Patrick Bade
Composers in Exile

Patrick Bade | Composers in Exile | 02.28.24

Visuals and music played throughout the presentation.

- Well, the Second World War saw an extraordinary gathering of musical talent in the United States, composers, musicians fleeing from the horrors of war and from fascism. And these musicians included the twin pillars of modernism in music, Arnold Schoenberg on the left and Igor Stravinsky on the right. Now Schoenberg had actually arrived as early as 1933. Though he was of Austrian origin, he was a professor in Berlin till ‘33. He actually happened to be on holiday in France when the Nazis took over, and he was urgently warned not to go back to Germany. And he was so shocked by this that he decided to reconvert to Judaism. Earlier in his adult life, he’d converted from Judaism to Protestantism, but now, really as a political gesture, he decided to reestablish his Jewishness in a synagogue in Paris. And then he went on to America, where he had various teaching posts before landing up as a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles.

Stravinsky, the other great pillar of modernism, he was an exile already, of course, from Russia. And he had just taken French nationality in 1939, was very happy to be living in Paris. And around that time, one thing that really bothered him was that the Nazis didn’t like his music, and he wrote a letter to his German publishers saying, “Don’t they understand that I loathe communists and Jews just as much, if not more than they do?” It’s surprising to me that this is so rarely brought up in connection with Stravinsky. Poor old Richard Strauss, who’s sort of is tarnished or tainted with Nazism, people are always saying to me, “Oh, I love Strauss’ music, it was a pity he was a Nazi.” He wasn’t a Nazi, not at all, and would never have said anything as crass as the remark I just gave you from Stravinsky. Of course, Strauss, he did make compromises, partly to protect his own musical legacy, and above all, to protect his half-Jewish grandchildren. Here is a Darius Milhaud. He got out at the last minute, helped by Varian Fry, and landed up with a teaching post thanks to Pierre Monteux, at Mills College, again, in California. And on the right is the Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinu. I don’t think it was actually Varian Fry, but he nevertheless had a very adventurous and difficult escape from France at the last minute, to New York. Wonderfully sinister-looking Kurt Weill on the left-hand side. He, like so many German-Jewish composers, of course, his first port of call was Paris. He was there in the ‘30s and then moved on to New York, where his “Threepenny Opera,” for which he’s most famous, I suppose today, was a complete flop on Broadway. But more about him later. And on the right, Ernst Krenek, who also had enjoyed, well, no, he had enjoyed a major success actually, , at Met with his opera “Jonny spielt auf.” Then Hanns Eisler, well he had to get out. There was a double whammy there. Not only was he Jewish, but he was known to be a communist. And on the right hand side, Paul Hindemith, who would love to have stayed, but had to get out eventually in 1937, because Hitler absolutely loathed him. And that went back to a performance of his opera “Neues vom Tage” which was attended by Hitler. Hitler was a man of prudish sensibility, and was terribly shocked that in this opera there was a scene in which a nude soprano sang an aria from her bath, and that was enough to finish Hindemith for him forever. Janoslav Weinberger on the left, most famous for his opera “Schwanda the Bagpiper”, and the very haunting face of Bela Bartok, the Czech. Weinberger, Hungarian, Bartok, more about them later. Then the Polish Alexandre Tansman, who like Stravinsky in fact had just taken a French passport, but he knew that wasn’t going to protect him, so he escaped once again to America. And on the right hand side, the Austrian Eric Zeisl. Both of these two found what I think they thought of as rather demeaning work in Hollywood, in the movie industry, churning out music for films, and that was the case with these two as well. Lovely face that, isn’t it? Castelnuovo-Tedesco, the Italian Jewish composer, and Ernst Toch on the right hand side. It was all right for some in Hollywood, people like Korngold and Waxman, you know, the top dogs in the Hollywood film industry, they had a good time. But for most of these composers working for the film industry, it was a pretty disheartening job. Two more Russians, again, doubly exiled, first of all from Russia after the Revolution, and then again because of Hitler. And that is Alexander Gretchaninov on the left hand side, and Sergei Rachmaninoff on the right hand side. And the lighter muse, that I mentioned last time, it’s a huge appetite for light classical music during Second World War, particularly operetta, on both sides. And here are two very famous European operetta composers, Oscar Straus on the left hand side, and Emmerich Kalman, Hungarian composer, on the right hand side, who was apparently so popular that in Paris on his way to New York, he was tracked down by Nazi officers who actually offered him honorary Aryan status if he would stay behind. But he was luckily intelligent enough to realise that that was a very bad idea. This is Alexander Zemlinsky, Austrian composer. A sad, a sad man. He was somebody I would say, who was born under an unlucky star. I think most of you all know about his abortive affair with Alma Schindler, later Alma Mahler, of course. He was about to get his evil way with her, and she might even have married him, if he hadn’t been pipped at the post by Gustav Mahler, so he was thwarted and frustrated by that. And somebody who just, bad luck seemed to follow him through his career. He was always about to have