youtube/watch?v=Yn--NqyLZag If this doesnt bring tears, maybe you need to see a doctor! Richard Strauss: Rosenkavalier, Act 3, Trio: Carlos Kleiber, conductor; Felicity Lott (Princess von Werdenberg); Anne Sofie von Otter (Octavian); Barbara Bonney (Sophie); Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (live performance, October 1990) Making music with Carlos Kleiber was a privilege—when it was happening, you just knew you were in the presence of a powerful, charismatic force, someone guiding you, opening that special door to an experience never to be forgotten. He put us back in touch with those pure emotions and truths, reminding us how lucky we are to be musicians and artists—children of paradise. For me—and this must also be true for the thousands of musicians around the world who have been touched by his genius—when Carlos Kleiber is conducting and we are playing in his orchestra, we dont feel as if a conductor is inflicting his will upon us, which is usually the case. Rather it is as if we feel exactly the way he does about the music (of course, this is the key!). He is inviting us to join him in an experience that lifts us up and transports us to another time and place: a cosmos of emotion and color. A wall, which normally has two dimensions, becomes a door opening onto infinite dimensions and layers—a universe of worlds, a world of universes. When he held out his arms in a long, cantilena line, they seemed to stretch across the entire orchestra, almost as if he were cradling us. Such moments occurred in the youthful passion of Bohème; the ever-so-vulnerable, fragile pathos of the prelude to the final act of Traviata, with its infinite colors and hues of light and shade; many parts of Otello; and positively in Rosenkavalier where, when the final trio arrives, the orchestra, soloists, and conductor have become as one with the magic and wonder of spinning out that long, soaring, noble line. Making music with Carlos Kleiber, whether in rehearsal or performance, was incomparable. He was in a class by himself. For those of us around the world lucky enough to have shared in this experience, we have been touched forever. (excerpt from Making Music With Carlos Kleiber, Elusive Titan of the Podium, by James Kreger, cellist of the Metropolitan Opera, originally published in the Juilliard Journal, November 2004)
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 21:34:11 +0000