Celibidache's Rumanian Rhapsody

By Michael Walsh

An enigmatic European maestro makes his U.S. debut

First movement: Allegro. New York City, Feb. 27, 1984. Sergiu Celibidache makes his way across the stage of Carnegie Hall to a welcoming roar from the audience. He is the very image of a maestro out of Central European casting: formal evening clothes and a cascade of long white hair. After more than 30 years spent in the shadows of a reputation as the least heard of the great European conductors, he is finally making his American debut, not with a major orchestra, but with a student ensemble from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

From the first peremptory drum roll of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra overture, it is clear that the brilliance of Celibidache (cheh-lee-bee-JaA-keh) is no myth. The performance is almost preternaturally nuanced, unfolding with a sure sense of logic and purpose. Even during the patented Rossini crescendos, Celibidache maintains a calm yet iron control, putting the listener in mind of Richard Strauss's dictum that only the audience should sweat at a concert, never the conductor. In the first section of Debussy's Iberia, Celibidache's unerring grasp of detail evokes a Spanish haze that shimmers like the heat off a Madrid sidewalk in midsummer. The cool, nocturnal redolence of the slow movement, Les parfums de la nuit, hangs suspended in the air until dispersed by the boisterousness of the finale.

Second movement: Adagio. Berlin, 1945. The capital of the Third Reich lies in rubble. So does the Berlin Philharmonic; the orchestra's conductor, Wilhelm Furtwaengler, has been banned from performing until he can prove himself innocent of being a Nazi sympathizer. Onto his podium steps a 33-year-old music, mathematics and philosophy student from Rumania named Sergiu Celibidache. Despite his lack of professional experience, Celibidache more than restores the orchestra's prewar luster. "A baton genius, beyond any doubt," declares one Berlin critic. Only his former teacher at Berlin's Hochschule fuer Musik, Heinz Tiessen, fails to join the praise. "My, what an idiot you are," Tiessen tells him. "You are making effects, not music."

Celibidache is shocked into agreement. He rejects a conventional career and becomes uncompromising in his pursuit of a musical ideal: every score must be minutely analyzed, but played as if spontaneous. He disdains recording studios and spends the next decades guest-conducting in Europe and Latin America. No American and few of the great European orchestras are willing to engage him because of his inordinate demands for rehearsal time.

Third movement: Scherzo. Philadelphia, 1984; the Curtis Institute. Director John de Lancie has worked hard to persuade Celibidache, now 71, to come to the U.S. The elusive conductor still leads an eclectic existence: he lives in Paris, lectures on musical phenomenology at Mainz University and conducts the Munich Philharmonic. The Philharmonic, which he will bring to the U.S. next year, grants him between ten and 18 rehearsals for each program; U.S. orchestras generally allow four. He is no easier on the young American students than he is on professional musicians. Through 17 rehearsals he painstakingly explores every bar without the use of a score, allowing no detail to escape his attention. "How many bars in the new tempo do you have?" he demands of an errant celesta player. "I was taking my cue from the harp," she explains. Says Celibidache: "The harp was perfect. You came in too soon."

His philosophy is at one with his music, and he punctuates his rehearsals with statements as mystical as they are baffling to the young players. "You young conductors, what is the best way to learn something about music?" A Socratic pause.

"To go to the wrong concerts. Too big.

Too small. Too smooth." Then again:

"What is the importance of tradition?

None. Of knowledge? None." And yet again: "How can I teach you the right phrasing? I can't. When will you know it?

When you are free, like a child who does not know how difficult it is."

Celibidache explains his approach to conducting: "You cannot impose your will on an orchestra. If you do, they will imitate you, not create on their own. They will not be able to see your reasons. Toscanini was a very great conductor, but he was not a great musician." Despite the work load and the stream of mysterious utterances, many Curtis students love him. Says Concertmaster Susan Synnestvedt, a third-year violinist: "He feels there is a truth in music, and it should be discovered."

Finale: Maestoso. New York, Carnegie Hall. Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde begin at the very edge of audibility. Celibidache's pianissimi are courageous, and in them, Eros stretches provocatively. Each intense, chromatic line is achingly detailed, and when the climax of the Love-Death is reached, the effect is shattering. "Music," says Celibidache, "is a meditation. When it is transcendent, it is as transcendental as a prayer." In the concluding Scythian Suite, Celibidache unleashes Prokofiev's panoply of barbaric orchestral splendor.

"These American students, they are wonderful," exclaims the maestro. "I ask myself, why just teach the youth of Germany?

Why not the youth of America?" He is mulling offers from at least one American university to teach here, and he has a 16-year-old son who wants to go to Princeton.

Presto, maestro, presto. --By Michael Walsh