On Monday, October 17, 2022 at 9:22:25 AM UTC-7, Roland van Gaalen wrote:
This is a 'retweet', as it were, of a part of a message posted here, in this newsgroup, by Oscar on 13 February 2021.
See below for the text I simply copied from Oscar's message.
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Roland van Gaalen
Amsterdam
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... erstwhile rmcr-er Henry Fogel contributed a fine review of Frits Zwart's new 1,354 pps. Mengelberg biography. A new paperback printing has arrived; the cloth-bound first printing was upward of US$250.
<< For those music lovers who have a strong interest in Willem Mengelberg’s conducting and for those who have an interest in the intersection of music and politics around the advent of Hitler and the Third Reich, these two volumes are essential
reading. Frits Zwart has done an enormous amount of research, and documented it well. The picture he paints of Mengelberg is not a pretty one. Anyone naïve enough to hold on to the feeling that artistic ability somehow signifies a humane and generous
person will be sufficiently disillusioned. At the same time, however, Zwart conveys his own regard, and that of the music world’s, for Mengelberg’s conducting.
No doubt reading such a massive biography is a chore––1,143 pages constitutes the narrative, and the remaining 186 pages are detailed appendices. One appendix is a 65-page listing of his entire repertoire, which is much broader than we might guess
from what he recorded. Another is devoted to the works of Mahler that Mengelberg conducted between 1904 and 1949. It makes one heartsick that only the Fourth Symphony, the Adagietto from the Fifth, and Songs of a Wayfarer survive on disc. The lack of
vision among record company executives has deprived us of a veritable treasure trove of other Mahler under a conductor very close to the composer. Just in the era of electrical recording, beginning in 1925, Mengelberg led performances of Symphonies Nos.
1–5 and 7–10, as well as multiple performances of Das Lied von der Erde. We are told in the narrative of the extraordinary reactions of German musicians and critics to Mengelberg’s way with Das Lied, which makes one ache to experience it, all the
more because some performances were with the great Dutch Heldentenor Jacques Urlus and Kerstin Thorborg (not together, but I’d be thrilled with either).
We have always known of Mengelberg as one of Mahler’s principal supporters, and his 1939 broadcast of the Fourth Symphony goes into my pantheon of the greatest recordings ever made. Zwart gives us much detail and texture about the relationship
between the two, which began in 1902 when Mengelberg was first introduced to the Third Symphony. He described Mahler as “the Beethoven of our time” and supported him and his music until the end of his career.
Zwart does not shy away from the difficult parts of Mengelberg’s personality: a childish vanity, a stubborn unwillingness to consider the feelings of others (disguised by the conductor and his supporters as “high standards”), and most seriously
his blindness about the Nazis. This is something we have always known but not in the detail given here. Mengelberg defended the Third Reich even while aware of what it was doing to Jews. Although he acted to save Jewish musicians and others who
approached him, Mengelberg seemed to isolate those compassionate acts into their own corner of his brain while he continued to declare that the German takeover of the Netherlands was a good thing. What makes his stance even more inexplicable is that
despite Mengelberg’s passionate support of Mahler, and the fact that the Nazi authorities totally banned performances of Mahler’s music, the conductor found a way to compartmentalize the two things.
We also get incredible detail about the last period in Mengelberg’s life, after he was banished by the Dutch for his treasonable support of the German occupation, which led to heartbreaking attempts by him and his supporters to explain away his
actions. Even if you don’t have a strong interest in Mengelberg the conductor, these chapters are remarkable for how much they reveal about what life was like during the war and the post-war era. Ironically, the very last concert Mengelberg ever
conducted was a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on June 21, 1944, with the Paris Radio Orchestra. It had been added to his tour under orders from the Wehrmacht, and German soldiers filled the hall.
These two volumes provide a wealth of information about musical life during the first half of the 20th century. The reactions of other artists to Mengelberg (and his to them) provide a good deal of insight. They also demonstrate the self-absorbed and
self-serving behavior of the conductor, who often played the New York Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw Orchestra off against each other while he was Music Director of both orchestras and both wanted more of his time. His approach to conflict was to run
from it, frequently by simply not responding to people’s requests.
For me there is one shortcoming in Zwart’s work: He deals only tangentially with Mengelberg’s recordings. The Mengelberg discography is one of the most important ones from the first half of the 20th century, and a particularly dramatic example of a
style of performance that largely vanished after World War II. In such a thorough examination of Mengelberg I would have expected a much greater attention to, and analysis of, those recordings––or at least a description of the inestimable importance
they hold today, which could have been tied in with a description of the recording process in the earliest days of gramophone technology. But there is precious little.
That aside, Zwart’s account makes fascinating reading and is well worth the considerable investment in time that reading more than 1,000 pages will require. Zwart’s work will probably not change your opinion of Mengelberg. I continue to admire his
conducting enormously, and at the same time find some aspects of his personality repulsive. This compendious biography makes clear the complexity of the man and helps us understand, if we did not already, that people are complicated beings. Those with
special talent are even more so.
— Henry Fogel, Fanfare Archive >>
(Upcoming radio program):
https://www.wfmt.com/2022/11/13/willem-mengelberg-and-the-concertgebouw-orchestra
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