Excited over Wagner: The Israel Chamber Orchestra

It seems to be a permanent bone of contention, but broaching the topic of Israel’s relationship with Richard Wagner is a dangerous pastime. The composer’s great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, cancelled a trip to Israel when news of it was leaked to the Israeli press. The intention of the visit was one of goodwill: to announce that the Israel Chamber Orchestra would be invited to open next season’s Bayreuth festival, the annual Wagnerian spectacular that culminates in the performance of the entire Ring Cycle. But this act of cultural diplomacy was duly rebuffed.

A sentimental ban of Wagner’s works has existed ever since 1938, when the then Palestine Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Arturo Toscanini refused to play Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on account of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany. The fate of Wagner’s music was sealed with the Holocaust, as its perpetrators openly adored and patronised it. Personal theories on race and musical talent were rendered one and duly condemned, the notorious Das Judentum in der Musik fused with the interminable narrative of the Ring Cycle. Besides, Israel needed to bolster its own cultural program, and in managing it, Wagner could hardly receive a hearing.

The Israeli journalist Noah Klieger still sticks to the old assumption that a ban of Wagner is justified. Now, while they are very good musical reasons as to why Wagner should not be inflicted on anybody (‘Is he better than he sounds?’), his anti-Semitism is not a solid one. Singularity is the name of the game in condemning evil, rather than necessarily realising how general it can be. Anti-Semitism, that longest of hatreds, has had a list of practitioners so diverse amongst the otherwise cultured that banning their work from consumption would make the cupboard of civilization rather bare.

Whether an Israeli orchestra plays in Bayreuth or otherwise is of no consequence to those such as Klieger. ‘We don’t need reconciliation with Wagner. We have reconciliation with Germany.’ Wagner, to put it simply, ‘is the same Wagner – whether it’s today or 100 years ago, it’s the same Wagner with the same theory’ (Deutsche Welle, Oct 6). The question remains then who Israel is reconciling itself with? Few, in any case, would ever want reconciliation with Wagner’s political beliefs.

Things veer into the realm of the absurd when we consider the fact that other anti-Semitic composers such as Richard Strauss are played in Israel. Indeed for a time Strauss, along with Carl Orff and Franz Lehár, got the cold shoulder from the Israeli authorities, something many Jewish figures of culture disagreed with. And Wagner himself has been, as the scholar Na’ama Sheffi has pointed out, played on the Kol Hamusika (Voice of Music) for years without incident. What matters for those opponents such as Klieger is that Wagner was the ‘father of this [racial] theory’. For Klieger the point is obvious, and even he contends with the logical conclusion. ‘If we banned all anti-Semites, we wouldn’t have a lot of writers, poets and composers because most of them were anti-Jewish.’

Ultimately, it does all come down to sentimentality, sensitivity and political management. Grand figures of culture tend to be unspeakable monstrosities in their politics, and to ban them for their personal inclinations is always a dangerous practice. The argument that figures of art influence political action is not much better. Many would like to see the vocation of the political better affected by cultural sense. It is questionable to assume that a fine musical sequence on its own accord manned the gas chambers. As former Israeli politician Colette Avital commented, ‘As long as there are survivors of the Holocaust, their sensitivity has to be respected and nobody should hurt their feelings’ (Independent, Oct 6). Eventually, the views of the outsider shall prevail, and that view shall favour, for better or for worse, the playing of Wagner.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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