the big breakthrough, and it never quite happened. And then of course, he lands up, in fact he really, really didn’t want to leave at all. And it was only his wife, who was also Jewish, who really insisted, “No, no, no, we have to go.” And he went to America and he absolutely hated it. And that is a common theme for most of the musicians I’m talking about today. Well, they were very grateful to Americans and to America that their lives had been saved and they were taken in, but they were not happy. They were fishes out of water. And with very few exceptions, going to America badly affected their creativity. One day walking down Broadway in New York with his wife Louise, he turned to her, he said, “I wouldn’t even want to be buried in this country.” He was, of course he died in 1942, so he was initially buried in America, but his remains were then transferred back to Vienna, so at least that wish was fulfilled. And he’s now in, his grave is in, the Zentralfriedhof of Vienna. And this is Weinberger, and well, it’s always sad that even as a young man, I think it’s a very sad face. And on the left you have his death mask. His one great success in life was the opera “Schwanda the Bagpiper”, and that dated from the end of the 1920s, and it was taken up in German opera houses. Of course, that would’ve been impossible after '33, because of his Jewish origin. And then it was performed in London, and it was a big success in New York. So going to America, I suppose he might have hoped that he would be able to continue a successful career, and he certainly tried hard enough. He made desperate attempts to please American audiences with music, with titles like “Prelude and Fugue on Dixie”, and “Mississippi Rhapsody” and so on. But they all really fell on deaf ears, nobody was interested, and eventually he committed suicide. This is Ralph Benatzky, I’ll give his name to you, though people of an older generation, and particularly people of middle European origin, will be very, very familiar with some of his songs. He was the principle composer of “The White Horse Inn”, which was an operetta that really swept the world in the 1930s. It was hugely successful everywhere, in Paris, London, and New York. So again, he was somebody who might have expected to find success in America. He was actually not Jewish, though his wife was, so that may have been a reason why they both fled to America. And he, like so many of these composers, yes, they were taken in by the Americans. They were taken, they were received, but they were not received enthusiastically, and there was no interest, and every door was shut. He became more and more bitter about this. He kept a diary through the Second World War that was published a few years ago, it’s a diary in German, incredibly angry and bitter. He even makes the apparently rather antisemitic comment that everything in your in New York was , It was everything was Jewishized, as a very negative comment. And he lashes out in all directions. He describes Leonard Bernstein as “a second-rate amateur,” Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, “mediocre entertainment,” and he says, “The level of American theatre is 25 years behind the times of Europe. Culturally the very bottom, because of its crudeness, cheap effects and commercialism.” This is perhaps the most tragic case of all. This is Paul Abraham. Again, what a wonderful, sensitive face. And he had had two huge successes in Germany in the 1920s with his operettas “Flowers from Hawaii”, “Blumen von Hawaii”, and “Viktoria und ihr Husar.” And so he got to America and it was the same story, nobody was interested, and he, to use sort of old fashioned parlance, he lost his mind. He went mad, and he was institutionalised after he was discovered holding up traffic in New York by conducting an imaginary orchestra in the middle of the street. Now many of these musicians, artists, intellectuals, who fled from Europe to America and to Britain, where I am now, as you can probably see from the background, I’m in London. They regarded both America, as you’ve heard already from Ralph Benatzky, and Britain as being uncultured. I mean, Britain in particular was known as , the country without music. And so many of them went with a kind of almost attitude of a missionary, that they were bringing culture to these rather uncultured people, and this was not always appreciated. And certainly in this country, I’m talking about Britain, the Jews who’d been here for a long time, who were mainly of Russian/Polish origin, well of course the Sephardi ones had been here even longer. But the ones who’d arrived here in the late 19th century and early 20th century, fleeing from pogroms, they often resented the airs of superiority of these, inverted commas, cultured, assimilated Jews, who arrived as refugees in the 1930s. And I can’t resist playing you this little excerpt from a radio programme, with the great German soprano Lotte Lehmann. For me, she’s the greatest German soprano ever. The Nazis certainly rated her very highly. I mean, they thought she was a kind of national treasure, and they really, really wanted to keep hold of her and made generous offers. And in her autobiography, she admits that initially she was naive enough and ignorant enough to be tempted, and didn’t really initially understand the true evil of the Nazi regime. But eventually she woke up to this, and she left, and she went to America. And at the end of 1941, November or December, 1941, she gave a series of radio programmes introducing the art of the German Lied to American audiences, and I do find this quite hilarious. I mean, partly of course, she’s shamelessly trying to sell her own records, but there is a decided whiff of condescension towards her American audiences, as she introduces them to the music of Beethoven.

