Wolfgang Stresemann

 

 

I once had a meeting with Wolfgang Stresemann. It must have been in the early '70s soon after I had begun agenting. I had an opposite number in Germany then, called Andreas von Bennigsen. Andreas and I decided we were going to try to persuade Stresemann to engage a conductor of mine called Lamberto Gardelli. I remember entering Stresemann's office at the Philharmonie with Andreas and seeing the expression of absolute shock on Stresemann's face. We were not wearing ties! Needless to say Gardelli didn't get a date with the orchestra on that or any other occasion and we were toast.

I recently read two books by Stresemann. They are interesting. He was a sort of failed pianist conductor himself and had some interesting apercus on the musical world.

He tells the story of Toscanini's last concert when the maestro had a memory lapse during the Tannhauser overture I believe. The orchestra stopped playing immediately. Stresemann spoke later to one of the musicians and asked why they hadn't continued playing - after all, this was not unfamiliar repertoire and they had been comprehensively rehearsed. The answer was that Toscanini had removed the initiative of each player so comprehensively in order to replace it with their own that it was simply inconceivable for them that he had stopped conducting in the middle of a performance.

Wolfgang Stresemann's mother was Jewish by the way but when they emigrated to the USA in 1939, Stresemann said it was 'for political reasons.'