The Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber, who died July 13 in Slovenia, was a thrilling enigma in classical music.

He was among the most lauded and sought-after conductors of opera, and his recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh symphonies are regarded by many critics as benchmarks: “as if Homer had come back to recite ‘The Iliad,'” said Time magazine. He also turned down many more engagements than he was offered, was notorious for walking out on concerts and recording sessions for reasons that seemed trifling, and refused for decades to accept a permanent conducting post. He even, it was said, turned down Herbert von Karajan’s offer to succeed the master at the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Kleiber’s repertoire was tiny compared with those of other first-rank conductors, and it grew smaller over the years as he pared it down to his favorites. In addition to Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh symphonies, he would conduct only his Fourth; he would conduct only a dozen operas – none of Mozart’s and only one of Wagner’s, “Tristan und Isolde.” When Kleiber finally recorded “Tristan,” in 1980, his record company, Deutsche Grammophon, issued a statement explaining that the record had been delayed (amid rumors of rows with singers) because he “wanted to exploit the new 16-track technique down to the last inaudible detail.”

Kleiber discouraged publicity for his concerts and was notorious for refusing to sign contracts. He often refused to commit to a specific program in advance. Instead, he would arrive and inform the orchestra what to play. It helped that he insisted on extra rehearsals. He demanded 34 rehearsals for his first performance of Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” in Munich. When Berg’s widow heard the performance, she was so pleased with it that she presented Kleiber with Berg’s coat and wedding ring.

When Kleiber finally made his New York debut, in 1988, it did not hurt his reputation that the Metropolitan Opera’s management had been trying for a decade to lure him. Kleiber led “La Boheme” to universal raves in the Franco Zeffirelli staging, starring Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni. The next year, Kleiber returned to New York to conduct a new Zeffirelli staging of “La Traviata.” In 1990, he conducted “Otello” and “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Met, winning the favor of the sour critic Edward Said, who wrote, “It is depressingly rare to hear opera conducting of such intelligence and care.”

Kleiber was born in 1930 in Berlin, where his father, Erich Kleiber, was di rector of the Berlin State Opera (he had directed the premier of “Wozzeck” in 1925). Erich Kleiber, who was married to an American, was guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic in the year of Carlos’s birth.

In 1936, Erich Kleiber resigned from the Berlin State Opera after Nazi officials banned the premiere of Paul Hindemith’s opera “Mathis der Maler.” The family fled Germany with only the 40 marks it was allowed to take out of the country and went to live in Argentina, where Erich Kleiber conducted operas at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires for many years. In 1944, he replaced Bruno Walter for a year as conductor at the Met.

There was a darker side to growing up amid such musical sophistication, because Carlos’s father discouraged him from becoming a musician. Despite showing inclinations toward composing before he was in his teens, his father directed that Carlos study chemistry in Switzerland.

Eventually, Carlos insisted on studying music. Erich Kleiber disparaged his son’s ability repeatedly in public, and the treatment seems to have given Carlos an inferiority complex. Or at least that was one reason constantly suggested by critics for Kleiber’s limited output in his mature years; Kleiber him self never gave interviews and nobody really knew for sure.

Kleiber made his conducting debut at La Plata, Argentina, in 1952, and then at Potsdam in 1954, where it is said he performed under a pseudonym to avoid embarrassing his father. His career seems to have gained momentum with the death of his father, in 1956, the same year that he began conducting opera at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf. He went on to fulltime positions in Zurich, Stuttgart, and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.

After 1973, he accepted only guest assignments, spurning a full-time appointment altogether. Said Karajan, “He tells me,’I only conduct when I am hungry.’ And it is true. He has a deepfreeze. He fills it up, and cooks for himself, and when it gets down to a certain level then he thinks, ‘Now I might do a concert.’ He is like a wolf.”

A wolf everyone wanted at their doorstep. His “Tristan und Isolde” at the Vienna State Opera in 1973 and the following year at the Bayreuth Festival garnered international attention.

In 1974, he conducted Strauss’s “Der Rosencavalier” in London to powerful huzzahs; the engagement got off to an icy start, though, when Kleiber was introduced to the orchestra and was told that many of the players had worked for his father when he conducted the same opera in 1950.

Kleiber was known for his intense preparation, including mastery of returning to the autograph scores to divine the composer’s original intent. Placido Domingo, who performed under Kleiber in “Carmen,” “La Traviata,” and “Otello,” said, “In my experience there’s nothing in musical life better than a rehearsal with him. You can learn so much.”

At rehearsals, Kleiber would make allusive and sometimes humorous comments, to the patter of Charlie Chaplin’s feet or the rumble of subways, to explain to players how he wanted a particular passage to sound. “Violins – please put some butter on it,” he once implored at Covent Gardens. He was reputed to have walked out on rehearsals at which players laughed at his picturesque imagery.

When he stood at the podium, Mr. Domingo told Britain’s Guardian in 1990, “He is just like a magician. He always has a trump card up his sleeve. He never repeats. Other conductors do everything the same way. But just watch the total independence of Carlos’s hands. With one hand he can give the idea of a big long line beaten in four, while with the other he is beating in twelve with total independence.”

Some critics described Kleiber’s music as “rhapsodic” and even “bacchanalian,” but others stressed his utter control. “He moved through the symphony’s complex structure as simply as Billie Holiday sang ‘My Old Flame,” wrote a rhapsodic Gregory Sandow for the Wall Street Journal in 1983. “Hackneyed old ‘Boheme’ unfolded as if it had never been heard before,” said Thor Eckert Jr. in the Christian Science Monitor in 1988.

Kleiber’s final performance was at the 1999 Canary Islands Music Festival, at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. He conducted, for the first time, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh symphonies. “Yet, after five rehearsals (which were closed to the public),” went the Associated Press dispatch,” it sounded as if he had led the orchestra all his life.

Carlos Kleiber

Born July 3, 1930, in Berlin; died July 13 in Slovenia; he had a son and a daughter; his wife, Stanka, died last December.