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• [Lotte] Good evening, I’m so glad to be with you all. There’s always something particularly heartwarming for me in singing over the radio. I think then of all those people who cannot go to concerts, the sick and the old, and those who live in lonely places. I think of all those people into whose lives the radio and the phonograph have brought music, and it makes me happy to know that you may repeat for yourselves on records, whatever gives you pleasure in this broadcast. Now, please think of yourselves as guests in my home, in my own music room. You can hear my accompanist Paul Ulanowsky playing now. He plays well, doesn’t he? Now, tonight we are going to begin our series with the music of Beethoven. The first of the four songs I will sing is called “Andenken”, or “Remembrance.” It breathes its poetry in quiet longing. The melody is simple and soaring, and they repeat the question, “When do you think of me? Where do you think of me? How do you think of me?” Is held in a delicately rising crescendo, up to the outbreak of-

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• So back to Stravinsky who arrived in 1940, and was already very well known in America. He was not somebody who people had not heard of. Indeed he’s referred to in the play “Pal Joey” of 1940. There’s the character of a stripper, and she’s talking about what she thinks about while she’s taking her clothes off. And the line goes, “I’ve interviewed Pablo Picasso, and a countess named DeFrazo. I’ve interviewed the great Stravinsky.” Well, getting off the boat in New York, he went straight to Harvard University, did a series of lectures on musical aesthetics in French. But this was of course very prestigious, but it wasn’t going to earn him much money. So even the great Stravinsky was forced to take on some slightly undignified commissions when he went to America, such as a polka that he wrote for dancing elephants in the Barnum and Bailey Circus, which apparently was not a great success. The band master said that the elephants hated Stravinsky’s music. He said they listened to it “with increasing disquiet and distress.” And one critic put it, he said, “The elephants listened to Stravinsky and they turned up their trunks.”

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Yeah, obviously not music for elephants. But later in the war, he got another rather unconventional commission from Woody Herman’s jazz band, to write a concerto for clarinet and jazz band. And apparently, initially the jazz musicians reacted no more positively to Stravinsky’s music than the elephants did. But it is a wonderful piece, and this is the original recording with Woody Herman and his band.

