Opera
Karl Bohm
Rodney Milnes
Maybe a good conductor has to be old before he can be granted star status. Karl &Aim, who died last week just before his 87th birthday, only really became a star in the last decade of his life. This had little to do with his work, which had never in any case been starry: it was as though he suddenly became a marketable commodity simply because of his age, and the fact that he happened to be a very good conductor indeed was only a coincidence in an age when stardom is thrust upon minor talents for purely commercial reasons.
The reason why the dreaded word 'star' should ultimately be withheld is that it was characteristic of his work that he never came between a composer and his listeners, never forced an interpretation on the notes, but had that indefinable genius for allowing them to be heard to their best advantage. He will be remembered mainly for his conducting of Mozart and Strauss. His conducting of Figaro (1977) and Cosi Fan Tutte (1979) on two of his rare visits to Covent Garden (the other was with his Dresden Company in 1936) was notable not just for warmth of expression and strongly dramatic accents, but for extreme clarity of texture.
His approach to Strauss, with whom he had a close musical and personal relationship (he conducted the premieres of Die Schweigsame Frau and Daphne, and is the dedicatee of the latter) was similar; few conductors of his generation were so adept at sorting out the textures of a Strauss score and presenting them both so clearly, and with such warm appreciation of their musical values.
The tradition that Bohm represented has not with luck passed with him, though there are few in the generation immediately following who aspire to the same values. Rather, we should look to that remarkable group of conductors now in their twenties and early thirties who seem to have looked at Beihm's work, seen that it was good compared to so much of the dross that surrounded it, and decided to emulate it.
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