Klaus Tennstedt, London Philharmonic Orchestra – Beethoven: Overtures (1984)

For a precious handful of concert seasons, Klaus Tennstedt (1926-1998) dominated the orchestral scene on London’s South Bank. As principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra between 1983 and 1987 he built up a loyal following and his performances of the so-called “core” Austro-German repertoire were widely regarded as yardsticks.
Under the ambitious leadership of its then chief executive John Willan (also Tennstedt’s favoured producer at EMI) the LPO boldly proclaimed itself to be “London’s Premier Orchestra”. Despite the remarkable things the LSO was continuing to achieve under Claudio Abbado across town at the Barbican Centre, there was some justification for the claim. Simultaneously, his successor as musical director of the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Günter Wand, was belatedly receiving the recognition he deserved, working with the BBC Symphony Orchestra as its principal guest conductor.
The two men never got on personally and their world views could hardly have been more different, for Klaus Tennstedt excelled, above all, in his highly personal interpretations of the works of Gustav Mahler and once said he loved the LPO so much because “it is a romantic orchestra”. All that was anathema to Wand, whose approach to music was far more fastidious, not detached exactly, but far less subjective.I recall many of those “classic” Tennstedt concerts very clearly indeed. As a schoolboy I used to gaze in awe, in rehearsals and then at the concerts, as this awkward-looking, improbably tall figure swayed from side to side in an ungainly fashion, with little or no discernible conducting technique, drawing from his devoted players the most exquisite sounds – stupendous fortissimi, breathtakingly beautiful pianissimo and almost too much passion.
Although my personal road to musical addiction and Gramophone may have begun with those performances, my first experience of the Tennstedt phenomenon was on record. When I first discovered Mahler as a mildly Byronic teenager, I went off to the local WH Smith to order the highly recommended, recently recorded 2-LP set of Mahler’s Symphony No 2 with Tennstedt conducting “his” LPO. I was immediately hooked and, within a matter of weeks, was commuting excitedly to London on a cold February evening, to hear Tennstedt’s Mahler in the flesh – the Symphony No 1, preceded by Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. I left behind me my favourite teacher, Liz Nash, whose inspired teaching of German had played no small part in stoking up my love of the wider culture that bred Mozart and Mahler, with instructions to record the BBC Radio 3 relay of the concert. I wore those tapes out.
The phenomenon that was Tennstedt in concert will never, can never, be recreated. You simply had to be there, though there are two excellent EMI DVDs of him, and other performances languish in the archives – for instance at least one Brahms symphony with the NDR orchestra and the BBC film of his legendary LPO Mahler 5 in December 1988. What even DVDs cannot fully capture is the peculiar, dangerous quality that Tennstedt uniquely possessed – greatly enhanced in his later years by the fact that no one ever knew, until he was there on the podium in front of us, whether he would conduct a concert at all.