German Maestro a Champion of Newer Music

Bernhard Klee is the model of the contemporary international conductor. The German maestro is principal guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, England; with his Swiss wife, Yvonne, he makes his home in Switzerland, and since 1974 he has made regular tours of North American orchestras. He is in town for a two-week stint with the San Diego Symphony.

Although his catalogue of recordings is devoted to Mozart symphonies, Beethoven’s obscure oratorio, “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” and less well-known German Romantic composers, Klee is a champion of music of this century. His San Diego Symphony concert last week included Prokofiev and Ravel, not exactly the enfants terribles of the avant garde, but one of the few programs this season to indulge 20th-Century masters.

During Klee’s 10 years as general music director for the city of Duesseldorf, a post he left just last year, he inaugurated a residency program for promising composers in their early 20s to work with the Duesseldorf Symphony.

“The problem with giving commissions to younger composers is that they usually ‘compose in the blue sky,’ ” said Klee, rendering a common German figure of speech that needs a good English equivalent. “Each composer in our program spent a week with me rehearsing, performing and talking to members of the orchestra. At the end of the week, they could decide whether or not they wanted to write a piece for our orchestra.”

About 80% of the young composers took up the challenge. According to Klee, the Duesseldorfers ended up with a small collection of strong pieces tailored to the abilities and strengths of their orchestra, rather than a pile of commissions they would never use again after the contracted first performance.

After getting composers to write pieces that orchestras are capable of playing, the problem is getting audiences to give new music a sympathetic hearing.

“When I was working with Pierre Boulez in London from 1972-75, we were always playing to empty concert halls because our programs were so contemporary, so unusual. Of course, if you played a Mahler symphony, you could fill a football stadium in England. But just suggest five minutes of Webern, and everybody is terrified!”

Klee does not place the blame on members of the audience, however. “It’s not as if they are lazy or simple-minded. Even for me, it’s difficult to appreciate a new piece in a single 10-minute performance.”

His theory about audience reluctance to embrace new music has deep historical roots, a typical German approach to problem analysis. He is even willing to fix the date as 1793, the middle of the French Revolution, when things started to go awry.

“After the Revolution, we got the strong educational concept of the conservatory, which became the educational model around the world. The French conservatoire was designed to save the traditions of music. Up until that time, this was not the normal way to approach music, which was to write and to be interested in contemporary music.

“So what we have now is a one-sided audience, brought up in the schools and in their piano lessons on Bach, Clementi, Beethoven and Brahms--period.”

While Klee may deplore music education’s bias toward music of the past, he is no iconoclast. Having begun his education as a member of Leipzig’s historic St. Thomas Boys’ Choir, where J.S. Bach spent most of his career, Klee appreciates traditional connections.

“Bach was our godfather, far away,” he explained. “Always we could feel him behind us.”

When Klee entered St. Thomas in 1948, another more recent musical giant, Karl Straube, cast his shadow over the school.

“Straube was a famous organist and music educator. Max Reger wrote many of his organ works for him, and Straube was one of the first to discover the old ways of Bach performance. Although Straube had retired before I entered the school, he still lived in Leipzig. I remember the choir always singing for him on his birthday.”

When asked if he would be interested in becoming the music director of an American orchestra, especially since the local symphony is without one, Klee was evasive. Having spent 10 years with heavy administrative responsibilities in Duesseldorf, he claims he is now enjoying the freedom to focus on conducting.

“I would do it--but not today. Probably tomorrow. Why not, if a good relationship can be worked out?”