Sergiu Celibidache


Sergiu Celibidache was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, :it: Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana|Sicilian Symphony Orchestra and several other European orchestras. Later in life, he taught at Mainz University in Germany and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Celibidache frequently refused to release his performances on commercial recordings during his lifetime, claiming that a listener could not have a "transcendental experience" outside the concert hall. Many of the recordings of his performances were released posthumously. He has nonetheless earned international acclaim for his interpretations of the classical repertoire and was known for a spirited performance style informed by his study and experiences in Zen Buddhism. He is regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century.

Biography

Early life and education

Sergiu Celibidache was born on 28 June 1912 to Demostene Celebidachi, a cavalry officer of the Romanian army and later prefect of the Iași region of Greek origin and Maria Celebidachi, in Roman, a small city in the Moldavia region of Romania, where his father was a government official. He grew up in Iași, where his family soon moved after his birth. He was already improvising at the piano by the age of four, and after a traditional schooling in mathematics, philosophy and music in Iași, was sent by his father to Bucharest and then to Paris, where he continued his studies. His father had expected him to pursue a political career in Romania, but in 1936 Celibidache enrolled in the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he studied composition with Heinz Tiessen and conducting with Kurt Thomas, Walter Gmeindl and Fritz Stein. He continued with doctoral studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, where he studied philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann and Eduard Spranger and musicology with Arnold Schering and Georg Schünemann. He submitted a dissertation on Josquin des Prez and received his degree in 1944. Throughout the 1940s, he accompanied and was romantically involved with Romanian-born dancer and choreographer Iris Barbura. During his studies in Berlin, Celibidache was introduced to Zen Buddhism by his teacher Martin Steinke, and Buddhism informed Celibidache's worldview and work for the rest of his life. In a 1986 interview, he said, "I was born a Christian Orthodox, and studied philosophy, but I still couldn't find solutions to my problems. It was through Steinke that I found the way of Zen. All I can say is that without Zen I couldn't have known this strange principle that the beginning is the end. Music is nothing but the materialization of this principle."

Career

From 1945 to 1952 Celibidache was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Europe's most celebrated orchestra. He got his big break shortly after the end of World War II in tragic circumstances: Leo Borchard, who was cleared to conduct by the American forces, was shot during a nocturnal car ride, and no other de-Nazified conductors were available. But he fought selflessly to have Wilhelm Furtwängler reinstated as orchestra leader, and from 1947 to 1952 they shared the responsibilities of conducting the Philharmonic. Celibidache later worked with radio orchestras in Stockholm, Stuttgart and Paris. He also worked in Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s, due partly to the promotional efforts of the pianist Eileen Joyce and her partner, an artists' agent. Joyce said that Celibidache was the greatest conductor she had ever worked with: "he was the only one who got inside my soul". In 1970 he was awarded Denmark's Sonning Award. From 1979 until his death he was music director of the Munich Philharmonic. He regularly taught at Hochschule für Musik Mainz 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 without fee. Among his notable students are Françoys Bernier, Bernhard Sieberer, Markand Thakar, and Nils-Göran Areskoug.
He appeared in the film Ambassadors of Music, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Egmont overture.
His later career was marred by controversy and accusations of sexism and discrimination that came to light during a 12-year legal battle during his tenure at the Munich Philharmonic due to an ongoing issue with trombonist Abbie Conant.

Personal life

In 1965, Celibidache married Ioana Procopie Dumitrescu. They had one son, Sergiu Ioan Celibidache, born 19 June 1968.

Death

Celibidache died at the age of 84 on 14 August 1996 at La Neuville-sur-Essonne, near Paris. He was buried in the Cimetière de Neuville sur Essone.

Legacy

Performance style and criticism

Celibidache's approach to music-making is often described more by 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 with many released posthumously by major labels such as EMI and Deutsche Grammophon with the consent of his family. Nevertheless, Celibidache paid 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 what he called a "transcendent experience". Aspects of Zen Buddhism, such as ichi-go ichi-e, strongly influenced his thinking. He believed that transcendental experiences were extremely unlikely 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 by the Orchestra of the Curtis Institute that New York Times critic John Rockwell touted as the best of his 25 years of concert-going.
Celibidache was well known for his demands for extensive rehearsal time with orchestras. An oft-mentioned feature of many of his concerts, captured in the live recordings of them, is a slower tempo than what is considered the norm, while, in fast passages, his tempi often exceeded expectations. In Celibidache's own view, however, criticism of a recording's tempo is irrelevant, as it is not 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 stimulate musicians to 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.

Discography

Notable releases have been his Munich performances of Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gabriel Fauré and a series of live performances with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra.