Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  One week later, Furtwängler withdrew his acceptance. His short statement, sent from Luxor, Egypt, was at once high-minded and patronizing:

  Political controversies disagreeable to me. Am not politician but exponent of German music, which belongs to all humanity regardless of politics. I propose postpone my season in the interests of the Philharmonic Society and music until the public realizes that politics and music are apart.102

  Once again, Furtwängler had insisted that politics and art were discrete realms. He claimed that as an artist he stood outside the political sphere. His brief message suggested that he believed the American public, which viewed his appointment and actions as inseparable from German politics, was unable to grasp this evident truism. Music belonged to all, he theorized; yet the policies and ideology of the German government, which had allowed Furtwängler to return to the podium, belied the notion.

  Even as the Philharmonic announced Furtwängler’s decision, which spared the orchestra from having to rethink its choice, the executive committee released a statement of its own, which was reported across the country. It “regretfully” accepted the German musician’s wishes and observed that New York was losing one of the world’s great conductors. The committee reminded the public that the German maestro was not a member of any political party in Germany, and it “deplore[d] the political implications that ha[d] been read into the appointment.”103

  Furtwängler’s withdrawal occasioned no shortage of reaction across the country, with the majority of publications characterizing it positively. “Nazi Stays Home,” trumpeted a Time headline.104 And according to the Baltimore Sun, while Furtwängler believed politics and music should be kept separate, it was not clear he had observed that ideal in practice.105

  In contrast, the Washington Post sought to take the high road, or so the editors likely imagined. The newspaper spoke of New York’s “intolerance and stupidity,” which had deprived the city of a distinguished conductor. Assuming a patronizing stance, the editors wondered whether the public could ever comprehend the chasm separating politics from the “universality of true art.” According to the Post, it was fatuous for Furtwängler’s detractors to claim that his appointment had any political significance. He had tried to steer clear of politics, and it was absurd to contend that his selection reflected support for the Nazi regime. Such a position, the paper argued, could be explained by the way “religious and racial hatreds” distorted people’s judgment. The editors then leveled one of the more shameful allegations to emerge during the entire episode, declaring that those responsible for Furtwängler’s resignation were “following in the footsteps of the Nazis” by viewing the “artist as a political agent of the state.” Furtwängler’s opponents were guilty of politicizing art.106

  The New York press offered a more straightforward assessment of the episode. According to the Sun, those who had selected the German had disregarded the composition of the orchestra’s subscribers, the majority of whom were Jews, a group offended by the appointment of someone who was “generally” thought to be a Nazi and who certainly “enjoyed the favor of the Nazi government.” As a result, economic considerations explained the orchestra’s growing distress, as the executive committee feared Jewish subscribers would flee.107

  Writing in the Brooklyn Eagle two weeks after the debacle ended, music critic Winthrop Sargeant reflected on the matter of boycotting musicians who, as in Furtwängler’s case, had compromised with the Nazi regime. As the conductor was an “officer of the German state,” it was appropriate in this instance, that “politics . . . took precedence over art.” But Sargeant wondered whether this should always be so, and he feared that in New York the balance might have tipped too far. The relationship between art and politics had assumed a wartime character, he suggested. There was a “cultural cost” to such musical “reprisals,” Sargeant explained, especially since Germany was the source of “modern musical culture.” To be sure, he did not defend developments inside Germany and he sympathized with those who wished to repudiate the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, Sargeant declared, the “hysteria” that led Germany to expel many of its leading musicians and ban some of its greatest compositions did not preclude questioning whether it was prudent to emulate Nazi musical policies.108

  Whether New Yorkers would lament being deprived of a German contribution to the city’s musical culture remained an open question. What was certain was that Wilhelm Furtwängler would not conduct the New York Philharmonic in the fall of 1936. His fate had been sealed by the opposition that had boiled over in New York, especially among those who refused to support an artist whose ties to a malevolent regime were, at best, questionable—and possibly worse than that. While this would not be the end of America’s flirtation with the German conductor, his next opportunity to share his interpretive gifts with American audiences would not occur for more than a decade. That relationship, too, would not be consummated.

  There was no small irony in the fact that on April 29, 1936, six weeks after the conclusion of the Furtwängler episode, when Arturo Toscanini returned to the stage after the intermission of his final concert with the Philharmonic, he conducted only Wagner, whose music had generated such fury not many years before. But now, a few weeks after New Yorkers had rallied to prevent a German conductor from coming to their city, the Carnegie Hall audience stamped and cheered when the “Ride of the Valkyries” brought Toscanini’s Philharmonic tenure to an end. In a city where riots had once exploded over performing Wagner, the crowd thrilled to the music.109 There was further irony in the fact that amidst New York’s convulsion over the Furtwängler appointment, another Philharmonic conductor with a history, Josef Stransky, passed from the scene at the age of sixty-one. As some surely recalled, in an earlier time, the talented Austrian had faced charges of disloyalty, which led many to try to knock him off the podium.110 Some twenty years later, Teutonic musicians, particularly those with dubious ties to unsavory regimes, could still inflame the public.

  But the man Furtwängler was meant to replace, Arturo Toscanini, was not ready to lay down his baton. Although he had decided to step away from the Philharmonic, he would remain a leading figure in the classical-music world, and continue to play a key role in the developing conflict with Nazi Germany. In late February 1936, the month his resignation from the Philharmonic was announced, Toscanini accepted an invitation to go to Palestine to direct some concerts given by a new orchestra comprising Jewish musicians, many of whom were refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Helping to organize the ensemble was Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who invited the Italian to join him in this noble enterprise, claiming the maestro’s support would be crucial in both the fight against Nazism and the construction of Palestine. For his part, Toscanini asserted that it was everyone’s duty to help the cause.111 Privately, he wrote about his commitment to the new orchestra. Calling himself an “honorary Jew,” he said he would be leading some performances there.112

  A few months after the announcement, Huberman let it be known that Toscanini’s first concert with the young ensemble would include the music of Mendelssohn, whose compositions the Nazis had banned. In performing music from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Toscanini was clearly determined to send a message to the Nazi leadership and to the people of Palestine.113

  In December 1936, accompanied by his wife, Toscanini arrived in Palestine, where he would conduct the inaugural concerts of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Alexandria, and Cairo. The ensemble had seventy-two musicians, of whom about half were German, while the rest hailed from Poland and Russia, with a handful from Palestine.114 During the Toscaninis’ stay, there was memorable music-making, of course, but the trip extended beyond the joys of the concert hall.115 After the first concert in Jerusalem, attended by sixteen hundred people, the maestro, sounding like a diplomat, said it was the “happiest moment” of his life. “Just think, to have been able to conduct a modern, first-class orchestra in the Holy City, the cradle of three great religion
s of the world.”116

  Still more moving, New Yorkers learned, was Toscanini’s trip to a settlement, Ramot Hashavim, where he was greeted by a chorus of school children, who sang a Hebrew song composed for the occasion. The musician and his wife, accompanied by Huberman, were presented with the title and deed to an orange grove in the Jewish settlement, and given baskets of oranges, grapefruits, honey, and eggs. They were then taken to the mayor’s cottage, where they had a glass of wine and heard the history of the three-year-old settlement, which was peopled by sixty German refugee families. With no small pride, the mayor’s wife told Toscanini that the settlement possessed seven pianos. Clearly moved, the conductor told Huberman, “I never before saw a country as small as this where there was so much culture as among the Jewish farmer and labor classes.”117

  If these were his public reflections, Toscanini’s private comments were still more effusive. Writing to a mistress from Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, he said, “From the moment I set foot in Palestine I’ve been living in a continuous exaltation of the soul.” He called Palestine the “land of miracles,” and said,

  the Jews will eventually have to thank Hitler for having made them leave Germany. I’ve met marvelous people among these Jews chased out of Germany—cultivated people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, transformed into farmers, working the land, and where there were dunes, sand, a short time ago, today these areas have been transformed into olive groves and orange groves.118

  If the maestro’s first trip to the Holy Land was remarkable, his return in the spring of 1938 was equally meaningful. The tale of the Toscaninis’ second trip, which included concerts in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, was described to New Yorkers in their daily papers and noted in other papers, as well. Among the journey’s emotional highpoints was a return to the Jewish settlement. This time, the settlers gathered to greet the couple, offering Mrs. Toscanini branches filled with orange blossoms from the Toscaninis’ grove and a basket of oranges for the maestro.119 As before, the concerts were extraordinary events. In Haifa, seventeen hundred heard him interpret Mendelssohn and Schubert, with many more turned away because they could not obtain tickets. The audience was thrilled and the curtain calls endless.120

  In Tel Aviv, New Yorkers read, some three thousand filled the hall for a concert that was given especially for working people, though twice that number actually heard the performance, since by custom, those less well off shared their tickets with others at the intermission. Readers learned the maestro’s chauffeur, Morris Zlatopolsky, was disappointed that his wife had been unable to attend because she was pregnant. Upon hearing this, the conductor spoke with Mrs. Toscanini and the two proceeded to the chauffeur’s home to have tea with the driver and his wife. The Toscaninis wandered around Tel Aviv, entering small shops and watching children play. “I like to go into Jewish homes, eat Jewish food and feel the pulse of Jewish life,” the conductor explained.121

  The ensemble’s offerings in Tel Aviv were striking, as Toscanini included Wagner on the program, marking the first time the composer’s music had been played in Palestine since Hitler came to power. Distilling a bitter debate that had raged for some time down to a simple statement, the maestro declared, “Nothing should interfere with music.”122

  Explaining the meaning of the Italian’s presence to the people of Palestine and to Jewish people everywhere, Bronislaw Huberman, who had traveled from Europe to hear the concerts, remarked, “In these sad days of trial, when everything appears so black for Jews,” Toscanini’s trip to Palestine “is appreciated beyond words.” The Jews realize he is “a true . . . friend.”123

  In 1938, Toscanini again acted on the conviction that music was inseparable from the wider world, when he stepped down from the Salzburg Festival, where, since 1934, he had led symphonic concerts and operatic productions after leaving Bayreuth a few years earlier.124 But even before his 1938 departure, Salzburg was hardly free of politics. Indeed, two years before resigning, the maestro had caused a stir when he forbade the Austrian government from broadcasting his Salzburg performances into Germany, rejecting an agreement that was part of a cultural exchange treaty between the two countries. If his performances were beamed into Nazi Germany, he declared, he would leave Salzburg and not return, a threat the Austrians were not inclined to test.125

  The following year, during an extraordinary summer of music-making in the Austrian city, the Italian conductor and Wilhelm Furtwängler had a much-publicized clash, though the exact details of the 1937 encounter remain hazy.126 To Toscanini’s distress, the German had been invited to appear at the festival that summer for the first time, directing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in a concert Toscanini believed either he or Bruno Walter should have conducted. Whatever Toscanini’s feelings about the Furtwängler invitation, the review of the Beethoven in the New York Times was devastating, with Herbert Peyser claiming Furtwängler’s talents had undergone “a kind of spiritual deterioration.”127

  There was speculation that Furtwängler had been invited to the Austrian festival (where distinguished artists performed who were unable or unwilling to work in Germany) so as to placate the German government, which had sometimes made it difficult for German singers to participate. By asking Furtwängler to conduct in Salzburg, the Austrians hoped the Nazi regime would relax the restrictions it had imposed in order to diminish the festival’s quality. Although Toscanini had initially threatened to step down because of the Furtwängler invitation, he fulfilled his 1937 Salzburg commitment, while insisting that Furtwängler not be engaged the next season and that he (Toscanini) not be invited to any functions that the German conductor might attend.128 When Furtwängler heard this, he reportedly decided to seek out the Italian musician so they could discuss the source of Toscanini’s anger. Here the tale grows unclear.

