In that incredibly disappointing, irresponsible generation of conductors who are now almost passed, the loss of none seems quite as heartbreaking as the vastly premature loss of Istvan Kertesz. It is almost unfathomable to think that he was the same age as Dohnanyi and Haitink, and two years younger than Blomstedt. If conducting is as much of a horserace as it's often treated, then no conductor of his generation had gotten so much music out of music as Kertesz did by the age of 43: not Dohnanyi or Haitink, not Abbado or Davis, not Pretre or Boulez, not Sawallisch or Svetlanov, certainly not Tennstedt or Mackerras or Skrowaczewski or Blomstedt or Zinman or Berglund or Jarvi whom all were just barely known to the international circuit at that age, and certainly not those all-flash prima donna jetsetters like Maazel, Dutoit, Previn, Ozawa, and Mehta, whom between them have the musical depth of a reflecting pool. The only four traditional conductors of that generation who seemed even remotely so perceptive so young were Guido Cantelli - killed at 36, Carlos Kleiber - drove himself crazy and spent his career in semiretirement, Peter Maag - who retired to a monastery and thereafter shunned stardom, and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky - who spent the bulk of his career in a totalitarian regime. He who goes into the conclave a Papabile never comes out a Pope, and pity those too talented too early.
We'll never know of the musicians who died before meeting their potential, but of the musicians who died after giving a glimpse of their potential, we can only mourn the unheard possibilities. Those who heard Kertesz at the Cologne Opera where he was director for nearly ten years before he died say that he was as gifted an opera conductor has the world has ever seen, and gifted all over a gigantic repertoire - but we have perhaps three opera recordings and I have yet to see a live Kertesz/Cologne opera broadcast turn up on youtube.
Some star conductors are promoted because of a good agent or good hair, they become famous too early, and they never have a chance to prepare their scores away from the spotlight of the camera and the critic. So if there are dozens of recordings from Zubin Mehta or Lorin Maazel faced the Vienna Philharmonic before they were forty-five, it's not a particular reflection on their achievements. That a not quite star young conductor could be engaged by the Vienna Philharmonic to record the complete Brahms and Schubert is a testament to just how good he was. But Kertesz was nowhere near so telegenic as those jet-setters, and while the musicians of the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras both seemed to want him as their next director, Kertesz was not a big enough star to make their boards of directors take him seriously as a potential successor to Szell and Ormandy. When an informal poll was taken of the Cleveland Orchestra musicians over whom they would like to replace Szell, something like 77 of them voted Kertesz. Kertesz would have been ideal for Cleveland - he was as meticulous as Szell about rhythm and clarity, but he was nowhere near so martinet-like, Kertesz's performances relaxed and sung in a manner that couldn't help but escape a musical drill sergeant like Szell.
Kertesz was neither an overwhelming musical personality like Tennstedt or Bernstein who shaped music to the contours of his ideas, nor was he trying to disappear behind the music like Haitink or Abbado. He was simply a natural musician, and music simply flowed through him in much the same way it flowed through Mackerras or Dohnanyi or Blomstedt or Sawallisch, but Kertesz seemed already to be this kind of natural master of music by the time he was thirty-five - those others had to wait until they were virtually senior citizens to achieve the same mastery. Carlos Kleiber had that level of mastery, but Kertesz performances were never so high-strung or self-consciously virtuosic. Guido Cantelli had that complete mastery too, but a Cantelli performance was so regimented as to be almost cold, whereas a Kertesz performance, even if rigorously disciplined, was meltingly warm - until it turned white hot at the climaxes. So had Kertesz music in his bloodstream the he did not interpret, he simply played. Had he lived to twice his lifespan, Kertesz may well have been the obvious choice to inherit Berlin from Karajan.
What we have from Kertesz, all that Dvorak and Brahms and Schubert and Bartok and Mozart and Bruckner, tells us just how gifted he was and exactly what kind of musician. He was in that sweet middle spot between classical and romantic where music speaks best for itself - the performances neither draw attention to the performers ideas nor to the performer's meticulousness, the music simply speaks. Far more than Kleiber's self-conscious virtuosity or Haitink's self-effacement or Dohnanyi's meticulousness, this is, to me at least, what ideal music making sounds like. Music must, to a small extent, 'swim in the sauce.' It has to be lived in, broken in like a shoe, else it is all immaculate surface on which one can perceive nothing beneath. When you listen to a musician like Kertesz, you're hearing music in more dimensions than how a simpler musician would transmit it. A Szell would try to contain the expression to fit within the contours of a perfect form, a Bernstein would distend the form to maximize the expression. It has all of a Szell's highly sprung rhythms, and all of a Bernstein's ability to make the orchestra sing appassionata.
This is what it means to be a true 10/10, or 11/10 conductor. Such a stupid rating system does not necessarily denote the best conductors, but perhaps it does denote the most talented. The ones who can continually capture the music's expressive essence, no matter how elusive or complex, who is able to meet the requirements of virtually any musical moment. Perhaps it's not a surprise then that those musicians so gifted that their abilities are unable to be adequately comprehended are the musicians who leave us relatively little.
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