Josef Krips mounted the podium. It was our first orchestra rehearsal of The Magic Flute for his 1967 Met debut. His recordings and performances of Mozart had already won him the reputation as the nonpareil interpreter of Mozart, while his album of all nine Beethoven symphonies, performed by the London Symphony, was also highly praised by critics and Beethoven buffs. So we musicians of the Met orchestra were excited and expectant, though we worried that Krips might be a martinet who would cause ulcers and heart attacks by picking on errant individuals and even firing someone. On the other hand, several of my elderly colleagues who had known Krips in Vienna assured us that he was not only a fine musician, but also a good-natured gentleman with a great sense of humor.
Maestro Krips was a bald, corpulent man with a ruddy complexion. He had a perpetual smile on his round face, and wore huge horn-rimmed glasses. After a spry bow, he addressed the orchestra in a Viennese-accented, high-pitched voice:
“Ladeeeez and gentlemen, Beethoven is here!” He extended his arms to shoulder height. “But Mozart?” He raised his arms higher, waving them over his head and pointing his baton at the ceiling. “Ahh, my dears, Mozart is in heaven!”
Every musician in the orchestra was smiling. “Now we make chamber music,” he added softly, “because you see, my dears, Mozart is always chamber music, yes? Ach, so!”
His baton whipped down on the opening chord of the overture. The clarity and pacing of his beat was amazing. His tempos were brisk, yet always comfortably playable, and his crisp downbeats left no doubt where each bar began. He seemed quite pleased with our playing, and his smile broadened into a wide grin. His ample belly jiggled like jelly as he bobbed up and down, tossing cues with his left hand. Then suddenly, in the coda of the overture, he made a slight accelerando and the contrabasses fell infinitesimally behind his flicking baton.
“Chamber music!” cried Krips. “Listen to each other—like a string quartet!”
He stopped conducting and bowed his bald head low, as if ashamed. “Mozart is watching us from heaven,” he said softly, “and he is unhappy. I beg you, my dears, pleeeze listen to each other. Chamber music! From heaven!”
And so it went with every rehearsal, which he preceded with his demonstrative comparison of Beethoven and Mozart—with the latter always winding up in heaven. When the singers joined us for the sitzprobe, Krips stopped his “chamber music” outcries. Yet the singers, too, were shown Mozart’s divine superiority to poor Beethoven, when Krips waved his arms over his bald dome and pointed to Heaven. (I doubt that Pilar Lorengar, Nicolai Gedda, Jerome Hines, Hermann Prey, and the other distinguished singers in that cast, were amused by our maestro’s antics as much as the orchestra was. This was the first time since 1927 this opera would be performed in German, it was a new production, and even the diction coach and prompter seemed a bit stressed.)
Meanwhile, as the premiere drew nearer, an abundance of graffiti began to appear on the walls of the musicians’ bathroom. “If Mozart is in heaven,” wrote someone, “where the hell is Beethoven?” Over a washbasin: “Krips is a hypocrite. He must love Beethoven—or he would not have recorded his nine symphonies!” On the wall of a toilet stall: “Mozart may be in heaven, but he is not God.” Yet nearby: “Mozart is God!” Underneath, in another handwriting: “So should we pray to Mozart?” My personal favorite appeared over a urinal in red marker: “Krips is a jolly jellybean!”
Nonetheless, everyone in the Met appeared to respect Krips immensely and enjoy working with him, despite his redundant histrionics. The premiere was a success, and Krips received rave reviews. “His texture was translucent,” wrote Speight Jenkins in the Times Herald, “and the chamber [!] quality of the orchestra was lovely to hear. His secret was pacing.” [My word, too!] And Alan Rich, music critic of the World Journal-Tribune: “Josef Krips made his debut shaping a tight, beautifully balanced, totally loving reading of Mozart’s wonderous score. Krips knows Mozart’s glowing way with the orchestra deep in his heart, and he got it into the orchestra beautifully.”
Maestro Krips was invited back to the Met in 1969 to help revive an aborted opera season due to a labor dispute. The opera was The Marriage of Figaro, and the cast was Zylis–Gara, Stratas, Elias, Siepi, Krause, and Plishka—not bad for a hastily assembled group of Met comprimarios! Once more we had the great pleasure of playing under him, and again we were a captive but amused audience for his ranting about the relative positions of Beethoven and Mozart in celestial eternity.
Then one bleak October day in 1974, we were shocked to learn that our beloved jellybean had died in Geneva, Switzerland. A gloom hung over the musician’s lounge. Even the poker players dispensed with their usual banter, while my chess opponent and I, distracted and depressed, silently blundered our pieces away and finally agreed to a draw. We were not merely mourning the death of perhaps the greatest Mozartean maestro of the 20th century. Moreover, it was the grim realization that playing Mozart’s operas might never be as magical and enjoyable under the baton of any conductor other than Krips.
Suddenly a cellist, notorious for his tasteless humor, broke the silence. “Ladeees and gentlemen,” he whined, mimicking the shrill voice of the deceased while raising his arms shoulder high, “Beethoven is here!” Then he pointed skyward. “But Mozart? Ahh, my dears, Mozart is in Heaven!” He paused. “And Maestro Krips? At last, he is also in heaven—with Mozart!”
No one smiled, though I do recall a few tears.
