The famously reclusive, eccentric Kleiber died on July 13.
Known for his perfectionism, he was beloved by the musicians fortunate enough to come into contact with him.
They realized the music they were making under his direction was music as it was meant to be, but rarely is.
After reading various obituaries over the past week, I purchased one of his signature recordings, the Beethoven Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
The Fifth was wonderful, but it was the Seventh - which I'm listening to at this very moment - which was the revelation.
I'd previously dismissed the Seventh as not for me.
Wrong.
This recording is revelatory.
The best investment of $10.99 (at amazon) I've made this year.
Harvey Sachs, in Sunday's New York Times, wrote an appreciation of Kleiber, which follows:
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The Conductor Who Could Not Tolerate Error
Carlos Kleiber's rehearsals for Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" at La Scala in Milan in the spring of 1978 were fraught and exhausting.
The opera had not been performed there for 13 seasons, and many younger members of the orchestra had never played it.
Kleiber's demand for 17 full rehearsals had been met.
But instead of allowing the orchestra to read through substantial stretches of the score at the first sessions and going over the details later, he pounced on the inevitable errors from the first minutes of the first rehearsal.
The Scala musicians adored him, having performed other operas with him during the two previous seasons, but in "Tristan" players and conductor seemed at cross-purposes.
During a break, I was stretching my legs in a corridor when I saw Kleiber walking toward me. (Through the intercession of a shared friend, I was one of the lucky few he allowed to observe his rehearsals.)
Although I knew him only slightly, he asked, "Why do I keep trying to conduct?"
My jaw must have dropped, because he continued: "I can't get them to understand what I want. I shouldn't be conducting at all."
I began to make a tactful comment about the orchestra's unfamiliarity with "Tristan"; he saw where I was heading and stopped me short.
"I know, I know," he said. "That's just the point. I can't bear to let the errors go uncorrected. It's bigger than I am."
The production finally gelled, but not until the second or third performance.
Kleiber died on July 13 at 74, but in keeping with the mystery that surrounded his later years, his death was announced only on the 19th.
He was a tormented man, an almost terrifyingly gifted interpreter whose self-dissatisfaction eventually took the form of self-laceration.
The legends about him made him seem almost psychotic, and one celebrated performer who worked with him often and admired him greatly described him as "deeply sick."
Armchair psychiatrists in the music world have speculated that Kleiber's career, maybe his entire adult life, was based on a deep-seated Oedipal need to surpass his father, the marvelous Viennese-born conductor Erich Kleiber, in repertory the older man had been closely associated with.
Although there may be some truth here, the fact is that both Kleibers amassed vast repertories early in their careers.
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