Concert Features "Silenced" Music

By Viktoria Hertling


On November 14, 1936 - 65 years ago - a beloved statue of Felix Mendelssohn wasdestroyed in Leipzig, Germany. This violent act by the Nazis signaled that from then on, music by composers of Jewish faith or tradition would no longer be performed in the Third Reich. The
music of Mendelssohn, Salomon Sulzer, Jaques Offenbach,Gustav
Mahler, Max Bruch, Arnold Schoenberg, and many others was to be silenced forever.

Tonight, Nov. 15, the Argenta Quartet and Guest Artists will perform a special concert, "Silenced Voices," honoring composers whose music was silenced by Nazis.

Mendelssohn

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Nightingale Concert Hall.

Along with the prohibition against Jewish music came the systematic expulsion of Jewish musicians from concert halls and opera houses. The banishment began in early March 1933, just six weeks after Hitler's seizure of power. Bruno Walter, one of Germany's most famous conductors, had just returned to Berlin after a successful concert tour in the United States. Walter was informed that "certain difficulties" would arise should he decide to follow through with his scheduled guest appearance in Leipzig. The local Nazis had threatened to disrupt his concert - possibly by using explosives. A few days later, Walter was to conduct a concert at Berlin's Philharmonic Hall. Again, he was "advised" to cancel the performance in order to avoid "unpleasant occurrences."

As the Nazis consolidated their power, each month brought further restrictions, prohibitions, and anti-Jewish decrees. Between 1933 and 1939 more than 1,500 composers, conductors, concert masters, singers, members of orchestras, and musicologists were prohibited from performing and teaching because they were Jewish. Eventually; many left the country and went into exile. Some non-Jewish Germans also chose exile. Among them were the Nobel laureate for literature, Thomas Mann, the writers Heinrich Mann and Bertolt Brecht, and the movie star Marlene Dietrich.

Europe lost many of its best artists, scientists, and intellectuals. Most immigrated to the United States. America was enriched by such intellectual and creative giants as physicists Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi; artist Marc Chagall; novelist and poet Franz Werfel; filmmaker Billy Wilder; psychologist Bruno

Bettelheim; pianist Rudolf Serkin; architect Walter Gropius; conduc- tors Otto Klemperer and Erich Leinsdorf; soprano Lotte Lehmann; composers Schoenberg, Hanns Eisler, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Kurt Weill, and, of course, Walter.

"Silenced Voices" pays homage to those who were forced into exile, and commemorates those musicians and composers who could not escape the murderous regime of the Third Reich. This concert is also in memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust, their fates unknown and their names unspoken.
Gustav Mahler

Among the musicians whose voices were silenced, honored tonight are: baritone and cantor Erhard E. Wechselmann - murdered in Auschwitz; contralto Magda Spiegel - murdered in Auschwitz; Richard Breitenfeld, a member of the Frankfurt opera ensemble -murdered in Theresienstadt; James Simon, a student of Bruch - murdered in Auschwitz; and composer Viktor Ullmann - murdered in Auschwitz. Ullmann was a student of Schoenberg. As an inmate of Theresienstadt, Ullmann wrote the opera "The Emperor of Atlantis," a work that was given voice at its premiere in New York in 1977.

Particularly heart-wrenching is the fate of Mahler's niece. Alma Maria Rose was a renowned violinist. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, she escaped to France. There she was interned and eventually deported to Auschwitz. The orchestra of young female musicians that Rose founded in Auschwitz is memorialized in "Playing for Time," a book written by her surviving assistant conductor, the singer Fania Fenelon.

The Argenta Quartet features violinist Phillip Ruder, violist Virginia Blakeman, cellist Jon Lenz and pianist James Winn. Guest Artists are soprano Katharine DeBoer and clarinetist Charles Blakeman. Guest composer is Max Raimi, who was born is this country. Raimi is a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which has commissioned many of his compositions.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recently performed Mahler's Symphony on Sept. 9,2001 in Berlin's Philharmonic Hall... the concert hall from which Walter was banned in 1933.

Editors note: Viktoria Hertling is the director of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies.

What: The Argenta Quartet and Guest Artists perform "Silenced Voices."

When: 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov.15.

Where: Nightingale Concert Hall, Church Fine Arts Complex.

Cost: $13, general admission; $8 seniors, students and children.

Parking: Free, Brian Whalen Parking Garage immediately north of the complex.

Call: University Arts Box Office, 784-6847, or purchase at door.