Car­los Kleiber, the ec­cent­ric and re­clus­ive con­duct­or was a fabled per­fec­tion­ist who was known as much for the rar­ity of his ap­pear­ances as for the bril­liance of his in­ter­pret­a­tions.Kleiber has achieved cult status in mu­sic circles and has built a loy­al fan base, but he nev­er made it to a house­hold name.

In com­plete con­tra­dic­tion to his con­tem- por­ary Her­bert von Ka­ra­jan, Car­los Kleiber re­fused to par­ti­cip­ate in the in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic busi­ness – he showed a strong re­luct­ance to re­cord com­pany moguls, cor­por­ate spon­sors, agents and journ­al­ists – in fact he re­fused most in­ter­views. His re­clus­ive­ness star­ted in earn­est in the early 1980s, when he walked out on a Vi­enna Phil­har­mon­ic re­hears­al and soon after broke with Deutsche Gram­mo­phon.

It's hard to say what cir­cum­stances promp­ted that be­ha­vi­or. Kleiber's mu­sic mak­ing was su­preme, but there were, per­haps, oth­er things in life. Car­los Kleiber was a deeply private man, hugely de­voted to his fam­ily, who loved to read, study and write. As he once told Le­onard Bern­stein: 'I want to grow in a garden, I want to have the sun, I want to eat and drink and sleep and make love, and that's it.'

Mu­si­cians still go in­to rap­tures that mak­ing mu­sic with Car­los Kleiber, wheth­er in re­hears­al or per­form­ance, was in­com­par­able. His per­form­ances were renowned for their hy­per­aware in­tens­ity. They were minutely ex­press­ive and dizzy­ingly dan­ger­ous. Every­body wanted to be a part of these ex­clus­ive mu­sic­al mo­ments, but only a for­tu­nate few could en­joy. Car­los Kleiber left the clas­sic­al-mu­sic world wish­ing for more at the age of 74 in 2004 after long ill­ness.

The film un­cov­ers some of the mys­ter­ies and tries to clear up pre­con­cep­tions of one of the most elu­sive con­duct­ors: what where the real reas­ons he can­celled that of­ten? It sheds light on the re­la­tion­ships with his fam­ily, in­clud­ing his fath­er and moth­er, traces the de­vel­op­ments of his ca­reer and cov­ers the ‘myth­o­lo­giz­ing’ that star­ted dur­ing the life­time of the maes­tro. Car­los Kleiber has al­ways been a ma­jor mys­tery to the world and prob­ably even to him­self too. He dis­posed to close the door to his closest fam­ily circle for any bio­graph­ers and his chil­dren in­deed re­spect his wish. This is why the fil­maker had to do his re­search amongst the con­duct­or’s mu­sic­al com­pan­ions, col­lab­or­at­ors and friends.

In­ter­views were shot with Otto Schenk, Dr. Otto Staindl, friend and at­tend­ing phys­i­cian of Car­los Kleiber, mem­bers of the Wien­er Phil­har­monik­er, the München­er Phil­har­monik­er, the Ber­liner Phil­har­monik­er, the sing­er Ileana Co­trubaş, Mar­tin Eng­stroem (formerly Deutsche Gram­mo­phon), fur­ther­more: Sir Peter Jo­nas, Ric­cardo Muti, Mi­chael Gielen, Wolfgang Sawal­lisch and oth­ers. Many of them own let­ters or small note­pads by Kleiber, doc­u­ment­ary re­pro­duc­tions, pho­to­graphs or private video cop­ies of re­hears­als and con­certs. In ad­di­tion to this, his rare re­cords are mile­stones and ex­tracts of them are cer­tainly in­cluded in the film.