Israelis protest performance of Wagner

July 27, 2011 - 8:55 AM by

Members of the Israel Chamber Orchestra perform a piece by Wagner in Bayreuth, Germany Tuesday night. (AP)

Amid the tent cities that have proliferated across the country over the last couple of weeks to protest the high cost of apartments and just about everything else, another demonstration quietly took place yesterday in Tel Aviv that was totally unrelated.

Around a dozen people gathered outside the Tel Aviv Museum to demonstrate against the Israel Chamber Orchestra, who that night were making history by being the first Israeli orchestra to travel to Germany and perform a work by the composer Richard Wagner.

Wagner was a hero of the Fuhrer, who admired and drew inspiration from the composer’s anti-Jewish essays, which raged against the “corruption” of the “German spirit” by Jews.

In 1938 the Palestine Philharmonic imposed a ban on the notoriously anti-Semitic composer’s music, after the rise of Hitler and the Nazis’ attacks on Jews in Germany. The informal ban has continued in Israel since the country was formed in 1948 – with only a few exceptions.

Zubin Mehta once attempted to break the ban when, as a conductor of the Israeli Philharmonic, he announced at a 1981 performance that the encore would be Wagner’s “Prelude to Tristan and Isolde.” Pandemonium broke out in the audience.
At 2001′s Israel Festival, Daniel Barenboim led the Berlin Statskapelle in an encore of “Prelude to Tristan,” with only a few walkouts.
And now the Israel Chamber Orchestra traveled to the Wagner opera festival in
Bayreuth, Bavaria to perform Siegfried Idyll.

“It’s absurd to me,” Noy Dagan, 18, one of the protest organizers, told The Jerusalem Post. “By playing Wagner, they’re saying okay, we accept the Holocaust.”

But orchestra conductor Roberto Paternostro told Reuters before flying to Germany that it was time to separate Wagner’s worldview from his music.

“Wagner’s ideology and anti-Semitism was terrible, but on the other hand he was a great composer. The aim is in the year 2011 to divide the man from his art.”

Orchestra Chief Executive Eran Hershkovitz went further, telling CBS Radio that the orchestra’s performance showed the world the Nazis failed in their attempt to exterminate the Jews.

“It is a once-in a lifetime concert, a victory concert,” he said.

The performance evidently went off without a hitch, but despite the tasteful musical professionalism, the bad aftertaste is bound to linger for a long time among those who see it as an affront to the memory of the six million killed by the Nazis.

Tags: • Category: A New Reality, Art, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Music, News, Social Justice 

Comments

2 Comments on Israelis protest performance of Wagner

  1. Charles Berdiansky on Thu, Jul 28th 2011 1:58 AM

    2. Since supporters of performances of Wagner argue that his art should be separated from his nefarious writings, why won’t they do the following: Before and after any performance, a talk criticising his odious anti-Semitic words and behaviour should be given. Now if the music and hatred are truly independent (in other words there is no halo affect), the attendees should have no problem with the talks. Furthermore, such treatment hopefully would discourage any uniquely stench-ridden artists in the future from using art as a (sword or shield) for their evil. By the way, a concert I once attended, praised his earlier social consciousness, before performing his music.

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