The German composer no-one wanted to know

Michael Haas says:

I’m pleased everyone is so complimentary about the “Entartete Musik” series, but its raison d’être was never to prove that this was music that belonged in the canon. It was music that was lost and highlighted a plurality of developments that was stymied. If Krása, Schulhoff, Klein and Pavel Haas (no relation, by the way) had lived, Prague would have been as vibrant in the early 20th century as Berlin and Vienna – even Paris, where much of their influence came from. Goldschmidt, on the other hand, was a child of his time, but in England he changed – his opera Beatrice Cenci and Mediterranean Songs are not so far away aesthetically from Britten and Tippet. In fact, Beatrice Cenci received a fantastic performance at the Bregenz Festival just before the pandemic struck. I started the series because there was, in the 1980s, a huge amount of discussion on art banned by the Nazis and what was clled “the literature of exile”. Music, beyond possibly Kurt Weill, was never mentioned in this context. It seemed strange and when dug deeper, it emerged that the reason music had been excluded from the conversation was, (to quote on important German musicologist) “had these composers not been Jewish, the Nazis would have loved their music”. They offered no expression of resistance or rebellion, only the pitiable display of assimilation that the post-war generation of German musicologists simply could not stomach. It was “the wrong sort of modernism”. Some of the music that was lost really does deserve, and is achieving a more established place in the repertoire. Indeed, there is more and more Zemlinsky, Schreker, Korngold, Braunfels to be heard these days and I personally don’t believe their place in the canon inappropriate. Janáček broke with the Germanic school of Czech music of Suk, Smetana, Dvořák and a generation of Czech composers followed. Martinů is the only one who is known today. I believe that Winterberg will come through as the representative of a generation of composers that grew out of Czechoslovakian self-assertion, and the irony in his story, is his ultimate refuge was in the Germany that only a few years before had murdered his mother and his teacher. Give it time. The piano concertos are new and wonderful, and in light of the fact that I don’t think a recently composed piano concerto has been able to establish itself in the repertoire, (or at least, not since Shostakovich), Winterberg may have something to offer audiences and jaded musicians alike.