  In one account, which set tongues wagging in Salzburg, Furtwängler met with Toscanini and told him if the Bayreuth Festival was not held the following summer, he would probably conduct concerts, and possibly operas, in Salzburg. In response, Toscanini said the Bayreuth conductor (Furtwängler) should perform at Bayreuth, not in Salzburg, and the Salzburg conductor (Toscanini) should perform in the Austrian city, not Bayreuth.129 A few days later, the tense encounter between the two musicians was described in the American press as the “sensational Salzburg colloquy,” in which Toscanini had told Furtwängler “that the Prussian State Councillor, who conducted at Baireuth [sic] and thus embodied a certain ideology,” should stay away from Salzburg.130 Other accounts suggested the meeting had focused on the appropriate relationship between music and politics, with Furtwängler assuming his well-known stance, contending the former had nothing to do with the latter.131

  While it is impossible to say precisely what occurred, Toscanini’s letters in this period reveal the Italian’s antipathy for Furtwängler and Germany, along with his disdain for the Austrians. Writing to Bruno Walter, Toscanini wondered why the Austrian government and the director of the Vienna State Opera had asked Furtwängler to come to Salzburg. For what reason had they invited this “most humble servant of Messrs. Hitler, Goebbels, and company? It’s a mystery! Artistically, there was no need!” Surely, others could lead the Beethoven Ninth. “These Austrian gentlemen ought to be sincere, for once—they must not continue to do conjuring tricks. Either in or out. Either for or against Nazism! Either the devil or the holy water. . . . I am withdrawing forever from the theater.” 132 It is suffocating, he said.

  A few days later, writing to his mistress Ada Mainardi, Toscanini vented further: “[I]f they don’t liquidate Furtwängler I won’t move from here! I want to teach a lesson to those ill-bred Nazis. I thought that the inclusion of F. was a political decision . . . that through him they would get the singers needed at Salzburg, but on the contrary, it’s to please him. Let him stay out in the cold!”133 Writing again to Mainardi, Toscanini wondered about her travel plans and those of her husband, asking if they would go from Milan on to Germany: “Damn that country! You two are poisoned by those
. . . rude massive Germans! I hate them. I’ve always hated them, since long before Hitler.”134

  The maestro’s letters reveal how deeply affected he was by events at Salzburg during the summer of 1937, and how the Furtwängler invitation had intruded on his work in a setting he adored. As a coda to the summer’s developments, the following November, the press reported that Toscanini had achieved an apparent victory in Salzburg, when the program for the 1938 season did not include an appearance by Furtwängler.135 But things would unfold rather differently in the summer of 1938, as Toscanini would be the absent maestro.

  In February 1938, the roiling waters of European politics again unsettled the world of classical music. That month, German designs on Austria reached a fateful stage when Hitler parleyed with the Austrian chancellor and demanded changes that would allow Germany to exercise control over the Austrian government. At Hitler’s insistence, the Austrian cabinet would be restructured, giving pro-German figures important positions; in addition, Vienna would be compelled to coordinate its foreign and economic policies with those in Berlin.136 This combination of demands set the stage for the Anschluss, the absorption of Austria by Germany, which would occur in March. Like many others in the United States, Toscanini watched events in Austria closely, and in mid-February, having had enough of Germany’s malevolent intriguing, and before an independent Austria was completely swallowed up a few weeks later, he announced that he would not appear at Salzburg that summer.137

  Americans across the country learned of the maestro’s decision.138 In Baltimore, the Sun claimed the Italian was a man who “reads the signs of the times and acts . . . with the same discriminating accuracy he gives a musical score.” After highlighting Toscanini’s many stands against fascism in Italy and Germany over the past few years, the editors praised his bold action.139