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So Martinu, Bohuslav Martinu, the Czech composer, he had a considerable reputation in Europe, but was pretty well unknown when he arrived in America. And as with many of these musicians, times were really hard for him, and he was saved by the patronage of the great Russian conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, who you see in the insert here on the right hand side. He was the chief conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So he programmed works of Martinu, and he commissioned a symphony from him. And that really was his breakthrough to greater fame and a degree of prosperity. But in 1942, there was a terrible event in his native Czechoslovakia, that inspired a piece of music from him called “Memorial to Lidice.” Czech partisans had been flown from London, dropped into Bohemia, and they, ooh, why is that there?

They assassinated the so-called Reich Protector of Bohemia, Reinhard Heydrich, who you see here. And of course the Nazis regarded this as an act of terrorism. As we know, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. And in this case, well I think there should be a clear line of demarcation actually, that once innocent civilians are targeted, I think it can no longer be called freedom fighting, it has to be designated terrorism. And though certainly, you know, Heydrich was in a way innocent victim, he was one of the most evil men who ever walked the Earth. And he’s one of the principle architects, of course, of the Final Solution. But anyway, the Nazis decided upon collective punishment and terrible reprisals, and it seems quite arbitrarily, they chose the village of Lidice. I’ve been looking this up online today, and apparently there is no evidence that Lidice had anything to do with the partisans who assassinated Heydrich.

But anyway, the Germans surrounded the village and they massacred the inhabitants. They murdered 192 men, 62 women and 80 children. Now by the standards of 20th century and 21st century atrocities, that’s not such a huge number. The Nazis had carried out much, much worse massacres than that in Poland already during the Second World War. And of course, as we know later in the war, they were murdering people on a huge industrial scale in the death camps. What made this particular atrocity so notable, was that it was meticulously documented by the Nazis, and it was carried out openly and published to the world. And their other crimes were usually, they attempted to hide them.

So, and this really shocked the whole world. So I’m going to play you an excerpt from this piece by Martinu called “Memorial to Lidice.” I’m going to play you the climax of the piece. It starts very gloomy, very, very pessimistic, but it rises towards a climax in which he quotes the opening victory motto theme the V for victory, dah, dah, dah, dum, which was being used at the time, of course, by the BBC as a symbol of the ultimate victory of the allies. So it’s clearly placed in this piece of music at the climax, as a declaration of belief in the ultimate victory of the Allies.

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Another composer of considerable European reputation, but at this time totally unknown in America, was Bela Bartok, who was not Jewish, but it was in fact the modernist character of his work that put him in danger with the fascists. So he arrived in America penniless and in very poor health. And, but luckily there were a small group of people who knew of his genius and who helped him out. Again Koussevitzky, who commissioned the “Concerto for Orchestra”, which has perhaps become Bartok’s most famous and popular piece. The Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti, who you see on the left hand side, and Benny Goodman. And it was, again, you can see it’s a bit like Stravinsky with the “Ebony Concerto”, here was an attempt of a European composer to write something with a decidedly American flavour, with a jazzy element in it. So this is a piece called “Contrast”, that was commissioned and first performed by Szigeti and Benny Goodman, and here they are performing it with Bartok at the piano.

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So going to America certainly didn’t inhibit Bartok’s creativity. He wrote some very fine work there, right at the end of his life in America. He died of course, during the war in America. But the one composer who really did thrive, and who famously successfully adapted to American idioms was Kurt Weill. Rather like Meyerbeer in the 19th century who had this chameleon ability to, Meyerbeer wrote Italian operas in in Italy, he wrote German operas in Germany, and he wrote French operas in France. He could completely adapt his style to where he was working. And I think you can say the same of Kurt Weill who, I mean, it was a struggle for him, but he really determined that he was going to be a success in America.

And he had that success in 1941 with a very clever musical, with a play by Moss Hart, and wonderful witty lyrics by Ira Gershwin, the brother of George Gershwin, and it was a vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence, “Lady in the Dark.” Of course New York was full of refugee psychoanalysts, as was of course Buenos Aires. They were the two cities where they all fled to. And so psychoanalysis was the latest thing. So this was really quite a bold and innovative idea, to write a Broadway musical all about psychoanalysis. But I’m going to play you a song. It was sung in the original performance by Danny Kaye, here it is. “It’s never too late to Mendelssohn” by Kurt Weill.

