Michael Haas

Michael Haas at Tonzauber Studios Vienna, photo Georg Burdicek
Michael Haas, (full name: Benjamin Michael Haas) was born in 1954 in Charlotte, North Carolina but grew up in both Raleigh NC and Vienna where he received much of his general education and most of his musical training. He is a British and Austrian citizen and studied piano performance at the Municipal Conservatory (now Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien) along with courses in composition, piano and organ at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts (mdw). In addition to being bilingual in German and English, Haas speaks Italian, Spanish and French. He moved to London in 1977 to start employment with Decca Records.

Michael Haas in 1978 with friends, from l to r Craig Sheppard’s father, Craig Sheppard’s teacher Peter Feuchtwanger, Haas, pianist Craig Sheppard in London
Recording Producer: Michael Haas has continued to work as a recording producer since joining Decca, though since 2016, he has limited production to repertoire relevant to the centre he now co-chairs at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts, (see below). From 1977 to 2000 he worked for Universal Music Group’s London/Decca and the Sony Classical labels. His projects have been recognised with a number of major recording awards, including four Grammys and the first ever Grammy Latinos.

Session photo with Solti and member of Vienna Philharmonic
While at London/Decca, he spent more than a decade as producer for Georg Solti before joining Sony to work with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1994, he was appointed Vice President of A&R at Sony Classical in New York.

Session photo with Abbado recording with the Berlin Philharmonic
Since 2000 he continued to produce recordings released by major and independent labels, including Deutsche Grammophon, EMI and Opera Rara.

Collage of a small selection of recordings produced by Michael Haas
During his years at London/Decca and Sony, he produced prize-winning recordings with major classical artists including conductors such as Rudolf Barshai, Richard Bonynge, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Kirill Kondrashin, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle and Mstislav Rostropovich, instrumentalists like Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Lynn Harrell, Radu Lupu, Alicia de Larrocha, András Schiff, Maxim Vengerov and Pinchas Zukerman along with composer Hans Werner Henze.

Collage of recording artists with Michael Haas: from l to r: Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli, Ute Lemper, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Richard Bonynge, Signing Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham and Christoph Eschenbach, Bike ride with Pavarotti
He has worked closely on recordings with singers such as Roberto Alagna, Cecilia Bartoli, Hildegard Behrens, Barbara Bonney, Ian Bostridge, Monserat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Mirella Freni, Angela Gheorghiu, Matthias Goerne, Sumi Jo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Christa Ludwig, Jessye Norman, Luciano Pavarotti, Lucia Popp, Samuel Ramey, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Joan Sutherland and Bryn Terfel.

Michael Haas with the composer Berthold Goldschmidt during the recording of “Der Gewaltige Hahnrei” for Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series in Berlin
His most highly regarded work has been in the recovery of music lost during the Nazi era in Europe. In 1990, he initiated and produced London/Decca’s recording series “Entartete Musik” consisting of works that were banned, lost, forgotten or destroyed. The series won a number of major awards and launched many young artists.

a selection of the 30 recording projects that made up Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series, initiated and produced by Michael Haas
Recognition of Haas’s work as recording producer has been confirmed by his contributions to the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (2003) and the Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (2009).
He has also held seminars for aspiring classical recording producers at the Banff Arts Centre in Canada and the Music University in Hamburg. Press coverage has been extensive on Mr. Haas’ work with “Entartete Musik” as well as on his more established activities such as his multi-award winning recordings with Renée Fleming of “Rusalka”, “Thais”, “Daphne” and “Strauss Heroines”. In December 1999, the “London Evening Standard” cited Michael Haas in their “Millennium List of London’s 300 most prominent Movers and Shakers”.

Dedication to Michael Haas after producing Riccardo Chailly’s recording of Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” in Berlin

At the grave of Bertolt Brecht during the days of the GDR
Exhibition Curator: From 2002 to 2010, Haas continued the recovery of composers lost during the years of the Third Reich with the exhibition series Musik des Aufbruchs (‘Music in Transition’) as Music Curator at Vienna’s Jewish Museum. He curated dedicated exhibitions on the lives and works of Hans Gál, Egon Wellesz, Erich Zeisl, Franz Schreker, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Hanns Eisler and Ernst Toch.

