Bruno Walter, composer?

Bruno Walter, composer?

Album Of The Week

norman lebrecht

May 05, 2023

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

Context is a shocking thing. Looking through a list of concerts performed by inmates at the Theresienstadt concentration camp between 1942 and 1944, I was taken aback to find a chamber work by Bruno Walter. Most of the music performed was either by major Austrian and Czech names, with a fair sampling by composers who were themselves incarcerated in the camp — Ullmann, Haas, Krasa, Ilse Weber — all destined for deportation to the Auschwitz death camp.

Bruno Walter was an outlier in this company…

 

Read on here.

And here.

In the Critic here.

En francais ici.

Comments

  • Robert Holmén says:

    “The Vienna-based Aron Quartet play them with a tad too much seriousness…”

    If you don’t give the material your full effort, you don’t know if it was any good.

    – Johnny Carson

    • Peter San Diego says:

      NL, I think, refers to an overly serious of mien in performance, not to making an excess of effort in the preparation.

      • Robert Holmén says:

        JC, I think, refers not to an *excess* of effort but to giving the work its proper effort.

        Comedy, like music, has to be done just right to be right.

    • Peter San Diego says:

      I meant “an overly serious mien”, of course. Pardon the goof.

  • Mr. Ron says:

    Good stuff and great find.

    I have a NY Phil recording with Walter speaking. He was extraordinary in his clarity and spoke with great precision, even in English, not his first language, of course. It’s the best English I’ve ever heard.

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