Celibidache categorically refused to release his performances on commercial recordings during his lifetime, claiming that a listener could not have a "transcendental experience" outside the concert hall.

He has nonetheless earned international acclaim for his interpretations of the classical repertoire and was known for a spirited performance style informed by his study and experiences in Zen Buddhism.

[7] He was already improvising at the piano by the age of four, and after a traditional schooling in mathematics, philosophy and music in Iași, was sent by his father to Bucharest and then to Paris, where he continued his studies.

His father had expected him to pursue a political career in Romania,[5][7] but in 1936 Celibidache enrolled in the Hochschule für Musik (Academy of Music) in Berlin (German authorities erroneously changed his surname from Celebidachi to Celibidache, the form he was known under), where he studied composition with Heinz Tiessen and conducting with Kurt Thomas, Walter Gmeindl and Fritz Stein.

He got his big break shortly after the end of World War II in tragic circumstances: Leo Borchard, who was cleared to conduct by the American forces, was shot during a nocturnal car ride.

He also worked in Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s, due partly to the promotional efforts of the pianist Eileen Joyce and her partner, an artists' agent.

Among his notable students are Enrique García Asensio, Konrad von Abel, Françoys Bernier, Raffaele Napoli,[10] Rony Rogoff, Bernhard Sieberer, Markand Thakar,[11] and Nils-Göran Areskoug.

[citation needed] He appeared in the film Ambassadors of Music (1952), conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Egmont overture.

A controversy arose over discriminatory behaviour that came to light during a 12-year legal battle during his tenure at the Munich Philharmonic[12] with trombonist Abbie Conant.

[18] In his view, music is made of the cumulation of thousands of "Nos" and one final "yes" when the conditions are eventually all gathered during a concert.

[20] An oft-mentioned feature of many of his later concerts, captured in the live recordings of them, is a slower tempo than what is considered the norm, while in fast passages (especially in his earlier performances) his tempi often exceeded metronome markings by far.

As Celibidache explained, the acoustic space in which one hears a concert directly affects the likelihood of the emergence of his sought-after transcendent experience.

Notable releases have been his Munich performances of Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gabriel Fauré and a series of live performances with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra:[24][25]