Selection of exhibitions curated or partially curated by Michael Haas, l to r: Vienna’s Jewish Museum in Palais Eskeles; Hans Gál; Ernst Toch; Erich Zeisl; Franz schreker; Egon Wellesz; Erich Wolfgang Korngold; Hanns Eisler; Quasi una fantasia and Mahleriana
The exhibitions were well reviewed internationally with the Korngold exhibition clocking some 45,000 visitors during its half-year run. He has also advised on large exhibitions at Vienna’s Jewish Museum including Quasi una Fantasie, Die Juden und die Musikstadt Wien (Vienna, Jews and City of Music, also shown at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York, 2004), Mahleriana – Vom Werden einer Ikone (Mahleriana – the making of an Icon) and the Jewish Museum’s exhibition on Lorenzo da Ponte for the Mozart year in 2005. He was editor of the accompanying exhibition catalogues as well as Vienna’s Jewish Museum Year Book in 2008, which featured a selection of papers presented at the Salzburg Easter Festival’s conference Music and Resistance. In recognition of his exhibition on the composer Hanns Eisler, Haas was awarded the Theodor Koerner Prize in 2009 for “cultural and historic excellence” by the president of Austria.

Published by Yale University Press, 2013
Historian: Now engaged as Senior Researcher, co-Founder and Chair of the Exilarte Center, based at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts, Haas is responsible for finding, and overseeing the digitisation and dissemination of “exiled” musical estates acquired by Exilarte. (See below for more information on Exilarte.) Until 2017 he was director of the Jewish Music Institute’s International Committee of Suppressed Music, which following an invitation from Prof. David Cesarani, moved from its former base at SOAS to the Holocaust Research Centre at Royal Holloway, London University. Until 2015, he was also honorary research associate at the Department of Jewish and Hebrew Studies at University College London (UCL). Until 2016, he was consultant with the City of Vienna’s prestigious Music Collection, advising on the acquisition of Austria’s exiled composer estates. He was recording producer or initiator for exil.arte’s series of Exile Austro-Czech-Hungarian composers released in collaboration with Vienna’s Gramola label and Austrian Radio. He has just completed a book on the music of Exile for Yale University Press and is translating the articles from die Neue Freie Presse on Gustav Mahler for Routledge. He has also translated the memoirs of Korngold’s wife Luzi Korngold along with a volume of family correspondence, yet to be published.

Selection of exil.arte recordings, with Gramola recordings produced by Michael Haas
Following publication of Forbidden Music – the Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis, by Yale University Press in 2013, Prof. David Cesarani advised that Haas be proposed for a PhD, and supported by London’s Jewish Music Institute, Haas completed a dissertation on the restitution of music as cultural legacy at Middlesex University. His doctorate was awarded in January 2017. Haas has organised and chaired many international conferences and is an active supporter of Musica Reanimata in Berlin, Les Voix etouffée in Paris and the Orel Foundation in Los Angeles. He was director of the Musica Prohibita festival of “Entartete Musik” in Barcelona in 2000 and principal advisor for Dutch Radio’s (‘Vara’) Saturday Concerts 2004/5 season at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. This involved the planning of 44 concerts focused on Music that was lost during the years of the Third Reich with concert performances of operas by Egon Wellesz, Erwin Schulhoff and Franz Schreker. He has been invited to speak at numerous events, and universities such as Columbia University’s Jewish Theological Institute and held seminars in Hamburg’s Music University, the Music University of Vienna, the University of Virginia and the Lincoln Centre Festival. In 2009 Haas was asked to participate in a Festival of music banned by the Third Reich in Taipei. Subsequent speaking engagements include the University in Johannesburg and UCLA in Los Angeles. In 1997 and 1998, he was consultant during the earliest planning stages of The Milken Family Foundation’s recording series, ‘The Jewish Experience in American Music’, now released on the Naxos label.