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♪ A man without a woman ♪ ♪ Or a woman without a man ♪ ♪ Was never part of paradise’s plan ♪ ♪ It’s like a poached egg without a piece of toast ♪ ♪ Philadelphia without the Saturday Evening Post ♪ ♪ George Jean Nathan without a play to roast ♪ ♪ And to make a man and woman rhyme ♪ ♪ The wedding bells must chime ♪ ♪ Oh, it’s never too late to Mendelssohn ♪ ♪ Ding dong, ding dong dell ♪ ♪ Two hearts are at journey’s Endelssohn ♪ ♪ When the people hear that steeple bell ♪ ♪ Without the strains of Lohengrin ♪ ♪ Love is Mischa or Jascha without a violin ♪ ♪ It’s never too latе to Mendelssohn ♪ ♪ Ding dong, ding dong dell ♪ ♪ Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong ♪ ♪ Here comes the bride ♪

And in 1957 after the war, he wrote what I think is maybe his finest musical play, or one of the finest, it’s “Street Scene”, and very ambitious. It’s really trying to fuse musical genres. It’s halfway between a Broadway musical and grand opera, and he wanted proper singers. They borrowed singers from the Met, including the very fine Brian Sullivan who sang most beautifully in this lovely song, “Lonely House”.

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♪ At night, when everything is quiet ♪ ♪ This old house seems to breathe a sigh ♪ ♪ Sometimes I hear a neighbour snoring ♪ ♪ Sometimes I hear a baby cry ♪ ♪ Sometimes I hear a staircase creaking ♪ ♪ Sometimes a distant telephone ♪ ♪ Then the quiet settles down again ♪ ♪ The house and I are all alone ♪ ♪ Lonely house, lonely me ♪ ♪ Funny with so many neighbours ♪ ♪ How lonely it can be ♪ ♪ Oh lonely street, lonely town ♪ ♪ Funny you can be so lonely ♪ ♪ With all these folks around ♪

Amusing harmonies there. It was particularly, I think the operetta composers who had a bit of a hard time, because tastes, I mean European-style operetta had been popular between the wars. I think of Nelson Eddy and Janet McDonald. But because of this sudden flowering of the Broadway musical, I think the European-style operettas came to seem a bit passe to Americans. This is Oscar Straus, a very funny, witty man, wrote a lovely autobiography. And he was lucky in that MGM wanted to make a film of his operetta, “The Chocolate Soldier”, again as a actually a vehicle for Nelson Eddy, and this time with the opera star Reese Stevens. But in fact the film was not a success. But nevertheless, MGM had had paid Oscar Straus a large sum of money, and he tells a wonderful story about he went to Hollywood and he met one of the top executives at NGM, and who said to him, “Oh Mr. Straus, I’m so pleased to meet you. Will you play me your lovely piece, the 'Blue Danube’?”

So he plays the “Blue Danube”, and then he says apologetically, “But unfortunately, it’s not by me.” So the executive then says, “Oh, well then play me the waltz from ‘Der Rosenkavalier’.” So he plays that and then again, he has to say at the end of it, “Oh I’m sorry, it’s not actually by me.” I can’t remember how many Straus waltzes he went through. And finally, this guy from MGM is really cross. And he says, “Well, are you the great Straus or not?” And he’s just said, “Well, I’m not, I didn’t write all those things, but I may not be the great Strauss, but I’m one of the great Strausses.” And he then played one of his own pieces from “The Chocolate Soldier.” Another operetta composer who arrived was Robert Stolz, who you see here on the right hand side. And I think it was Goebbels who personally, well I can’t remember if it was Goebbels or Goering, one of the two, intervened and really wanted him to stay, because it was a problem that the Nazis loved operetta.

