Klarinet Archive - Posting 001105.txt from 2000/12

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re the Vienna Philharmonic
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 19:28:41 -0500

Hattner's interesting note mentions that Wilhelm Jerger, who was a
contrabassist in the orchestra and a Lieutenant in the SS, became the
chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic. Let me give you the story of the
man who was his predecessor, because it was men like him who saved
whatever honor Austria had in this matter. This story was published in
two magazines and I mentioned it in an earlier posting.

Dan Leeson

A RIGHTEOUS PERSON

On the tenth of December 1996, I went to La Honda, California, a small,
isolated town on the spine of the last mountain range before the Pacific
Ocean, and planted a redwood tree in memory of Hugo Burghauser, taking
care to select a Sequoia that would someday produce the largest, most
noble, longest living member of the species, and choosing a site not
likely ever to see a lumberman's chainsaw. Since I don't know
Burghauser's exact date of birth, I chose the anniversary of his 1982
date of death for the ceremony, one at which I was the only attendee.
My effort was not as a result of some formal action but was
self-motivated because of my conclusion that Burghauser was a righteous
person, deserving of the honor. His behavior in 1938, though modest in
scope, required great personal sacrifice and strength of character. Let
me tell you about him.

Before moving to California, I lived in New Jersey and, on one Saturday
morning in 1966, I received a call from the personnel manager at the
Metropolitan Opera House asking if I were free to play that afternoon's
performance of Richard Strauss' one act opera, Elektra. When an
orchestra member gets sick at the last moment, as had the orchestra's
bass clarinetist, someone must be engaged to fill in and, since I played
at the Met from time to time, my name was on the substitute list, which
is how I came to be called that day.

Accepting the engagement, I called Herb Blayman -- my friend and then
first desk clarinet at the Met -- in the nearby town of Tenafly to ask
if I could ride in with him to the matinee. He agreed but with the
caveat that he was playing both matinee and evening performances that
day and would not be able to leave until after 11 p.m. That meant I was
either to wait until he finished or take the bus home.

"What's the second show?" I asked.

"Così fan Tutte," he said.

I needed to know nothing else. A day when one can play Elektra in the
afternoon and then see (and hear) Così fan Tutte in the evening, is a
gift from God.

It was while warming up backstage that Blayman introduced me to Hugo
Burghauser. He was a neatly dressed man who appeared to be in his
mid-seventies. "There will be a seat on your left for Hugo to occupy
and watch the opera. He used to play bassoon with the orchestra but is
now retired," said Blayman.

"I'm very glad to meet you," Burghauser said to me, his German accent
noticeable at once. "I hope you don't mind me sitting next to you, but
since your seat looks directly at the conductor's right hand side, it is
a good place for a view of the stage. You recognize, of course, that in
the pit, the closer one gets to the lip of the stage, the less one sees
of it. I will be sure not to inconvenience or disturb you."

"Mr. Burghauser, the pleasure is mine," I replied. "You realize that I
am kept very busy during the opera so I won't be able to see much of it
with you."

"I know," he said. "One really works hard in Elektra. I once told
Strauss that the work exhausted the musicians physically, emotionally,
and intellectually."

That stopped me cold.

"Mr. Burghauser," I said, respectfully. "You knew Richard Strauss?"

"Very well," he replied. "I was privileged to work with him many times
in Vienna and elsewhere. He was a marvelous conductor." Pausing for a
moment, Burghauser added, "though a terrible card player." Much later I
was to learn that Strauss' "Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon with
String Orchestra and Harp" was written for and dedicated to "Hugo
Burghauser, dem Getreuen."

At that point the orchestra began to file into the pit, tuned up, and
got ready to open with the muscular "A-GA-MEM-NON!" theme that pervades
the entire opera. On my left, with his chair turned 90 degrees --
placing his back directly against the audience separation wall which
gave him a face-front view of the stage -- sat Burghauser. The lights
dimmed, the conductor made his entrance, we rose and bowed to the
audience, seated ourselves and, with a flick of the wrist, were into the
story of matricide amongst the ancient Greeks.

For the next hour and thirty minutes -- the length of the opera -- it
became obvious to me that Burghauser knew every detail of the work. He
flicked a finger when Klytemnestra missed an entrance by an eyeblink.
And when, for the arrival of Orestes, a trumpet overshot a cue by a
millisecond, Burghauser's hands, folded and resting on his lap,
imperceptibly rose up, as if to give the player a helpful cue. It was
just a tiny movement, but I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

After the performance, I asked him if he might join me for supper,
explaining that I was finished playing but was coming back for the
evening's performance. And that is how I got a small piece of Hugo
Burghauser's remarkable story. It took a long time to get all of it.
He was so modest and self-effacing that he chose not to speak of
himself. The details came from others much later.

It is not wild hyperbole to state that, until 1938, Hugo Burghauser was
the most powerful musician in the world. During that time, he was the
President of the Vienna Philharmonic -- as well as the principle bassoon
-- which means that he was the most influential person in the world's
most influential symphony orchestra. Ergo, he was the most dominant
musician in Vienna, in Austria, in Europe and, therefore, in the world.