LJCC Award 2002
In 2002, the London Jewish Cultural Centre presented him with the coveted Music Award, an award he received alongside Roman Polanski for his film The Pianist and Steven Spielberg for lifetime achievement. From 2002, Haas received the David Uri Fellowship for five consecutive years in recognition of his work and research. In 2010, he was invited by David Pountney to deliver the opening address to the Mieczysław Weinberg Conference at the Bregenz Festival. Yale University Press published Haas’s Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis in April 2013 and he appeared at London’s Southbank Centre, as part of The Rest is Noise Festival.
Exilarte Centre: In 2015, it became apparent that Austria’s archives were no longer financially or logistically in a position to take on further musical estates of exiled Austrians. Archives in neighbouring Germany also confirmed that they were unable to take on more than the most well-known musical estates of exiles. Haas turned to Prof. Gerold Gruber, who founded the exil.arte Society in 2006, bringing Haas on board as co-chair the same year. Together, Haas and Gruber put forward plans for changing the society into a research centre. The plans were accepted by both the out-going and in-coming chancellors of Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts, with the incoming chancellor, Ms. Ulrike Sych, giving the centre greater prominence within the University’s structure, placing it directly under her supervision.
The historic building of the former Music Academy opened in 1913, as a wing of the Konzerthaus. Many musicians forced to flee Hitler had studied or taught at the Academy and its use as a venue for exil.arte offered space for an opening exhibition on the 1938 Nazi purge of the University called Wenn ich komponiere, bin ich wieder in Wien, (‘When I Compose, I return to Vienna’).

Exhibition Wenn ich komponiere, bin ich wieder in Wien
Existing vaults of the former Academy Library were modernised and brought up to the highest standards for the preservation of documents, manuscripts and even textiles and ephemera.

One of two vaults for storage
Rooms for lectures and recitals were added as well as generous office space for ever expanding personnel requirements. The exil.arte Centre was officially opened in May 2017, followed shortly afterwards with a documentary for Sky Arts made by Barry Humphries.

Barry Humphries in Vienna’s Prater for his Sky Arts freature including exil.arte
Within its opening months, the Centre acquired as either legacy or permanent loan a number of important musical estates, including Hans Gál, Jan Urban, Richard Fuchs, Wilhelm Grosz, Walter Bricht, Richard Frey, Gustav Lewi and Julius Bürger along with full digital estates of Walter Arlen and Hans Winterberg. The daughter of Hans Heinsheimer, the publisher who signed some of Universal Editions most important names and one of the primary shapers of 20th century music passed on to exil.arte the opening chapters her father had begun of a history of the publishing house, ending in 1938. Haas was able to forward the incomplete manuscript to Universal Editions who published it as part of their centenary celebrations. As of 2022, there are more than thirty musical estates held by the Exilarte Center, with recent additions being the singers Jan Kiepura and Marta Eggerth along with the composers Walter Susskind, Eduard van Cleeff, Richard Hoffmann and Walter Wurzburger with another half dozen estates still under negotiation.
The Exilarte Centre does not restrict its interests to Austrians or those born in pre-1918 “Greater Austria”, but includes all musicians and people active in the music industry, who because of political or racial persecution were exiled or murdered. Nor does Exilarte focus on any specific genre of music, but takes the estates of any victim of political or “racial” persecution involved with popular music to the avant-garde, operetta, film or broadcast. The purpose of the centre is to preserve, digitise and disseminate to the present and coming generations of musicians and scholars. The University is ranked the highest performing arts institution in Europe and occupies a similar position to Juilliard in the United States, though with a considerably expanded curriculum and student body.

Korngold, 1916 “Violanta”
Michael Haas and Prof. Gerold Gruber were approached by the Korngold family, along with the music publishers Schott to oversee the critical edition of all of Korngold’s output, including film scores. There is now a dedicated “Korngold Room” in the centre where a source index is presently being compiled.
In November 2018 and at the invitation of Thomas Hampson, Michael Haas became a board member of the International Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, an organisation presently producing the New Critical Edition of Mahler’s works, published by Universal Editions.
Michael Haas private details:
Father was Benjamin Leopold Haas (1926-1977) known as the author Ben Haas and was published exclusively by Simon & Schuster

Selection of books by Ben Haas
His mother, born Douglas Thorton Taylor (b. 1927), theatrical costumier has recently released her own memoirs.
Older brother Joel Haas (b.1951) is an artist and published author, while younger brother John Thompson-Haas (b.1957) began life as a musician, entering Vienna’s Music Academy at the age of 13 before moving into stage direction. In the mid-1990s, he undertook a career change progressing through banking into technology: “leaving the circus to join the bank”, as he put it.

