Wednesday 8 December 2021

Horror and part-redemption: Ančerl and Haas


The still from an infamous film is not quite what it seems. Conductor, composer taking a bow, orchestra and smartly-dressed audience are all Jewish prisoners in Theresienstadt/Terezin. Two days later - the sickening cynicism of the Nazi propaganda machine! - they'll all be deported to Auschwitz. Few will survive. 

Conductor Karel Ančerl was one who did, though his wife and son were murdered in the gas chambers. Arriving in Auschwitz, he stood in line with his friend, said composer Pavel Haas. Mengele was ushering him on the path to extinction when Haas, weakened, coughed. 'No, that one'. And because of this obscene twist of fortune, the composer was lost to us and the conductor went on to greatness at the helm of the Czech Philharmonic. After the liberation of Auschwitz, he also found the orchestral parts - except the one for double-basses - of the work being performed in the film, Haas's Study for String Orchestra. 

Ančerl features in the film about the film, apparently not downloadable but to be found on YouTube (the title is 'The Führer gives the Jews a city' in capitals). Thankfully it is not the unadulterated propaganda exercise about happy life in Terezin. It's all in German, without subtitles, but an essential watch, if you can bear it. The great man's steely precision about the facts and circumstances is moving in itself. Needless to say several 'students' on my Zoom Czech music course were deeply involved - two had relatives who were in Terezin and/or were murdered in Auschwitz. Pictured below: members of the dressed-up Terezin audience several days before slaughter.

In every class, we've found something profoundly moving or troubling. Just think of the infant mortality and premature deaths which dogged the lives of the great Czech composers. As we moved through the decades, it became such a pattern that I felt I had to ennumerate. Smetana lost three daughters between 1854 and 1855, and his wife, who died of scarlet fever, four years later. Dvořák and his wife lost three children between 1875 and 1877. Janáček wrote in his 1924 autobiography that he would 'bind Jenůfa simply with the black ribbon of the long illness, suffering and laments of my daughter Olga and my little boy Vladimir'. No sooner had Josef Suk begun to mourn the death of Dvořák, his father-in-law, intending a five movement memorial with a triumphant conclusion, than his wife Otilie, Dvořák's daughter, also died. Thus the Asrael Symphony became a monument of almost unrelieved sadness.

Even though Bohuslav Martinů and his wife Charlotte had no children of their own, he had cause to mourn the remarkable young woman who may have been the great love of his life, conductor and composer Vítězslava Kaprálová (pictured above). Like another composer who should have gone on to greater heights, Lili Boulanger, she died at the age of 25. That was in 1940, just as the Martinůs were fleeing the Nazi occupation of Paris and marking the first stages of their difficult journey to the USA.

If, as the late, great Jiří Bělohlávek insisted, we accept Gustav Mahler as a Bohemian - he was born in Kaliště before the family moved to nearby Jihlava - then here's the most devastating chronicle of family loss of all the 'Czech' composers. Apart from the major loss of his life, the death of his four-year-old daughter Maria ('Putzi'), of the 14 children to whom his mother gave birth, six died in infancy, sister Leopoldine of a brain tumour at the age of 26, while 21-year old Otto committed suicide, and the greatest shock of all to the young Gustav, it seems, was the death of his brother Ernst of pericarditis, aged 14. On the manuscript of the work he defined as his official Opus One, the fairytale cantata Das klagende Lied, at the point where one of the two brothers in the forest lies down to rest - his sibling is about to slay him - the composer wrote 'Ernst' in the margin. Below are stanzas written out by Mahler in 1879.


Das klagende Lied got a look-in when I covered fairytales in the sixth Czech music class. Curious how events of great emotional significance have intruded on every instalment. Smetana's Má vlast, the fountainhead in so many ways, could be seen or heard in filmed or recorded concerts of special import: most recently, perhaps, when Rafael Kubelik returned to his newly-liberated country in 1990 (there are Japanese films of all the movements played by a conglomerate orchestra under him in Tyn Square, as wel as the famous sound recording of the Prague Spring Festival concert with the Czech Philharmonic). A thrilling, fast and often rough performance has been preserved from a radio broadcast of Václav Talich conducting the work under German occupation. It's so moving to hear the audience, in the midst of wild applause, break in to the Czech national anthem (which you get at the end of this excerpt - there's a complete performance on YouTube which stops before that point).


The Hussite chorale featured in Má vlast's last two symphonic poems, 'Tábor' and 'Blaník', runs through to Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968 - I need say no more of the significance of that. Tomorrow we'll be focusing on Martinu in the 1940s but also remembering Haas and other Jewish composers who were murdered under the Nazis. I steel myself once again for a tough time and will try not to blub again. Then, in just over a week's time, it will all be over - the 10 Czech music classes as well as the 10 Opera in Depth surveys of Jenůfa and Julietta (which the students now accept as another of the 20th century's greatest operas). My thanks to visitors Nicky Spence, Mark Wigglesworth, Jana Boušková and Josef Špaček. As for the latest special guest, I can't wait to expound on the three Monday afternoon hours we spent in the company of Gerald Barry, ostensibly covering his latest operatic masterpiece, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, but roving far and wide to embrace, among other things, Miss Marple, Edward and Mrs Simpson, The Power of the Dog and linen napkins daubed with lines from Beethoven's letters. More anon.

18 comments:

JohnG said...

Marvellous post, David. I hope that you keep well in these dark days (the subject of the post adding some welcome perspective). That 1939 Talich Ma Vlast is overwhelming, isn't it? The increasingly emotive response of the audience after each movement, and then what happens afterwards? Extraordinary to have it preserved. How much that music mattered.

David said...

