Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996) on his Philosophy of Music

This extraordinary Romanian-born conductor studied in Romania and later in Paris

and Berlin, excelling in various disciplines (math, philosophy, piano, composition and

conducting). At the age of 33, Sergiu was already conducting the Berlin Philharmonic  

Orchestra til 1952. After he worked with radio orchestras in Stockholm, Stuttgart and  

Paris. From 1973-75 he was the primary permanent guest conductor of the French 

Orchestre National and in 1979 he became the director of the Munich Philharmonic,
which he made one of the best in the world.

Celi was also considered to be an outstanding maestro giving master courses on
orchestral conducting in Siena (Accademia Musicale Chigiana), Germany (Mainz
University) and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, PA. He had many great
students and among them were Regino Sáinz de la Maza, D. Carbajal, D.
Barenboim, etc.

He always preferred the immediacy and human perception of a live performance
rather than recordings, and felt that recordings obstructed the listener's involvement
or "transcendant experience" with the music and gave a distorted representation of
the live performance. However, EMI Classics and Deutsche Grammophon released
posthumously broadcast performances. The repertoire is diverse spanning from the
Renaissance (Josquin des Pres) all the way to the 20th century (Stravinsky, Bartok,
etc.) At the same time he appears to interpret more frequently Romantic (Beethoven,
Bruckner, etc.) and post-Romantic composers (Debussy, Ravel, etc).