Sandwiched between these two less familiar works was Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto. I guess the inclusion of this warhorse was intended to prove Schoenberg’s point, that Brahms was a “progressive” composer; but for me the more interesting juxtaposition was that of orchestra and pianist. Yefim Bronfman emigrated from his native Russia in 1973 to live in Israel, where his family could escape the suffocating anti-Semitism of the Brezhnev era. Though Bronfman is now a US citizen, he remains a vigilant defender of the Jewish state.
The Vienna Philharmonic, by contrast, was secretive about its role under Hitler until March this year, when it finally opened its archives. Almost half its musicians were Nazi party members, far more than the Austrian average, while 13 of them were kicked out for the crime of being Jewish or married to Jews. Five were murdered; none ever returned. As for the New Year’s Concert, with its Strauss waltzes: that too, it seems, was invented by Nazi propagandists.
Its sinister past notwithstanding, the VPO famously makes a uniquely recognisable sound and its Brahms with Bronfman was sublime. Has Vienna learnt anything since Schoenberg’s day? Haas tells the story of the Jewish Viennese composer Erich Korngold, whose family recall what happened when he returned after the war from exile in Hollywood to visit what had been his villa in Vienna’s wealthy Cottageviertel. A neighbour greeted him thus: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Professor Korngold! I don’t believe my eyes! You’re in Vienna! When are you going back home?”
1:04 PM