Absolutely. I'm glad I have the joy of a Slavonic Dance from a Talich concert taking place around the same time to balance the sadness and grief we have to face in today's class.

And yes, thanks, in the little world things are fine, but increasingly what's happening in Little England fills me with a rage I don't know quite how to express. Plans are to leave, but not possible with ailing nonagenarian mothers to keep an eye on (I'm the only child). How about you?

JohnG said...

Good to hear that things are essentially fine, David. I quite understand your frustration. I'm a secondary school teacher and have to put up with the nonsense (literally non-sense) which is government policy - e.g. masks obligatory for the minute or so it takes to walk between lessons but not required in a poorly ventilated classroom for the duration of a 70-minute lesson; window restrictors and always-to-be-closed fire doors in place for 'health and safety' (sic), so that the government-provided carbon dioxide monitors merely confirm that rooms are often sky-high with exhaled air. It's desperate. The students are magnificent. I've written to my local MP, and to various school ministers, all of whom of course fob me off. But then we live in Boris's Britain where you must both work from home and party.

I found myself leafing last night through Stephen Johnson's excellent little book on Shostakovich... There's always perspective via music and good writing on music, so thank you as ever for your continued work. Currently I'm diverting myself with what strikes me as an excellent new disc of music inspired by the Kalevala on BIS - quite hooked on Madetoja's Kullervo.

Keep well, and courage, mon brave.

David said...

Not only do you have to put up with that, but also with the Ofsted police, eloquently countered in a recent article by that magnificent survivor Michael Rosen. I salute you - teachers and healthcare workers are, by and large, the best of us.

I'll need to investigate more 'Kullervo's than Sibelius's if, as intended, I pursue Finnish music in my summer Zoom course (next term is the turn of the Hungarians). Stephen's book is excellent.

JohnG said...

I meant to ask you David - and it's appropriate to your post - whether you've had the new Capriccio recording of Weinberg's The Passenger? What a powerful piece, I think. Extraordinary too our lateish (re)discovery of this composer.

Susan Scheid said...

You eloquently recount here so many remarkable acts of creation under the most impossible circumstances. Wishing you the very best for the holiday season, despite it all.

David said...

Good to read your message, Sue - I thought my most loyal blogfriend had given up. Blissful greetings from Italy, where everything WORKS thanks to vaccine passports for all restaurants, trains, museums and places of entertainment. Makes me sick how the UK's (mis)government has failed us yet again. We came by train on the last day when it was possible to travel via France from the UK. The sense of liberation is ENORMOUS.

Susan Scheid said...

Oh how glorious that you are both in Italy. Particularly right now! We just landed in NYC today after doing loads of packing and sorting, trips to donation sites, etc. etc., then spending the day today trying to fit what we brought into every available nook and cranny--like doing an enormously challenging jigsaw puzzle. Of course things aren't so good virus-wise right now, but at least, last time we were in (same pack, sort procedure), before Omicron really hit, we were able to visit with some friends we haven't seen, in some cases, since before March of last year, including one friend celebrating her 90th birthday (which she confessed at her gathering she hadn't been so sure she'd make it to the date). Christmas itself we'll spend with our indomitable 92 year old friend who has survived the whole period in a 4th floor walk-up in the city. Well, I see I am going on, and not even related to your marvelous post, with its message of hope despite the most dire of circumstances. To yours and J's good health, and enjoy your time in Italy (as I am certain you will).

John Graham, Edinburgh said...

According to Tilson Thomas' DVD on Mahler's life, he was born in Iglau, still in Bohemia. His father owned a tavern there.

David said...

Try checking most sources. Repeat: 'he was born in Kaliště before the family moved to nearby Jihlava'. Which is the Czech name for Iglau.

Is that it? Do we actually know each other or not, John?

David said...

Sue, I always want to hear all about what you two are up to. The jigaw puzzle of Omicron related rules and regulations is getting ever more complicated in Europe now. Greetings from Siena, where we are now staying in Sophie's splendid apartment (she's bought her hotel but doesn't expect to have it ready until next September).

John Graham said...

Thank you; I stand corrected, especially since the Tilson Thomas DVD supports what you write. Can you recommend a good biography of Mahler for the layperson, not too technical ? I've heard of Norman Lebrecht's book, but have yet to see a copy.

David said...

Never Norman, alwaus a reliable source of factual errors. As far as little books on Mahler go, Deryck Cooke's is still superb. I like letters and diaries, and of course Henri Louis de la Grange, who is readable but in multiple volumes.

You will see from the latest post that it's 34 years since we spent Xmas with you in Rome, and went off to Siena for a bit.

John Graham said...

Actually 33 years, Xmas 1988. We managed to inspect some interesting Jesuit churches, but I was ill with my excema and neurasthenia. I am not a robust traveller

David said...

I think you did jolly well and much fun was had in spite of it, no? And of course it was 33 years - that's how long J and I have been together. How's Edinburgh right now?

Unknown said...

Yes, you and J were in the same festival production in the previous August, when you started stepping out together. Edinburgh is fine though with a tendency to mass hibernation till mid-February at the earliest. Now I think of it, Norman's book on Mahler took a slating when it came out

David said...

it was Gianni Schicchi we both sang in - funnily enough just seen Damaiano Michieletto's new film of it on Italian TV. Stylish but not every funny.

Jonayhan Carr's The Real Mahler might be good - he writes well generally.

Unknown said...

Yes I attended your performance, in the Great Hall of Fettes College, wasn't it ? I remember the cast stayed with the Lambtons in Annandale St. Do you have any outstanding recordings from recent times that you might recommend ? I have a good quality CD player but no stereo download.