They absolutely loved it, and they felt it was really important for the morale of the people. But the problem for them was that nearly all the good operettas of the early 20th century were written by Jewish composers, apart from Lehar, and Lehar had stopped composing. It’s all the rest, Karman, Oscar Straus, and so on. And so, but Stolz was vehemently anti Nazi, and he refused to stay in Nazi Germany, or occupied Austria rather, because he was Austrian. So he went to America and had the same problem, nobody had heard of him, or he was forgotten. And he had a lucky break, because there was again, a circus with dancing animals. This time they were dancing lions, and they wanted to use the hit song, or the German hit song, “Du sollst der Kaiser meiner Seele sein”, “You Shall Be the Emperor of My Soul”, which they thought was by Lehar, but it it wasn’t, it was by Stolz.

And so they had to find him out, and they had to pay him royalties for this. So this kept him going for a bit. And then he had the huge luck of writing a song for a Deanna Durbin movie called “Spring Parade”, and that was a mega hit, and even was nominated for an Academy Award. And of course, I can never resist the opportunity to play a bit of Deanna Durbin. So here she is in that song.

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♪ I was a mortal with feet on the ground ♪ ♪ There I was, standing with people around ♪ ♪ Lovely music started somewhere ♪ ♪ And I started floating on air ♪ ♪ Into a dream world I floated afar ♪ ♪ I saw you smile as I reached for a star ♪ ♪ Could it happen, could it happen ♪ ♪ I only know, here we are ♪ ♪ Waltzing, waltzing, high in the clouds ♪ ♪ Drifting, dreaming, far from the crowds ♪ ♪ Over a moonbeam we stroll away ♪ ♪ While the world below seems to roll away ♪ ♪ And we go waltzing, waltzing, high in the clouds ♪ ♪ Only you and I in the clouds ♪ ♪ No one will hear when you call, my own dear one ♪ ♪ While waltzing high in the clouds ♪

All these musicians and composers of course arrived in New York, but many of them travelled across the States and landed up in the Los Angeles and Hollywood area. I suppose they were, many of them were as keen to get away from the European War as possible. This is part of a map of, fascinating. You can see all the people who are neighbours with one another. Who have we got here? We’ve got Arnold Schoenberg living quite close to Thomas Mann, and great cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky, Ernst Toch, we’re going to talk about in a minute, Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt and Hanns Eisler. And then further along the coast we’ve got Fritz Lang, the Hollywood Bowl of course, we’ve got Franz and Alma Werful, Igor Stravinsky, Otto Rubenstein, Jean Renoir, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich and so on and so on. Bruno Walter, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

So, and these people, they were all meeting up with one another, often, you know, which you had to drive around Los Angeles, but very often they were at the, now Salka Viertel, where was she? She was in this, oh yes, Berthold and Salka Viertel, they were really, they had a kind of salon, and everybody met there. And people who had not been friendly with one another in Europe, like obviously Schoenberg and Korngold, who were bitter enemies, landed up meeting at Berthold and Salka Viertel’s house, and enjoying her chocolate cake, and talking German with one another. And this here, we’ve got one of these occasions, and you can see Bruno Walter, seated in centre, with Lotte Lehmann next to him, and Thomas Mann on the left.

And I think it’s quite amusing to see, you know, we all know the term , for those German and middle European refugees who landed up in Palestine, and didn’t really adapt very well to the climate, and they all went round still wearing their jackets, their , and you can see Thomas Mann out there in the sunshine but wearing his tie, and even Bruno Walter, he’s got rid of his , but he’s wearing a bow tie. This is Otto Klemperer on the beach in California, but still wearing a jacket, and how about this? This is Schoenberg on the left hand side. Well, he does look more appropriately dressed for the climate, but the Kolisch Quartet, very oddly dressed, indeed.