There is no orchestra quite like the Vienna Philharmonic. Proud,
haughty, brilliant, though, by today's standards, unforgivably sexist
and inflexible. But in early 1930, it stood at the pinnacle of symphony
orchestras, a law unto itself. The VPO is completely self-governing.
Unlike the vast majority of professional orchestras, one does not find
two faces; i.e., the musicians on one hand and management on the other.
On the contrary. The orchestra manages itself, inviting who it wishes,
ignoring those with whom it chooses not to be involved. As royalty is
not told what to do, one does not dictate to the VPO. They can be
pressured, to be sure -- as was the case of the recent scandal caused by
their obstinate refusal not to hire women -- but they are a law to
themselves, with vast record sales, a large government subsidy,
completely sold out subscription concerts, and the world's most
prestigious summer festival (Salzburg). Thus, the VPO can and does
thumb its nose at demands that, in any other orchestra, would be
political suicide. It is a private club. (I do not defend their
attitude, only report it.)

And in the 1930s, Hugo Burghauser was the President of this most
influential body.

After the "anschluss" or occupation of Austria by Germany, Burghauser
was requested to appear at the headquarters of the Austrian Nazi party.
There he was directed to dismiss all Jewish players from the orchestra
and, further, to prevent the hiring of all artists and conductors who
were Jewish or whose politics were not in accord with Nazi philosophy.

Burghauser, a Roman Catholic with no Jewish ancestors -- but married to
a Jewish woman then on tour in South America -- refused to comply,
stating that he would not participate in such an immoral act. Storming
out, he went back to work. Burghauser was called in for a second
meeting where he was threatened, and again he refused. Ordered to
appear a third time, he refused to go. Two days later he was summarily
fired from the Presidency of the VPO and his more amenable replacement
immediately terminated the employment of every Jew in the ensemble. A
later and very public disagreement with a Nazi party member in the cello
section resulted in Burghauser's resignation from the orchestra.

Burghauser did not have to do any of this. Had he concurred with the
request that he fire all the orchestra's Jews, he would have continued
in his important and well-paying job, perhaps facing criticism at the
end of the war, but who knows? However Burghauser's ethics were such
that he gave it all up rather than be a prisoner to the Nazi view of who
should not be permitted to play in Austria's most important symphony
orchestra.

Now, being without a job, he approached his friend, Arturo Toscanini who
recommended him to Sir Ernest MacMillan, then conductor of the excellent
Toronto Symphony, an orchestra that was then searching for a principle
bassoon. Burghauser, on the basis of Toscanini's endorsement, was
offered the position.

Burghauser had no idea where Toronto was and thought that he had been
engaged to play in Taranto, Italy. Since his mother was Italian -- his
grandfather had played flute under Verdi -- he was fluent in the
language and looked forward to living there. But soon, the
misunderstanding was clarified and he was on his way to Canada with his
bassoon and exactly ten marks, the maximum allowable on leaving Austria.

Arriving in Paris on his way to Cherbourg where his boat journey was to
begin, it was his intention to finance his trip from a French bank
account he maintained. However, a bank moratorium, caused by
expectations of an imminent war with Germany, prevented any withdrawal.
Overnight Burghauser had gone from being the most powerful musician in
Europe to being indigent in a foreign country. He was also advised by
the French police that, without a steamship ticket, his tourist status
would be revoked in one week and this would be immediately followed by
expulsion from France. Alone and without resources, Burghauser chose
the only avenue available to him: he joined the French Foreign Legion.
By the most incredible of coincidences, on the day of his induction --
the last day before he would have been expelled from France and the day
before his scheduled but unpaid-for boat trip to New York -- he ran into
Mrs. Carla Toscanini on a Paris street. Like Burghauser, the Toscaninis
were abandoning Europe and scheduled to take the same boat from
Cherbourg, for which he was ticketed but without money to pay for the
trip. Mrs. Toscanini lent him the amount needed for the boat fare and
he was on his way to New York and Toronto, sharing the ocean voyage with
his old friend, a conductor who also had thumbed his nose at fascism.

Ensconced in the first bassoon chair, Burghauser spent three seasons in
Toronto before departing for New York where he played first with the NBC
Symphony and later assumed the second bassoon/contrabassoon chair at the
Metropolitan Opera House. A vignette about an event during his time
with the Toronto Symphony reveals the magnitude of his prestige. The
TSO had hired a world-famous guest conductor who appeared for rehearsal
at the appointed time. He took one look at the orchestra, saw
Burghauser, and left the stage, ashen faced.

"Do you realize who it is you have playing first bassoon?!" he said to
the orchestra manager. "That is the most powerful musician in all
Europe. What is he doing here?!!"

"He is playing the bassoon," came the response.

Hugo Burghauser was a righteous person. Unlike Oskar Schindler and
Raoul Wallenberg, Burghauser did not directly save lives, but his
actions and behavior in the face of a hostile, ferocious, and oppressive
government were consistent with the highest ethical principles of
mankind. The behavior of a few people like him saved whatever honor
Austria retained following the events of 1938-1945.

The last time I played Elektra, it was with the San Francisco opera and,
as I played it, I thought of this gentle, kind, brave, and righteous
man. It was later that I decided to plant a tree in his memory.
--
***************************
** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
***************************

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