Archives for December 2010

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working my way through Adolf Busch: The Life of an Honest Musician, Tully Potter’s massive two-volume biography of the greatest German violinist of the twentieth century, who is best known in this country for having co-founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival with Rudolf Serkin, his son-in-law and recital partner. Potter’s book is far too long for the ordinary reader, but so wonderfully well written and researched that anyone with more than a casual interest in Busch and his times will find it an unexpectedly easy read.
Part of what makes Adolf Busch: The Life of an Honest Musician so interesting, though, is that it also contains a bitingly frank account of how Germany’s classical musicians behaved under the Nazi regime. Busch, it turns out, was the only well-known non-Jewish German classical musician who conducted himself impeccably: he canceled all of his concert dates in Germany a few weeks after Hitler came to power in 1933, declaring himself to be disgusted by “the actions of my Christian compatriots against German Jews.”
I knew that most German musicians had collaborated with the Hitler regime in one way or another, but I hadn’t realized that Busch stood alone in his iron integrity. This fact inspired me to write a “Sightings” column for today’s Wall Street Journal in which I talk about what Busch did, and why it still matters. Here’s an excerpt.
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Virtually all of the other big names in Austro-German music, including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Walter Gieseking, Herbert von Karajan, Carl Orff and Richard Strauss, stayed behind, some because they were active supporters of Hitler and others because they thought that the Nazis would dry up and blow away. Busch knew better. In a prophetic letter, he wrote, “Some of them believe that if they only ‘play along,’ the atrocities and injustice that are part and parcel of the movement will be tempered, can be turned around…they do not notice that they can only have a retarding effect, that the atrocities will still take place, only perhaps a bit later.”
Busch’s principled stand was motivated in part by the fact that many of his closest friends and colleagues were Jewish, including Serkin and Karl Doktor, the violist of the Busch Quartet. But the Nazis, who were keenly aware of the force of public opinion, were prepared to look the other way at such things in order to prevent prominent non-Jewish Germans from leaving the country in protest. As late as 1937, it was discreetly made known to Busch that if he returned, the Nazi government would let Serkin come back as well. “If you hang Hitler in the middle, with Goering on the left and Goebbels on the right, I’ll return to Germany,” he replied.
As anti-Semitic laws spread across the continent, Busch responded by cancelling there as well, and at the end of 1939 he, Serkin and the members of the Busch Quartet moved to the U.S. What happened next was a tragedy. Though Serkin was quickly able to establish himself as a top-tier soloist, America in the ’40s had an oversupply of famous violinists and a limited appetite for chamber music. Busch was able to eke out a living, but his days of fame were over….
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Read the whole thing here.

“Art is a revolt against fate.”
André Malraux, Voices of Silence

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)

• A Free Man of Color (epic comedy, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 9, reviewed here)

• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• The Merchant of Venice * (Shakespeare, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 9, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, closes Jan. 16, original Broadway production reviewed here)

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 20, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• Fela! (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• The Pee-wee Herman Show (comic revue, G/PG-13, heavily larded with double entendres, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Oklahoma! (musical, G, suitable for children, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• The Pitmen Painters (serious comedy, G, too demanding for children, reviewed here)

“The sons of torture victims make good terrorists.”
André Malraux, Man’s Fate

A rare kinescope of Sammy Davis, Jr., and the Will Mastin Trio performing on The Buick-Berle Show in 1954. In this excerpt from the group’s nightclub act, Davis impersonates Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Vaughn Monroe, Billy Eckstine, Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Frankie Laine, and Jerry Lewis:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”
Margaret Drabble, A Summer Bird-Cage

Mrs. T and I are off to Washington, D.C., to see Mary Zimmerman’s new production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, one of the all-time great problem shows (brilliant score, impossible book). Zimmerman’s revival, which originated in Chicago earlier this season, is an attempt to solve the show’s underlying conceptual problems without compromising the integrity of Bernstein’s music. Does it succeed? I’ve heard varying reports from Chicago, so I want to see for myself.
Mrs. T and I will be spending the night in Washington and returning to New York on Wednesday for further adventures in our new apartment, which is gradually starting to look less like a warehouse and more like a residence. More as it happens!

“Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me, the ability to think in quotations.”
Margaret Drabble, A Summer Bird-Cage