The little girl is Nuria. She’s still alive, I checked, she’s in her 90s now, but it must be about 30 years ago that somebody brought her to my previous flat in Islington for dinner, and she was very charming, very interesting. The one thing I remember distinctly from that conversation was that she told me that when her parents arrived in California, the whole lifestyle was so strange to them, and particularly for her mother, who’d always had servants to look after her, and didn’t even know how to make a bed. So in some was Los Angeles must have seemed like, and California, despite the wonderful climate, and the abundance of everything, the abundance of nature, the prosperity, but for many again of these refugees, it was very much a mixed blessing.

And in the insert here, you’ve got Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, both very left wing, both communists of course, and eventually both of them fell foul of McCarthyism, and the Un-American Activities Committee, and they were forced to flee and go back to Europe. So this is, I’m going to play you a song with words by Brecht and music by Hanns Eisler, which expresses this sense of disillusionment and bitterness. The translation is not that accurate, because they, obviously has two syllables, and the English word hell just has one, so that rather oddly translate , “Is paradise also hell?” So they’ve had to translate it to hellfire to fit the notes.

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Oh say, you can see at the bottom the famous Hollywood sign, where failed starlets would throw themselves to their death. This is Ernst Toch on the left hand side, and he was born in Vienna, but he was a professor in Manheim in Germany till 1933, forced to flee, goes to America, finds work as a arranger and composer for the movies. He actually did get three Academy Award nominations without ever winning the award, and churned out music in a rather dispirited way, including for the 1937 movie of “Heidi” with Shirley Temple. But in, in 1937, he was shocked to hear of the death of his mother in Vienna. And he was, you know, very sad not to have been there with her. And this caused him to again, reconnect with his Jewish roots. And he wrote a piece called “The Cantata of Bitter Herbs”, which is really based on the Passover Haggadah, and I’m going to play you an excerpt from that, which is the setting of Psalm 126.

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♪ When Adonai brought back his children to Zion ♪ ♪ It would be like a dream ♪ ♪ It would be like a dream ♪ ♪ And the melodies would fill our tongue ♪ ♪ And the laughter our mouth ♪ ♪ Great things did Adonai to Israel ♪ ♪ And Adonai ♪

Now Toch described himself as the most forgotten composer in the world. But I think actually probably that title really belongs to this composer, Eric Zeisl, an Austrian composer, who also came as a refugee, and landed up churning up music for films like “Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man.” And he would probably still be totally forgotten, if it were not for the efforts of Michael Haas. And if you’re interested in this subject, I would like to strongly recommend to you, it’s on the list of names that you were sent, Michael Haas’ recent book, which is called “Music in Exile.” Fascinating book, very detailed. And he probably has done more than anybody else in the last 30 years or so, to retrieve the work and the reputations of so many composers who were driven out by the Nazis. So he also, like Toch, separately from his movie music, he wrote music that returned to his Jewish roots, including this very lovely sonata for violin and piano, the second movement, which is entitled, “Andante Religioso”, in brackets, , clearly has a very Jewish character to the melody.

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Erich Korngold was in a relatively privileged position as far as these Hollywood composers were concerned. He came over in the mid ‘30s, he was brought over Max Reinhardt to arrange the music of Mendelssohn for the film “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and then once the Nazis had taken power in both Germany and his native Austria, he decided to stay, and he composed the music for 12 movies for Warner Bros. As I said, he was privileged because he had a very exceptional contract. He was allowed to choose the films for which he wrote the music, and more importantly, he was allowed to retain the rights over all the thematic material for the music that he wrote for the movies. And this enabled him to reuse these themes and musical material in works that he composed for the concert hall.

And most famously, his wonderful violin concerto, which was originally written for Bronislaw Huberman, but eventually premiered by Jascha Heifitz, who you see on the right hand side, and who it became very much part of his repertoire. At the time, I mean these composers really did have a rough time, because they had this, what they regarded as rather lowly, humiliating work. And many snobbish critics derided them or dismissed them because of their association with Hollywood. And this concerto, there was a famous put-down by one critic, when Korngold’s violin concerto was premiered, when one critic said, “It’s more corn than gold.” Well, very funny, I suppose, but ridiculous and totally wrong, 'cause it’s an absolute masterpiece, and it’s really established itself as one of the most popular violin concertos in the repertoire. And here is the opening movement.

