotte worked in a factory to help support the family.

Then came the long climb back. By the late 1940s, Klemperer had recovered enough to resume conducting in Europe. The Hungarian State Opera welcomed him as musical director, and for a few years he rediscovered his purpose. Yet, Communist interference soured the experience, and he resigned in 1950. A new chapter opened in London, where he built a bond with Walter Legge and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Though initially a guest conductor, by 1959 Klemperer had become the ensemble’s principal conductor. His Beethoven cycles from that era are still considered definitive. No frills. No flamboyance. Just truth, depth, and clarity.

By then, Klemperer was a shadow of his younger self physically, but a towering figure musically. He conducted seated. His face gave little away. His gestures were sparse. Yet orchestras followed him with reverence. As one Philharmonia violinist put it, “At his tempos, you heard every note and every nuance.” He had a particular affinity for the Germanic core repertoire—Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler. Yet he also surprised audiences with heartfelt readings of Bartók, Dvořák, Berlioz, and even Tchaikovsky.

He returned to opera in the 1960s, directing and conducting traditional productions of Fidelio and The Magic Flute in both Covent Garden and Zürich. These were no longer radical reinterpretations, but deeply spiritual renditions from a man who had lived through chaos, despair, and redemption.

In 1964, when Legge abruptly dissolved the Philharmonia, the players refused to disband. They reformed as the New Philharmonia and voted unanimously to keep Klemperer as their conductor. He would remain with them until his retirement in 1972. His final concert was in September of that year. He died in Zurich the following summer, on July 6, 1973. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Friesenberg, having returned to his ancestral faith just a few years before.

Klemperer left behind more than recordings and recollections. He also left a son, Werner Klemperer, who would gain fame as Colonel Klink on the American television show Hogan’s Heroes. The contrast could not have been sharper—Otto, the austere conductor who fought fascism with music; Werner, the bumbling Nazi commandant played for laughs. Yet both men found their own stage, their own audience, and their own voice.

Otto Klemperer belonged to a century of fire and rebirth. His was a life that bore the weight of exile, illness, and reinvention. Through it all, he never abandoned the baton. He did not just conduct orchestras. He conducted history.