Hans Pfitzner and antisemitism, 2024

This Week in Classical Music: April 29, 2024. Hans Pfitzner: antisemitism then and today. We are remembering the German composer Hans Pfitzner, who was born on May 5^th of 1869, not because of his talent – he was a conservative composer with certain gifts, but not more than that – but because of the antisemitism on our campuses. Pfitzner was a nationalist who was taken by the Nazi ideas; he met Hitler as early as 1923 (Hitler visited him in a hospital where Pfitzer was recovering after surgery). Pfitzner was very impressed, but not Hitler, he even decided that Pfitzner was half-Jewish. It took poor Pfitzner many years to get rid of this reputational blemish. Pfitzner lived in an atmosphere of unmitigated antisemitism, and while himself a vocal antisemite who thought that Jews, especially foreign Jews, presented a danger to German spiritual life and culture, he was not a “total” antisemite like the Nazi leadership, he was an antisemite “with exceptions.” For example, he refused to write the music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream when the Nazis decided to replace the Jewish Mendelssohn’s classical score – unlike Carl Orff, who was happy to oblige. Pfitzner tried to help some Jewish musicians, in particular his good friend the music critic Paul Cossmann: Pfitzner was instrumental in saving Cossmann’s life in 1933 when he was arrested by the Gestapo but was helpless in 1942 when Cossmann was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he perished several months later. Of course, Pfitzner was not an exception: during the Nazi period, German society as a whole was antisemitic. It was this societal antisemitism and, consequently, utter indifference to the fate of the Jews that allowed the Nazis to proceed with the “Final solution.”

After WWII and the Holocaust, antisemitism became an unacceptable trait, in all Western countries. So who could imagine that in 2024 the campuses of our elite universities would become centers of organized antisemitism? That Hamas supporters would become moral leaders of our most privileged youth, that we would hear the chants of “October 7^th Every Day!”? What is worse, instead of acting responsibly and resisting antisemitism, university administrators equivocate, and so do many in our media. This is disheartening, and we don’t see the light at the end of this especially dark tunnel.

Prkofiev, Menuhin, Pamphili 2024

This Week in Classical Music: April 22, 2024. Prokofiev, Menuhin and Pamphili. Classical Connect is still in turmoil, so we’ll be brief. Sergey Prokofiev, one of the most important

composers of the first half of the 20^th century, was born this week. The English-language wiki gives his birth date as April 27^th of 1891, the Russian one – as April 23^rd, and so does Grove Music. It’s even more confusing because at the end of the 19^th century, Russia was still using the “old style” Julian calendar, according to which Prokofiev was born on April 11^th (or April 15^th). Even the English spelling of his first name differs in different sources: with an “i” at the end in Wiki, but a “y” in Grove and Britannica. None of which matters much; what is important is his undeniable talent as a composer and pianist. Prokofiev left Russia after the Revolution of 1917 but then returned, unexplainably in retrospect, to the Soviet Union in 1936. He wasn’t the only one: dozens of Russian emigres, writers, artists, composers, even the members of the White Guard, returned to their land of birth, driven by nostalgia and Soviet propaganda, many of them to be arrested and killed. Prokofiev was spared, even if for some years his position was tenuous. We’ve written about Prokofiev many times, you can read more, for example, here and here.

Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinists of the 20^th century, was born in New York on this day in 1916. And we want to remember Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, born on April 25^th of 1653 in Rome. He was an important patron of arts, especially favoring composers (Handel was one of them), and a fine librettist. You can read about him here.

Marriner 100

This Week in Classical Music: April 15, 2024. Marriner, Maderna. Sir Neville Marriner, a great English conductor, was born one hundred years ago today, on April 25^th of 1924 in Lincoln, Nevill Marriner UK. He started as a violinist, played in different orchestras and chamber ensembles, and in 1958 founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the chamber orchestra that became world famous. Among Marriner’s friends and founding members were Iona Brown, who led the orchestra for six years from 1974 to 1980, and Christopher Hogwood, who later founded the Academy of Ancient Music. Marriner and St Marin in the Fields made more recordings than any other ensemble-conductor pair. Their repertoire was very broad, from the mainstay of the baroque and classical music of the 18^th century to Mahler, Janáček, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and other composers of the 20^th. In the words of Grove Music, Marriner’s performances were “distinguished by clarity, buoyant vitality, crisp ensemble, and technical polish.” Altogether, Marriner made 600 recordings, more than any other conductor except for Karajan. In 1969 Marriner co-founded the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, he served as the music director of the ensemble till 1978. Marriner was active till the very end of his life; he died in London on October 2^nd of 2016, at 92.

Bruno Maderna, one of the most interesting and influential composers of the 20^th century, was born in Venice on April 21^st of 1920. Here’s our entry from some years ago.

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