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University Centre Auditorium
October 30, 2009
In 1929 Otto Klemperer conducted the Kroll Opera in Berlin in the premiere of a new work by Paul Hindemith, then still a fervent avant-gardiste.
The opera, Neues vom Tage (News of the Day) featured the sound of typewriters in the overture, an aria in the form of a business letter and the heroine singing, while in the bath, the praises of an electric hot-water system.
All good clean fun, we might imagine today. But this was during the autumn of the Weimar Republic, with political wolves of every stripe gathering to pick the carcass. And in the audience for one of the performances was Adolf Hitler, who was both shocked and repulsed by Hindemith's opera (reason enough, one might suggest, for a revival).
When the Great Psychopath eventually attained power, he decreed that Hindemith's compositions were Entartete Musik ("degenerate music"), a term later taken up, with enthusiasm, by Goebbels.
Although both the style and subject of Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler were fare more accessible, this cut no ice with the new regime, intent on subjugating the arts - as Richard L Evans shows in the second volume of his Third Reich Trilogy - more effectively and more viciously than any other totalitarian regime in history.
Matters came to a head with the first performance, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, of the three-movement symphony, also entitled Mathis der Maler, based upon material from the opera.
Public enthusiasm was seen not just as appreciation of the music, but as support for the ant-nazi flavour of the opera and for its composer. In a well-meaning, but politically naïve, gesture, Furtwängler, who had been told by Göring that the opera could not be staged without Hitler's permission, wrote a lengthy letter to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, attempting to divorce music from politics and defending Hindemith in particular.
The letter backfired and Mathis der Maler was banned by Hitler. From this moment, both Hindemith and Furtwängler were marked men: Hindemith's music was banned in its entirety in 1936 and he finally fled to Switzerland (where Mathis the opera was finally premiered) in 1938; Furtwängler, one of Germany's most prominent artists, hung on until early 1945 when, tipped off that the Gestapo had him in their sights, he too fled to Switzerland. According to Albert Speer, "Bormann, Goebbels, and especially Himmler had not forgotten...[Furtwängler's] stand on behalf of the proscribed composer Hindemith."
Friday night's wonderful Hallowe'en concert by the János Sándor and the UVic Orchestra ended with a spectacular performance of Hindemith's symphony.
The opening movement Engelkonzert (Angel Concert) was full of luminous tones and suffused with a colourful serenity. It built to a beautifully euphonious climax - as Isobel Baillie put it (in entirely a different context), "never louder than lovely".
Grablegung (Entombment), the sombre, reflective slow movement, featured some exceptional wind playing and the finale, Versuchung des heiligen Antonius (Temptation of St. Anthony) was simply stunning, from the marvellously-shaped recitativo opening, with its meticulous dynamics, to the tumultuous, but never noisy, final bars.
The Hindemith set the seal on an evening of superlative playing from the latest incarnation of the UVic orchestra - an orchestra consisting, apparently, of cats, mice, at least one tiger, pirates, an entire viola section of masked Zorros and much more, led by a concertmaster who had seemingly just stepped out for a break from the E.R. - an evening whose only familiar music was the opening work, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain.
The carefully-contoured swirling strings which opened the work immediately gave notice that the audience was in for something rather special. Every section of the orchestra seemed on top form: the sumptuous tone of the strings, the delicious woodwind, the powerful, yet never overbearing brass - all combining, in tutti passages, to make a rich, full yet never homogenised sound.
Dvorák's The Noon Witch is one of a trio of late and for some reason seldom-heard tone poems. Perhaps it is the eerie nature of the music, which is hardly what most people expect from this composer. This is a pity, as they contain some of Dorák's finest music.
Sándor directed a terrific performance, the jolly opening pages gradually giving way to something altogether different; the passage depicting the appearance of the witch herself suggested something very nasty indeed in the woodshed.
Of course Liszt's Mephisto Waltz No.1 is not exactly unfamiliar, but I'll wager few in the audience had heard the orchestral original before.
Once again the performance was meticulous in terms of pacing and dynamics, and quite thrilling.
Undoubtedly this latest UVic orchestra is the finest I've heard to date and the musicians should congratulate themselves. But to produce this kind of playing and such exciting and idiomatic performances from a group which has been playing as an orchestra for weeks rather than months takes a fine orchestral trainer and an equally perceptive musician - and not all conductors are both.
But János Sándor most certainly is.
Unforgettable.
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