Klaus Tennstedt - Possessed by the Music

A friend wrote to me recently about his rapture listening to a recording of conductor, Klaus Tennstedt, leading the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a live recording of Mahler's Second at the Royal Festival Hall. That nudged me to think about my own experiences as a musician performing under Tennstedt while I was in the Minnesota Orchestra. I think he is perhaps the most underrated conductor of the late Germanic Romantic orchestral repertory.

I was a member of the Minnesota Orchestra for five years, 1977-82. During the first two of those years, the Music Director was Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the principal guest conductor was Leonard Slatkin. During the last 3 years, the Music Director was Neville Marriner and the principal guest conductor was Klaus Tennstedt. They wanted Tennstedt as music director but he turned it down because he was soon to become music director of the London Philharmonic.

Tennstedt was magical on the podium. Music shot out of his fingertips like lightning. He was a true German romantic. I understand that they had to send his wife with him when he conducted in other countries because otherwise he would just stay in his hotel room, drink scotch, smoke cigarettes, and study the musical scores. His wife would make sure that he ate nutritious meals and didn't drink or smoke too much.

Rehearsals with Tennstedt were great. I remember performing with him Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra," Mahler's 3rd Symphony and Bruckner's 4th Symphony. He was constantly looking around the orchestra to see if anyone was loafing, especially the string players. He would insist that they play with great intensity all the time, which they often were not used to doing. He would say things like "I need everybody here" or in his fractured English he would say things like "This must be a terrible crescendo" and "You must it because you can it!"

The opening night performance of Bruckner's 4th was the most memorable performance of my years as a professional musician. Usually in performances there was a sense that the orchestra and the audience were in separate rooms separated by the invisible "4th wall." Not with Tennstedt. The audience and the orchestra were all in the same room and experiencing the same feelings about the music simultaneously.

When the Bruckner 4th concluded, there was a moment of stunned silence, and then the entire audience leaped to their feet yelling "Bravo." It was the only truly spontaneous, simultaneous, standing ovation I have ever witnessed.

Unfortunately, there is no recording of that performance because it was a Wednesday night and they only broadcast the Friday night performances on the local NPR station. Friday night was good, but it was not magical like the Wednesday night performance. Now that performance only exists in the memories of those of us who were there.

One other memorable experience was when Tennstedt conducted the New Year's Eve concert one year in the style of the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Eve concerts. We played lots of waltzes, marches, polkas, etc., mostly by Johann Strauss, Jr., of course. When we started rehearsing the most famous waltz, The Beautiful Blue Danube, we were used to just going through the motions with a piece we thought was pretty trite. Not with Tennstedt. After rehearsing it for a few minutes, he stopped the orchestra and simply said "You must make it very el-e-gant-e," with the word "elegant" pronounced as if it were in French. We started again. Now, it wasn't just another tired reading of The Blue Danube. It was the most elegant piece of music imaginable. He didn't so much conduct as he danced for us the extremely elegant Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz.

On New Year's Eve, he came out to the podium to much applause and many "bravos" before we even started to play. A young female member of the orchestra's office staff came out carrying a glass of champagne. He stepped off the podium, accepted the glass of champagne, kissed the young woman on the cheek, downed the glass of champagne in one gulp tilting his head all the way back, handed the glass back to the young woman, leaped onto the podium, and we were suddenly in Vienna on New Year's Eve for the next 2 hours. It was very el-e-gant-e!

I thought one newspaper critic summed up Tennsted's conducting very well by saying "He is not so much a master of the music as he is possessed by it." He was truly possessed by the muses. He was truly one of the great ones. I was incredibly fortunate to have played for him in the Minnesota Orchestra, even those few times.

-Max Bonecutter, July 2022