Walkout

Salzburg was scandalized. The world premiere of the new opera, Danton's Death, was all set--and then the conductor stomped off after a rehearsal. It was a faint echo, at least, of the hectic days of the Salzburg Festival's patron saint, when Wolfgang Mozart dashed off the overture to Don Giovanni the night before its premiere in Prague.

This year, for Salzburg's third postwar festival, something new had been added. There was still Mozart nachtmusik by candlelight under the stars, and a performance of the Marriage of Figaro. But the big news was Danton's Death, composed by young (28) Gottfried von Einem, Austria's newest claim to musical fame. Einem had set to music Georg Buechner's 1834 drama of the French Revolution: he was inspired, he said, by the plot on Hitler's life, and the Nuernberg trials. Einem and his father, trying to escape to England in 1938, were jailed by the Nazis; his mother was imprisoned by the French, as a suspected collaborator.

Devotion to Dissonance. Composer Einem's six-act opera was full of clashing, dissonant stridencies, which reflected his devotion to Hindemith, Stravinsky and Mussorgsky, and perhaps his admiration of Duke Ellington. Temperamental, giant-sized (6 ft. 6 in.) Conductor Otto Klemperer found it troublesome to rehearse. He packed his bag, boarded a train for Switzerland. Klemperer's Hungarian assistant was rushed in to take his place.

Someone swore he had heard Conductor Klemperer mutter that the new opera was dreadful. Festival authorities, however, quickly announced that Klemperer "had found the ardors of conducting too strenuous; he has gone to Switzerland to recuperate." They recalled Klemperer's physical troubles after a brain operation years ago (TIME, Aug. 5, 1946); he is still partially paralyzed, and can play the piano only with his left hand. Yet Klemperer conducted a concert in Interlaken two days after walking out of the rehearsal, and he is scheduled to return to Salzburg to conduct a Mahler symphony this week.

Strenuous Rest. At the fashionable Waldhaus in Sils, Switzerland, Conductor Klemperer was not very communicative about his wrestlings with the Einem score. He showed up in the hotel lobby in bright green corduroy shorts, white sleeveless shirt, his thin white legs encased in striped silk socks. Yes, he felt he needed a rest, he said. It was a strenuous rest: he was playing tennis, going for long walks, working on two compositions of his own, sitting up late alone evenings over a benedictine with mineral water in the hotel bar. Did he like Einem's opera? Klemperer was guarded. The music is agreeable, he said, but harmless and rather weak. Then he added: "The French Revolution was not light and agreeable but very serious--at least for those who were beheaded."

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