Celebrating with husband Kevin Bell at the Ivy Club Room in London following their civil partnership/marriage ceremony in 2006
In 2006, Michael Haas and Kevin Bell became civil partners, cementing a relationship started in 1985. They live in the North Cotswolds in Gloucestershire (UK) Michael Haas is also a resident of Vienna Austria. Both Kevin and Michael are members of London’s Reform Club.
Contact Details: Dr. Michael Haas, exil.arte Center, mdw; Lothringerstraße 18, A-1030 Vienna
Haas-m@mdw.ac.at or michaelhaas@coralfox.com
Telephone: (Austria) +43 676 548 3090; UK: +44 7768465923
CV as of July 2017:
Benjamin Michael Haas (Known as Michael Haas)
Born 23.10.1954: Charlotte North Carolina, Father Ben Haas, novelist; Douglas Haas, (née Taylor), Theatrical designer
Education:
1960-1972: Volksschule: Klosterneuburg bei Wien; Gymnasium: Klosterneuburg bei Wien; Broughton High School, Raleigh North Carolina.
During these early American school years (1969-1971), attended numerous summer music courses in various universities and schools: Duke University as well as the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill
1972-1974: Entrance to Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Wien (now University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna): Principle subjects: Piano, church music and composition
1975-1976: Konservatorium der Stadt Wien: Principle Subject: Concert Performance Piano
1974-1977: part time employment with The Decca Record Company for recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic.
1977: First engagement with Decca Records Ltd and relocation from Vienna to London
1978: First recording as producer: Radu Lupu plays Schubert Sonatas
1978 – 1982: Further recording production with Lupu; Alicia Delarrocha; Karl Muenchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; Various conductors in Geneva with the Orcestre de la Suisse Roman – numerous chamber and solo productions as well as assistant, principal or secondary producer in various recordings with Decca exclusive artists: Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Vladimir Ashkenazy; First artist’s signing to Decca with Andras Schiff to recording Mozart and Bach
1983: First recording as principal producer with Sir Georg Solti in London; later further productions in Chicago, Vienna, Frankfurt, Budapest and Berlin. Producer of many historic recordings with Solti such as Bartok with the CSO or Otello with Pavarotti and Kiri te Kanawa. Solti’s return to Budapest and his farewell concert from Chicago. Produced Chailly’s first recording with the Concertgebouw; also assigned to Christoph von Dohnanyi as principal producer
1984: First encounter with music banned by the Third Reich with recordings with Riccardo Chailly in Berlin of various early works by Alexander Zemlinsky.
1985 – 1989: Zemlinsky recordings were followed by further projects such as Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and a number of Kurt Weill recordings with Ute Lemper, Milva, and others; from 1990, these recordings were partially incorporated into the Decca Series “Entartete Musik”– a collection of music by composers banned by National Socialism; there also followed further Kurt Weill recordings: notably Kurt Weill’s Street Scene with Jerry Hadley, Josephine Barstow, Barbara Bonney, Samuel Ramey etc.
1986 and 1987: first two of four Grammy Awards for recordings with Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
1989 – 1993: Develops and records first instalments of Decca series “Entartete Musik” with co-productions in Berlin and Leipzig of works by Ernst Krenek, Erich Korngold and Berthold Goldschmidt; produced Riccardo Chailly’s first recording in Amsterdam as principal music director of Amsterdam Concertgebouw as well as co-producer of Cecilia Bartoli’s first recording: Barber of Seville in Bologna;
1993 – 1995: Move to Sony Classical as principal producer for Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic; continuation as executive producer for Decca’s ‘Entartete Musik’ series. During Sony years, produced Berthold Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci – the opera with which the Berlin Festival was opened in 1993. Goldschmidt recording of Der gewaltiger Hahnrei resulted in new productions at Berlin’s Comic Opera, and several other important venues throughout Germany and Switzerland.
