Sergiu Celibidache

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Sergiu Celibidache /'ser.ʤju ʧe.li.bi'da.ke/ (June 28, 1912 – August 14, 1996) was a Romanian-born conductor who lived and worked mainly in Germany.

Sergiu Celibidache

Sergiu Celibidache (pronounced ser-joo cheh-lee-bee-DAH-kay) was born in Roman, Romania, and began his studies in music with the piano, after which he studied music, philosophy and mathematics in Bucharest, Romania and then in Paris. One of the most important influences in his life was his introduction to Martin Steinke, who, being knowledgeable about Buddhism, heavily affected Celibidache's outlook for the rest of his life.

He studied in Berlin and, from 1945 to 1952, he was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He later worked with radio orchestras in Stockholm, Stuttgart and Paris. From 1979 until his death he was music director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. He regularly taught at Mainz University in Germany and in 1984 taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Teaching was a major focus throughout his life and his courses were frequently open to all comers, without fee.

Celibidache's approach to music-making is often described in terms of what he did not do instead of what he did. For example, much has been made of Celibidache's "refusal" to make recordings even though almost all of his concert activity actually was recorded (and many were publicly released posthumously by major labels such as EMI and Deutsche Grammophon). Nevertheless, Celibidache did pay little attention to making these recordings, which he viewed merely as by-products of his orchestral concerts.

Celibidache's focus was instead on creating, during each concert, the optimal conditions for a what he called a "transcendent experience." He believed that such experiences were extremely unlikey to ensue when listening to recorded music, so he eschewed them. As a result, some of his concerts did provide audiences with exceptional and sometimes life-altering experiences, including, for example, a 1984 concert in Carnegie Hall that New York Times critic John Rockwell touted as the best of his twenty-five years of concert-going.

Due to his dedication to live concerts and to teaching, Celibidache established a worldwide reputation as a musical master during his lifetime. Since his death, however, the recordings that exist now are the major source of access to his art and ideas. These recordings are often situated as historical artifacts, and are compared with recordings of the same repertoire performed by other conductors instead of being approached as a documentary legacy of his live artistic activity.

An oft-mentioned feature of many of these recordings, for example, is a slower tempo than what is considered the norm, while, in fast passages, his tempos often exceeded the norm. In Celibidache's own view, however, criticism of a recording's tempo is irrelevant, as it is not (and cannot) be a critique of the performance but rather of a transcription of it, without the ambience of the moment – for him, a key factor in any musical performance. As Celibidache explained, the acoustic space in which one hears a concert directly affects the likelihood of the emergence of his sought-after transcendent experience. The acoustic space within which one hears a recording of one of his performances, on the other hand, has no impact on the performance, as it is impossible for the acoustic features of that space to provide feedback to the musicians that might impel them to, for example, play slower or faster.

That his recorded performances differ so widely from the majority of other recordings has led them to be seen by some as collectors' items rather than mainstream releases, 'one-offs' rather than reference recordings.^[1] The reality is that the recordings and their relationship to other recordings are the arena within which his artistic importance is now judged, while the contributions he made in the concert hall fade along with the memories of those who were there.

Notable releases have been his Munich performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schumann, Bach, Fauré and a series of live performances with the London Symphony Orchestra.

As with many major conductors, including Toscanini (whom Celibidache despised as "an idiot who ruled for sixty years"), Lorin Maazel, Leonard Bernstein (whom he admired) and Simon Rattle, Celibidache's career was not without controversy. For example, under his direction, the Munich Philharmonic was involved in a protracted legal battle to oust principal trombonist Abbie Conant that lasted 12 years, with Conant ultimately prevailing. Ms. Conant alleged sexism in an internet article published by her husband, William Osbourne. The controversy is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink.

Sergiu Celibidache died in Paris in 1996.

[edit] References

http://www.iclassics.com/artistBio?contentId=8371

[edit] External links

Preceded by Eugen Jochum	Principal Conductor, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra 1945–1946	Succeeded by Hermann Abendroth
Preceded by Leo Borchard	Music Director, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 1945–1952	Succeeded by Wilhelm Furtwängler
Preceded by none	Principal Conductor, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra 1965–1971	Succeeded by Herbert Blomstedt
Preceded by Hans Müller-Kray	Principal Conductor, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra 1971–1977	Succeeded by Neville Marriner
Preceded by Jean Martinon	Principal Conductor, Orchestre National de France 1973–1975	Succeeded by Lorin Maazel
Preceded by Rudolf Kempe	Chief Conductor, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra 1979–1996	Succeeded by James Levine