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August 3, 2001/Av 14, 5761, Vol. 53, No.43
Decision to play Wagner in Israel sparks debate
PAULINE DUBKIN YEARWOOD
Chicago Jewish News
A week after Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Daniel Barenboim shocked the world by playing music by composer Richard Wagner in Israel, members of Chicago's Jewish and musical communities remain divided over his actions.
Many say they can see arguments on both sides of the issue.
Barenboim, a Jew and an Israeli citizen, told news media after the July 8 performance that he hoped his surprise decision would stir debate over Israel's informal, 50-year taboo against performances of Wagner's music. In Chicago, it has certainly done that.
The CSO conductor is one of the world's leading interpreters of Wagner, an openly anti-Semitic German who died in 1883. Wagner was Adolph Hitler's favorite composer, and his pieces were often played during Nazi public gatherings and propaganda events.
Barenboim had originally planned to play a Wagner piece at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem, Israel's most prestigious arts festival. But after protests by Holocaust survivors and others, he agreed to leave it off the program after festival authorities asked him not to perform it.
Instead, after the concert, Barenboim stepped on stage and told the audience that he would lead the orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle, in an encore. The music: the Prelude to Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde."
Barenboim, speaking in Hebrew, told audience members that they had the choice of leaving or staying to hear the music. After some heckling, about 50 people left, while more than a thousand stayed. The Wagner piece concluded to thunderous applause.
Although Barenboim originally told news media that he had spontaneously decided to play the piece after he arrived in Israel, when he happened to hear a cell phone programmed to ring with a Wagner phrase, a Chicago Tribune story later reported that the conductor had discussed plans to play Wagner with the orchestra, had rehearsed the piece, and had brought along from Germany two harps that were not used in any of the other works on the program.
On Barenboim's home turf in Chicago, several people commented that there are really two issues involved: the debate over playing Wagner in Israel and Barenboim's conduct at the festival. Those issues should be dealt with separately, said Robert Yaffe, associate regional director of the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago and a passionate fan of opera and of Richard Wagner in particular.
Yaffe stressed that his opinion was his own, not that of the JCCs.
He said he believes Wagner's work should be played everywhere, including Israel, because of its "immense importance in the history of music. (Wagner) revolutionized music in the 20th century," he said. "Practically every composer in the 20th century has been influenced by him."
Yaffe said that in the current controversy, some people mistakenly believe that Wagner was Hitler's "court composer," when in fact, he died some 50 years before the Third Reich began. "I think Hitler's hatred of Jews, what he did, would have occurred with or without Wagner," he said.
"Wagner was a despicable human being; that can't be denied," Yaffe added. "He hated Jews, he hated the French, he was a notorious adulterer. But his music is something else altogether. By banning his music, we're really giving Hitler and the Nazis the final word on this."
On the issue of Barenboim's actions, Yaffe said he "was a little disturbed by the manner in which he did it. A commitment was a commitment, and he did commit not to do it. Although I wouldn't totally condemn Barenboim for what he did, I feel that if Wagner is going to be played in Israel, let it come through the front door, not the back door."
For Holocaust survivor Charles Lipshitz, any performance of Wagner in Israel would be outrageous. Lipshitz, president of Sheerith Hapleitah, an umbrella organization of Chicago-area Holocaust survivor groups, called Barenboim's act "a very tricky thing, very unprofessional.
"Many people went to the concert knowing that he agreed not to play the music of Wagner, which was the anti-Semitic music of Adolph Hitler," he said. "There is so much other beautiful music - why make some people feel bad, even if it's only a few people?"
To Jonathan Levine, regional director of the American Jewish Committee and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., the Barenboim/Wagner discussion "has been escalated way out of proportion.
"The issue is the importance of artistic freedom versus the importance of sensitivity to Holocaust survivors and others for whom Wagner is anathema," he said. "It's one of those issues where decent people can agree to disagree without calling each other names."
Levine added that he believes banning Wagner in Israel "creates an artistic vacuum. "We must be sensitive to the concerns and feelings of Holocaust survivors and we must also be sensitive to Israel as a free market society when it comes to the arts." he said.
"No one is forced to attend concerts where Wagner is being performed," he added. "Even Barenboim gave them the option of leaving, and a few did. But most did not. That to me suggests that there is no consensus any longer in Israel on this issue."
Victor Aitay, concertmaster emeritus of the Chicago Symphony and a Holocaust survivor who was rescued by Raoul Wallenberg, said it's impossible to decide the issue from Chicago because the atmosphere in Israel is so different. However, he said, "I personally wouldn't have pressed it. This is not a political issue, this is an emotional issue, and emotions are high.
"It's very difficult to separate the person from the work, and if you can, then naturally you can appreciate Wagner's genius. But not everybody has arrived at that point yet."
Lori Lippitz, the founder and leader of Chicago's Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, said she has "a little opinion on each side." On one hand, she said, is the fact that Barenboim made a commitment not to play Wagner and broke that commitment: "It's a simple question of trust."
On the other side, she said, is her belief that "people who play music own it. If Wagner knew that Jews would be sitting in a concert hall listening to his music being played by Jews, he probably would be spinning in his grave. Yet, we can take the power and majesty he had to offer, re-translate it and give it a Jewish soul. Then, we own it."
Lippitz said her band has played in Austria and Germany many times. "We had Austrians dancing under a beer tent to Chasidic music," she said. "They flew us in and paid us for it. It was a kind of coup. We are the next generation and we can write the history that is happening now."
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