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I am finishing with Sergei Rachmaninoff, who as I said was twice over a refugee, 'cause he’d fled from Russia in 1917, from the Russian Revolution, built up a new life for himself in both America and Europe, and in the '30s he built his dream house in Switzerland, which you see here, Villa Senar, and that’s where he composed the “Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini”, and his third symphony. But with the outbreak of the Second World War, he never saw that again. And he landed up in this house in Los Angeles, which he describes as being very modest and having a tiny garden. Well, the garden looks gorgeous to me. And so the only work that he completely composed in the United States was his last major work, the three “Symphonic Dances”, and great master, again, and he’s of course, he’s a composer who for a long time was dismissed and derided by snobbish critics, but I hope that is now completely a thing of the past. Most people accept, he’s one of the really great composers of the 20th century, and that is amply demonstrated in this marvellous final work, the three “Symphonic Dances.”

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Right, time is up.

Q&A and Comments

So this is Sheila, “I think Schoenberg probably converted to Christianity.” Yes, I’m sure, it was like so many people, well like Heiner, what is that famous quote that Trudy always gives of Heiner that, “A baptism is the passport to European civilization,” or something like that. “In Prague, the former village of Lidice was destroyed, that was destroyed by the Nazis, includes a museum, a park where the streets were, and huge rose gardens in memory of the massacred villagers.” I’ve been to Prague a few times, but never to Lidice. “Partnership of Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes.” Yes, I don’t know more about it actually off the top of my head, but it is striking isn’t, it? It’s very interesting that Langston Hughes, such a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, but it’s somehow in a way to be expected. And I’ve talked about this before, and people have commented on it before, that there was this very interesting symbiosis between African Americans and Jewish immigrants to America. They obviously felt comfortable with one another. And I’m glad you like Deanna as much as I do.

And Pamela has a book of songs by Robert Stolz called “Blumenlieder”, which she bought in Vienna. I don’t know those, but of course they’re wonderful, wonderful songs. I really adore the song “Du sollst der Kaiser meiner Seele sein”, absolutely gorgeous song. Yes, they were alive, but it was, of course that’s the main thing, that they were alive. But some of them had a very sad ending to their lives nevertheless, like Zemlinsky. “The choreographer for Stravinsky’s,” yes was Balanchine, thank you for reminding of that. That is an extraordinary thought, of Balanchine choreographing elephants. Yeah, they were all desperate for money, weren’t they? Thank you again yes, about Balanchine. And glad you like my historic recordings. Well the critic said, oh, what he said about Korngold was that the violin concerto was more corn than gold, a cheap jibe, if ever there was one.

This is Rita, “'Balanchine, I wonder if we’d like a little ballet with,’ Stravinsky, ‘For whom?’ Balanchine, ‘For some elephants.’ Stravinsky, ‘How old?’ Balanchine, ‘Very young.’ Stravinsky, ‘All right. if they are very young elephants, I will do it.’” Yeah, I like that, thank you. Thank you, Rita. This is a link from Abigail to a film, a documentary about the creation of Nazi films, including extravagant musicals, yes they are. I watched all of those musicals when I was writing my book about music in the Second World War, and they are completely jaw-dropping, being made right up until the very last days of the Second World, particularly with the dancer-singer Marika Rook.

Joshua Bell, that wasn’t actually Joshua Bell, but I mean, every violinist these days, major violinist, loves that concerto and loves to play it. And Rachmaninoff had apartments in New York on the Upper West Side, where he apparently, he created a completely Russian ambience. There was Russian food served and Russian was spoken. He had Russian servants. Thank you very much, Myra. Miklos Rozsa, yes he’s, well he’s a, when did he go there though? I think of him as being later. But a very good composer of course, wonderful composer.

And thank you all very much indeed, and see you again on Sunday.