Klaus Tennstedt: Possessed by Music
by Georg Wübbolt
Translated by Jennifer Stephens
Published 2023
Paperback, 286 pages
Self-published
Michael Steinberg’s 20 December 1974 review in the Boston Globe quoted Handel’s remarks on composing his Messiah, “I thought I saw the Heavens open and the great Lord Himself”. The critic meant it in reference to Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, but he surely must have also had those words ringing in his ear the night before at Symphony Hall when he saw the audience rise to a “yelling, foot-stomping ovation” for the then unknown podium auteur who had just conducted the work.
It is a curious irony, as one reads in Georg Wübbolt’s biography of Klaus Tennstedt, that East Germany, whose political system had sought to first subjugate, then destroy the conductor had—despite itself—also largely preserved the cultural syntax that gave his profession a greater meaning beyond itself. The land that in its Hanns Eisler-penned national anthem proclaimed had “risen from the ruins/and turned towards the future” alone could, aside from Tennstedt, also count on conductors of the caliber of Otmar Suitner, Kurt Sanderling, and Herbert Kegel, while in Western Europe and North America a dearth of younger, talented conductors was perceptible already by the 1960s. Tennstedt knew his worth. Emigrating to a West where conductors with a distinct vision were sorely needed, his talent was celebrated. Within a short time he found the adoration and control that had eluded him back home, with England ultimately being the nation most amenable to his caprices.
Wübbolt portrays to his reader a Tennstedt who is autocratic, vain, slovenly, mercurial, hyper-sensitive, and corroded by self-doubt; reconciling within himself – often unhappily – the contradictions of his time and place. John Willan, former managing director of the London Philharmonic, recalled how the image of the conductor, whose talent he had initially rated as “average”, contrasted dichotomously with the man himself:
He wanted to be praised all the time, like a little boy. He expected the orchestra to love him, the audience to love him, everybody to love him. Quite quaint and not very intelligent. I certainly think he was an insecure man. The impression most people got of him was that he was a brilliant conductor. He was a peasant. He came from nowhere, was not educated, and dressed badly, although terribly expensively.
Hardly unexpected then that such an artist could inspire equal parts reverence and revulsion from his players. West German orchestras at first welcomed him, then quickly turned hostile; his podium manner, supercilious treatment of musicians, unrestrainedly personal musical interpretations, and East German accent all drew Wessi contempt. A Hamburg trombonist noted disdainfully how Tennstedt, having immediately returned from the United States, arrived to rehearse the local orchestra reeking of cigarettes and beer. Sometimes even Tennstedt appeared to struggle to accept himself. It was as if he could not believe that he belonged on the podium, a percussionist noted. One moment the conductor would threaten to jump from a window onto the street below, then insouciantly wave the impulse away the next. “Right, I need a cigarette”, he smiled to his bewildered onlookers.
Possessing a lifeforce that could barely be contained by any single being, Tennstedt merits a thorough biographical examination of his life of the kind that Harvey Sachs accomplished for Toscanini or Peter Heyworth for Klemperer. Wübbolt’s book is more a collection of interviews held together by a tissue of biographical narrative regularly disrupted by gushing interjections. The work of an unabashed enthusiast, it evinces both the benefits and drawbacks that can typify homespun labors of love, the latter apparent in digressions, typos, clichés, and unidiomatic prose that could have been improved by more careful editorial oversight. Yet where else can a Tennstedt admirer find all this information on the conductor, much less in one place?
Wübbolt’s book, like its subject, is a paradox. On the same page as the aforementioned Steinberg review— published at the height of “Me decade” vulgarity — there was, off to the side, an advertisement for a contemporary West German softcore pornographic film, Swingin’ Swappers. It was an antipodean juxtaposition worthy of Tennstedt, who thought nothing of patronizing street hookers (when his wife’s allowance would permit it) and surrendering himself utterly to a Mahler symphony in the same night.
Néstor Castiglione
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