Wittgenstein's Nephew Read Online Free PDF

“Bravo” or the first to whistle. For decades the Viennese did not realize that Paul was ultimately the author of their operatic triumphs, just as he was the author of the failures at the opera house on the Ring, failures that could be utterly disastrous if he chose. His approval or disapproval had nothing to do with objectivity, however, but had only to do with his capriciousness and volatility—in other words, his madness. Many Viennese conductors whom he could not stand fell into his trap; he would whistle and shout at them, actually foaming at the mouth. It was only with Karajan, whom he detested, that he met his match. Karajan was too great a genius to be so much as irritated by Paul. Having observed and studied Karajan for decades, I regard him as the most important conductor of the century, along with Schuricht, whom I
loved
. I must say that I have
admired
Karajan ever since I was a child, and that this admiration is based on experience; I have respected him at least asmuch as have all the musicians with whom Karajan has ever worked. Paul had a fervent hatred of Karajan, whom he habitually described as a mere charlatan, but I regarded him, from decades of observation, quite simply as the greatest musician in the world. The more famous he became, the better he became, but my friend, like the rest of the musical world, refused to see it. Ever since my childhood I have seen Karajan’s genius develop and come closer and closer to perfection; I have attended almost all his rehearsals of concerts and operas in Salzburg and Vienna. The very first concerts and operas I heard were conducted by Karajan. And so I am bound to say that I had a good foundation for my musical development right from the start. The name Karajan was guaranteed to produce a fierce quarrel between Paul and me, and for as long as he lived we repeatedly quarreled about him. But my arguments could never convince Paul that Karajan was a genius, nor could his convince me that he was a charlatan. For Paul—and this in no way vitiated his philosophical system—opera was the greatest thing in the world until the day he died, while for me it was a very early passion, which by that time had been pushed rather into the background; it is an art form that I still love, but for years I have been able to live without it. When he still had the time and the means, Paul spent years traveling round the world from one opera house to another, only to announce in the end that the Vienna Opera was the greatest of them all.
The Met’s no good, Covent Garden’s no good, La Scala’s no good
. None of them was any good compared with Vienna.
But of course
, he said,
the Vienna Opera is really good only once a year
. Only once a year—but all the same! He could afford to visit all the famous opera houses of the world in the course of a
crazy
three-year trip, getting to know all the moderately great, really great, and positively outstanding conductors and the singers whom they courted or chastised. His head was full of opera, and as his life became progressively more dreadful—with increasing rapidity during his latter years—it too became an opera, a grand opera of course, which naturally had a tragic ending. At this moment the scene had shifted back to Steinhof and the Ludwig Pavilion, which was one of the most neglected pavilions in the whole hospital, as I was soon to discover. The
Herr Baron
, as my friend was styled by everyone, was no longer wearing his white tailcoat, tailored by Knize, as he often did at night, especially at the Eden Bar—behind my back, so to speak—even in his last years. He had once more exchanged it for a straitjacket, and instead of dining at the Sacher or the Imperial, where he was still occasionally invited by the many well-off or positively rich friends he still had—some of them aristocrats, though not all—he was once more eating from a tin bowl on the marble table in the Ludwig