What is so special about his method?
Among all 20th-century great Romanian conductors, indubitably the most extravagant, original, paradoxical maestro of the baton remained Sergiu Celibidache. Perhaps only Herbert von Karajan enjoyed the status of absolute star during his life time as the Romanian conductor did. Celibidache came on the musical scene like a whirlwind in the 1940s conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. A conductor, composer, musical theoretician, philosopher, professor - Sergiu Celibidache roused with every public appearance at the radio and television, at development courses and press interviews, but especially at the music desk of the few orchestras that accepted his whimsical rehearsal terms (10-12 sessions!), real shows of contradictory attitudes.
The score became a miracle in Sergiu Celibidache's hands and artistic conception. The audience participated intensely in the conductor's "magic", giving in to the charm of the logic of the musical discourse, by the novelty of the timbre hues, by the construction of the sonorous edifice. The rhythm - the maestro argued - represents the spinal column of the work. The limpidity of the metro-rhythmic pulsation carries, in a latent form, velvet or steel magma. This is why in the Celibidache method that BEATING is so foundational. To quote Celibidache: "I have been told that my interpretations brought something new, but few were those who noticed that I merely wanted to render the natural tendency of the music structure."