page_title: Otto Klemperer
section_title: 1930s move to United States
hierarchical_section_title: Otto Klemperer / Biography / 1930s move to United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Otto Klemperer, conductor, Oil on Canvas, painted by Soshana, 1945 Deutsch: Otto Klemperer, Dirigent; Öl auf Leinwand, gemalt von Soshana, 1945
context_page_description: Otto Nossan Klemperer was a German-born conductor and composer, described as "the last of the few really great conductors of his generation."
context_section_description: When the Nazi Party gained power in 1933, Klemperer left Germany shortly afterwards and migrated to the United States. He had previously converted to Catholicism, but returned to Judaism at the end of his life. He was appointed Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and was granted United States citizenship in 1937. While in Los Angeles, he began to concentrate more on the standard works of the Germanic repertoire that would later bring his
  greatest acclaim, particularly the works of Beethoven, Brahms and Gustav Mahler, though he gave the Los Angeles premieres of some of fellow Los Angeles resident Arnold Schoenberg's works with the Philharmonic. He also visited other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia. While the orchestra responded well to his leadership, Klemperer had a difficult time adjusting to life and climate in Southern California, a situation exacerbated by repeated manic-depressive episodes, reportedly as a result of severe cyclothymic bipolar disorder. He also found that the dominant musical culture and leading music critics in the United States were largely unsympathetic to  modern music from Weimar's Golden Age, and he felt both the music and his support of it were not properly appreciated.
  Klemperer hoped for a permanent position as principal conductor in New York or Philadelphia, but in 1936 he was passed over for both  –  first in Philadelphia, where Eugene Ormandy succeeded Leopold Stokowski at the Philadelphia Orchestra, and then in New York, where Arturo Toscanini's departure left a vacancy at the New York Philharmonic but John Barbirolli and Artur Rodziński were engaged in preference to Klemperer. The New York decision was particularly galling, as Klemperer had been engaged to conduct the first fourteen weeks of the New York Philharmonic's 1935-6 season, and Toscanini himself had suggested Klemperer as a possible replacement.  Klemperer's bitterness at this decision was voiced in a letter he wrote to Arthur Judson, who managed the orchestra: "that the society did not reengage me is the strongest offense, the sharpest insult to me as artist, which I can imagine. You see, I am no youngster. I have a name and a good name. One could not use me in a most difficult season and then expell me. This non-reengagement will have very bad results not only for me in New York but in the whole world... This non-reengagement is an absolutely unjustified wrong done to me by the Philharmonic Society."
  Then, after completing the 1939 Los Angeles Philharmonic summer season at the Hollywood Bowl, Klemperer was visiting Boston and was diagnosed with a brain tumor; the subsequent surgery to remove "a tumour the size of a small orange" left him partially paralyzed. He went into a deep depression and was placed in an institution from which he escaped.  The New York Times ran a cover story declaring him missing, and after he was found in New Jersey, a humiliating photo of him behind bars was printed in the Herald Tribune. Though he would occasionally conduct the Philharmonic after that, he lost the post of Music Director. Furthermore, his erratic behavior during manic episodes made him an undesirable guest conductor of US orchestras, and the late flowering of his career centered in other countries.
  After World War II, Klemperer helped found the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory in Santa Barbara, before he returned to Europe to work at the Budapest Opera (1947–1950). Finding Communist rule in Hungary increasingly irksome, he became an itinerant conductor, guest conducting the Royal Danish Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Philharmonia of London.
caption: Portrait of Klemperer by Soshana Afroyim, 1945
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