Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer of Jewish origin. He was born on 14 May 1885 in Breslau and died on 6 July 1973 in Zurich.
Klemperer was born into a Jewish family in the Silesian city of Breslau, now Wroclaw, Poland. He began studying piano at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and followed his teacher James Kwast to the Stern Conservatory in Berlin.
In 1905 he met Gustav Mahler, with whom he formed a friendship. On Mahler's recommendation, Klemperer became music director at the Prague theatre in 1907. He subsequently worked at Hamburg's municipal theatre from 1910 to 1912 and in Barmen from 1912 to 1913. From 1914 to 1917 he served as deputy director of the municipal theatre in Strasbourg and principal conductor of the Strasbourg Philharmonic. Between 1917 and 1924 he led the orchestra and later became general director of Cologne Opera.
From 1927 to 1931 Klemperer conducted at Berlin's Kroll Opera, where he gained a reputation as an advocate of new music. His programmes included works by Leoš Janáček, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith. During the 1920s and 1930s he also made repeated concert tours in the Soviet Union, attracting strong responses from audiences in Moscow and Leningrad.
In 1933 Klemperer moved to the United States and was appointed conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. There he increasingly concentrated on the German classical repertoire, particularly the music of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler, which later became closely associated with his reputation. His repertory also included Johann Sebastian Bach, Anton Bruckner, George Frideric Handel, Felix Mendelssohn, Mozart, Richard Wagner and Kurt Weill.
After the Second World War, Klemperer returned to Europe. He worked at the Budapest Opera from 1947 to 1950 and appeared with a range of European orchestras, until an unsuccessful brain-tumour operation interrupted his work. He resumed touring in the mid-1950s and worked chiefly with the London Philharmonia Orchestra, founded by Walter Legge at EMI. From 1959 until his death he was the orchestra's principal conductor and made a number of notable recordings with it.
Klemperer was known for an analytical, serious approach to conducting and for his preference for comparatively slow tempos. His interpretations were associated with a full orchestral sound and a solemn, monumental style. He was inducted into Gramophone magazine's Hall of Fame. He was buried in the Jewish Community Cemetery in Zurich.