Robert, if I were to listen to music while adhering to the standards you insist upon maintaining as immutable, I would have to examine the context and take the moral temperature of every recording - which is both impractical and indeed nonsensical. Bad people can write and make great music - and the reverse is also true. Nor am I in position to judge the motives or probity of the behaviour of such as Furtwängler, Karajan and Böhm as otherwise I would cut myself off from much which is positive and life-enhancing while also importing the flawed thinking of identity politics into the realm of music - which I am not prepared to do. That in no way implies that I am insensitive to the sufferings of those who were victims of one of the worst regimes in modern history - but it does mean that I am looking for any good to have emerged from it.
Most of what I have read in this thread I have found deeply insensitive to those who suffered at the criminal, murderous hands of the Third Reich and deeply unpalatable personally. However not wishing to argue with or upset anybody I only wish to raise one point of fact: the matter of separating music and politics under the Third Reich. Whether music can ever be separated from politics in any society is debatable but the idea that in Nazi Germany or Nazi occupied territory music and politics could ever be separated is utterly erroneous.
Absolutely no aspect of daily life under the Third Reich was independent from the meticulous, imbecilic and criminally insane ideology of the Nazi Party, least of all music. The very fact that people like Karajan, Böhm or Furtwängler were even able to work and perform while many of their wonderfully talented fellow musical colleagues were removed from their posts, robbed of their possessions and livelihoods and sent to death camps where they were dehumanised and ultimately murdered, was not fortuitous, this was totally and solely due to direct Nazi politics. Levels of complicitness and engagement can be argued about but level of knowledge and acceptance about these policies among those who continued to work under the Third Reich can not, certainly not after Kristallnacht, if ever before. Likewise the music of which composers Karajan et al were allowed or not to conduct was also directly decided by Nazi politics.
Furthermore every public event in Nazi occupied territory, sporting, theatrical, musical or otherwise was a most concrete and definitive vindication and celebration of these ludicrous and loathsome racial politics and their all too tragic and still barely believable conclusion. I would also add for any British contributors here that these same public events were also an indirect, or very possibly a direct vindication and celebration of the glorious Luftwaffe who were sent to bombard the Great Britain of maybe yourselves, but certainly of your parents and grandparents.
Why people seem so keen to separate music and politics under the Third Reich I always find distasteful and suspicious but more importantly how they can do so just flies in the face of facts and beggars belief.
What a pleasure to come across your reviews, Mister Bridle, reviews which are even more refreshing because they contain none of the political pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo a certain American critic always derails himself into when the name Furtwangler is mentioned.
Thanks, it is a pleasure to read these reviews.
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