HELP FOR RICHARD STRAUSS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 440, 28 November 1947, Page 14

HELP FOR RICHARD STRAUSS

At 63. Hired Rooms and Borrowed Money

Bv Airmail Special to

i! "The Listener," by

J. W.

GOODWIN

London,

HERE are few people who can interrupt a _ rehearsal conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham and get away with it, but then there were few officials of the German Imperial Court who could disagree with the Kaiser and retain their posts; and even fewer who could later ignore the Third Reich and survive in Nazi Germany. The man who did all three is in London now. He is 83-year-old Richard Strauss, whose slick torrent of orchestral opulence was so shocking and exciting to the grandparents of the concert-goers of to-day and so sweetly soothing to their parents. It is a commentary on our civilisation that Strauss has to live in hired rooms on borrowed money, and Sibelius to accept private gift parcels of food, while their music is enjoyed by millions. For the old man, smiling sadly but benignly, wearing a mackintosh and brown felt hat, who wandered on to the stage and disturbed Sir Thomas Beecham, is penniless. He is probably owed £100,000 in American and British royalties which have accumulated since 1938, but he believes the money

| is included in reparations and that he must claim it from the Austrian Government with little chance of seeing any of it in his lifetime. Even the £1000 which he hopes to make in Britain by concerts and broadcasts will be the subject of negotiations with the Treasury before he-can take it out of the country. The composer of waltzes, operas, symphonies--Salome, Elektra, Ariadne, Rosenkavalier-surprised his admirers by announcing that after a retirement of years he would conduct long and vigorous pieces. However, there is nothing showy about his conducting even if there is much pomp and circumstance in his music. Knowing that a conductor’s work should be done at rehearsals, he almost extinguishes himself during the concert: there is no posturing to impress the uninitiated. * oe * USIC lovers should not have been surprised at anything Dr. Strauss did. When he was Hofkapellmeister

under the Kaiser and His Imperial Majesty began to hold forth on the subject of modern music, Strauss just said quietly, "Your Majesty will not expect me to share your opinions." He accepted the position of President of the Reich Chamber of Music under Hitler and then calmly asked the Jew, Stefan Zwé6ig, to.write him a libretto for a new opera. When the writer suggested that the opera would stand little chance of being performed in the Reich, Strauss replied confidently, "Till our opera is finished the Third Reich will be forgotten." His heresy was detected when the letter was intercepted, but Goebbels would not risk the martyrdom of such an eminent man and no action was taken-although the opera was not performed. . Perhaps anything can be forgiven the man who can make a bet that he will express in music the exact sensation of putting down a glass of foaming iced Munich beer--and, in his opera Intermezzo, came very near to doing it. * * ¢k T the same time that musical London is honouring the visit of this exile, it is also doing homage to an English composer who led the emancipation of

English music from the German domiNation of the 19th Century. Dr. Vaughan Williams’s 75th birthday has been marked by a series of concerts and broadcasts of his work. When Elgar was awarded the Order of Merit, one of his famous contemporaries remarked, "That is surely right; he has touched the heart of millions." ‘The same honour has gone to Dr. Vaughan Williams, and the same verdict goes with it.