Corresponding with Carlos by Charles Barber

Author:Charles Barber [Barber, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2011-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

Correspondence, 1989–2003

How do you like the moose on my envelope? I think his eyes are molto espressivi. And he has the stolid stance of the born maestro. The horns are from his girlfriend. (She got tired of that short tail.)

Semper idem,

—Carlos Kleiber, 26 March 1997

The first letter arrived in 1989, the last in 2003. This volume releases most of them, with the exception of a couple that I managed to lose and several whose content was wholly personal. These came very late in our correspondence and reflected his feelings at that stage of his life.

As seriatim reading makes clear, the rigors of consistency never troubled Carlos. His formidable intellect frequently yielded to the moment and invariably to his disdain for phoniness and preening, and to adamant certainties about musical and personal relationships. Early on he makes it clear that he never discusses other conductors; soon however, and “never” be damned, he is offering highly personal views of many of the most famous of his time, and not always gently. He held those he most esteemed to the highest standards of a consistency he himself could not sustain. Readers who are even now looking up famous names in the index may be quite surprised by the opinions he offered on some of the most-admired baton wielders of the twentieth century.

The pace and personality of these letters is well judged by the forms of salutation we used. He was, for years, “Maestro Kleiber.” I was “Mr.” or “Dr.” or (absurdly) “Maestro.” However, by 1993 a good deal of joking had set in. We started to assign ridiculous nicknames to one another. Soon enough they were “titles” that became part of evolving in-jokes. I will do my best to explain them. Many of his letters also included cartoons and little drawings, usually intended to illustrate his argument in whatever we were discussing at the time.

Some may be surprised by the fact and force of his views on two public figures largely revered in the world but considered by Carlos to be models of cant and hypocrisy. When he first mentioned these names to me I thought he was joking and so offered a standard defense of each. To my surprise he came roaring back, time and again in the case of Lincoln, to the subjects of hypocrisy and misuse of power. (Robert E. Lee was, to Carlos, a much more admirable human being.) He considered Gandhi part of the same class of disingenuousness.

Similarly, some may be surprised by Carlos’s choices in reading overall. As much as any in the world of poetry, the American Emily Dickinson earned his highest esteem. Carlos’s frequent references to her, the direct (and apparently memorized) quotation of her works, and the childlike joy he took in an Emily Dickinson T-shirt I gave him offer testimony to his regard.

He possessed a remarkable knowledge of conducting history and practice, and displayed a reverence for certain of the Old Greats. Bruno Walter, von Karajan, Stokowski, Klemperer, Furtwängler,

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