As an installment in a series on" Munichers of the Century" the
Sueddeutsche Zeitung today ran a retrospective piece concerning Sergiu
Celibidache written by the current boss of Carnegie Hall, Franz Xaver
Ohnesorg. It was the latter, then director of the Munich Philharmonic,
who originally hired on Celi for an innings that was to last 17 years.
Ohnesorg isn't explicit about why he chose Celi but his piece provides
some clues. A quote by Daniel Barenboim, who from childhood had known
Barenboim, is one of those. "He wasn't better or worse than other
conductors. He was different--the sharpest musical mind I ever
encountered...."
Ohnesorg backgrounds this by noting that Celi had studied mathematics and
philosophy in his native Rumania, followed by music in Paris and Berlin.
"As decisive as this was for him mentally, scarcely less important proved
to be his encounter with Wilhelm Furtwaengler."
Furtwaengler, who was 26 years older, took Celi under his wing. Ohnesorg
relates that once when Celi wanted to know how to handle a transition in
a Bruckner symphony and asked how, and how quickly, to handle the beat,
Furtwaengler shot back:" What do you mean, how fast? Do it as fast as it
_sounds_." Ohnesorg, pondering the meaning of this, ventures that it is a
prescription for a conductor's commitment. "He is committed to listen; he
is committed to that which actually emerges as sound,to what actually is
playing--he is not committed to theory."
A quick run-through of Celi's year with the Berlin Philharmonic follows,
first as its leader and then,upon Furtwaengler's return to Berlin, simply
as a conductor. He recalls that Celi conducted the day before Furtwaengler
died, 30 November 1954. Two weeks later the orchestra elected Karajan, not
Celi, as its head.
"The trauma of that sat deep," Ohnesorg writes. "Celibidache's years
after it were resembled permanent withdrawal, flight." Even though he
enjoyed success in Sweden, Denmark, South America and Spain he couldn't
settle down. And when Ohnesorg one day in 1978 tried calling him from
Munich to see whether he might be interested in taking over there, Celi
merely gruffed: "I'm not interested in Munich." But Ohnesorg wouldn't give
up so easily. He told Celi that he was new at the Philharmonic and had
some ideas. "Well, that's different,"the voice at the other end said."
Come on up."
Concludes Ohnesosrg: " If you think abaut the Munich Philharmonic's
century, then along with it think of Sergiu Celibidache who, as
Generalmusikdirektor, led it to hitherto unattained heights."
Denis Fodor
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Prof. Franz Xaver Ohnesorg
Member of the Organization Committee
Franz Xaver Ohnesorg was born in 1948 and, after training as a flutist, studied business economics at Munich University, as well as history of art, music and drama in his Studium Generale. While Ohnesorg was directing the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Sergiu Celibidache was appointed as the new general music director. As founding director, from 1983 he lay the foundations for the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra’s singular success story to which he contributed significantly for 16 years. During this time he also established the Cologne Musik Triennale. In early 1999 he took up the invitation by Isaak Stern to carry out important reform work as the first non-American Executive and Artistic Director at Carnegie Hall in New York. After two and a half years he finally accepted the Berlin Senate’s request and returned to Europe as director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. At the end of the Claudio Abbado era, he contributed significantly to the conversion of the orchestra into a foundation and thus prepared the ground for the new chief conductor, Sir Simon Rattle. At the beginning of 2003, he returned to the Rhineland where he has been directing the Ruhr Piano Festival as Artistic Director since 1996 and has since then developed it into a world-renowned piano event. The German regional state of North-Rhine Westphalia made him a Professor in 1999.
As early as 1993, he was awarded the Verdienstkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst (Cross of Honor for Science and Arts) by the Republic of Austria for his many years of idealistic work at the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, and this was made First Class in 2002. In 2003, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts decorated him with the Wilhelm Hausenstein medal for merits in the cultural field for “his joy in discovery, his enthusiasm for experiments, and his uncompromising views when it comes to competency and substance.”
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