25 years after the Decca series, Entartete Musik is still barely heard

Cynical Bystander says:

I bought all of the sets as they were released by Decca and the book by Michael Haas which were a revelation to me at the time. Few, if any, of the works or composers have found a secure place in the standard repertoire since they were composed, the Nazi’s nothwithstanding. This may be in part due to the conservatism of the audiences and not just necessarily in a political sense.

Much of the music of the middle 20th century has and was being ignored before Haas’s excavations, which is clearly different from being suppressed, and I always felt that Decca’s Entartete Musik series was incomplete, in part due to commercial pressures caused by indifference of the listening public.

I admit that most of my discs have been played only once, Korngold the exception, and this reminder might help me revisit this fascinating period in the lost byways of 20th century composition. But for every ‘degenerate’ composer there are as many who are just overlooked by those who decide what the repertoire will be. Even rediscovered operas rarely get more than a a single run of performance before being put back into the curiosity box.

Michael Haas says:

As this is a series I initiated, perhaps I may be allowed to express an opinion on its legacy: There is no question that a number of composers we featured have been taken up by orchestras, soloists and ensembles. The mere fact that a string quartet is now named Pavel Haas Quartet would suggest that certain names have gained significant recognition. Every one of the operas we recorded was taken up by an opera house somewhere in Germany, Switzerland or Austria. The series should have continued with works by Hans Gál, Egon Wellesz and Ernst Toch. An important characteristic to acknowledge is that music is actually something quite local. The plurality of voices in inter-war Berlin was different to that in Vienna, Prague, Budapest or Warsaw. The revival of names lost during the NSDAP years is inevitably local. Austria and Germany have both seen continuing interest and revivals of the composers featured in the “Entartete Musik” series as well as those we missed out. Osnabrück performed a superb “Das Lied der Nacht” by Hans Gál; Die deutsche Oper performed “Das Wunder der Heliane” – 100 times better than the Decca recording. Bregenz has just performed Berthold Goldschmidt’s “Beatrice Cenci” and Braunfels is almost established as a recognised name among German concert attendees. The fact that Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts and the Austrian government have handed us the wherewithal to repatriate the incalculable number of musical estates strewn across the globe at our exil.arte Centre indicates commitment to bringing this “local” repertoire back to those audiences from whence it was taken. The UK and the US inevitably see these composers from their perspective. Universal Music is American and Decca was British. The Anglo-American centricity of their view is very much the reason the recordings have probably not been made available again. It isn’t a phenomenon that affected them except as recipients of cultural émigrés – most of whom were happy to be alive and could only make the contribution to local cultures that local cultures were prepared to accept. Sometimes these were significant, but normally, the creativity in exile was diminished. Another issue that arises in the restoration of composers lost during the Nazi years, is the question of cultural ownership. Karol Rathaus, an important composer in inter-war Berlin considered himself Austrian. He was born in Tarnopol, which after the First World War became Polish and after the Second became Soviet-Ukrainian. He found refuge in the then not terribly prestigious Queens College in Queens New York. When he died, nobody knew who he was beyond his position as a much admired music teacher who appeared to be able to play the entire repertoire by memory on the piano. The fact that he was the first serious music composer to deliver a film score (before Korngold) or that he and Alfred Döblin were once mentioned as possible competition to Weill and Brecht, or his many film scores in Paris and London or his commissioned ballet from the Royal Opera House….well, nobody knew about those things. His compositions remained unclaimed by Austria, the country he patriotically called his own; by Germany where he made his career or indeed France or Great Britain. Ultimately, Poland has settled on claiming Rathaus as one of their own and one hopes to see future revivals. The complexities of music, tastes and an international market being catered to by a multi-national entertainment Golem facing down executives with quarterly results means the “Entartete Musik” series has become history. The music, however continues to live on and it is being revived in those countries which are most able to value it.