1994-1995: Executive Vice President of Sony A&R in New York
1995 – 1999: Return to Decca to continue work with Solti, Dohnanyi, Renée Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu; signed contract with baritone Matthias Goerne. Further recordings with Rostropovich; Haitink; Vengerov; Lynn Harrell etc.
1999: Named as one of 300 most influential ‘Movers and Shakers’ in London Evening Standard’s Millennium List in December 1999. With this public acknowledgement and the purchase of PolyGram by Universal Music resulting in a change of working conditions, sets up the production company Coralfox Ltd and goes independent
1999-2001: In addition to recording, sets up The International Forum (now Centre) for Suppressed Music at SOAS, which is established as a part of the Jewish Music Institute at SOAS College, London University. Numerous projects grow out of this association such as the symposium: The Composition Class of Franz Schreker at SOAS; two South Bank Days of “Suppressed Music” including the first UK staged performance of Max Brand’s Maschinist Hopkins.
2000 – 2002: further productions as free-lance producer for various major labels including winning two of first ever awarded classical ‘Grammy Latinos’ for productions with Placido Domingo as well as Midem Award for Rusalka with Renée Fleming. Further recordings in Cologne with Semyon Bytschkov and Renée Fleming: Daphne as well as Elektra with Deborah Polaski
2002: Is awarded the London Jewish Cultural Centre’s Music Award in gala event which also saw awards going to Steven Spielberg and Roman Polanski
2002 – 2010: Music Curator at Vienna’s Jewish Museum. Curator of a number of exhibitions, with accompanying catalogues, on Viennese Jewish composers suppressed during the Nazi years: Hans Gál, Egon Wellesz, Erich Zeisl, Franz Schreker, Erich Korngold, Hanns Eisler and Ernst Toch. Participated as advisor and consultant on further exhibitions: Quasi una fantasia: Vienna, the city of Music and Jews which went on to New York; further exhibitions included Lorenzo Da Ponte and The Making of the Icon Gustav Mahler. The Exhibition on Erich Korngold in 2008 attracted more than 45,000 visitors. Awarded Austria’s highest prize for services to Science and History: The Theodor Körner Award, presented by Austria’s President Dr. Heinz Fischer; further activities during this period included organising and running Recording Production workshops in Banff’s Art Centre in Canada and contributing a number of chapters to various Cambridge University publications: The Cambridge Book of Records and Recording and the Cambridge Book on Conductors and Conducting.
2004 – 2005: Artistic and repertoire advisor to VARA (Dutch Broadcasting) for their season of 40 Saturday concerts devoted to music banned by the III Reich. Concerts took place in Amersterdam’s Concertgebouw and involved all of Holland’s orchestras and many chamber ensembles. In addition to orchestral and chamber works, three operas were performed ‘concertante’: Schulhoff’s Flammen; Wellesz’s Bakchantinnen; Schreker’s Der Ferne Klang along with two chamber operas by Wilhelm Grosz and Walter Goehr.
2007: Co-Chair of Vienna’s exil.arte based at the city’s Performing Arts University. exil.arte devotes its energies to bringing composers banned during the Hitler years back into the consciousness of Austrian scholars, music lovers and musicians.
2013: published Forbidden Music – the Jewish Composers Banned by the Third Reich with Yale University.
2013/2014: Consultancy at the Musiksammlung der Wienbibliothek (Music Collection of the Vienna Library) home to Austria’s largest ‘Exile Composer’ collection. Established contacts between the archive and the following exile musician estates (not all of which have been taken or archived): Walter Arlen; Hans Gál; Walter Bricht; David, Rosi and Toni Grünschlag; Julius Bürger; Hilde Föde; Franz Schreker (Paris estate); Wilhelm Grosz; Peter Hamburger; Michael Graubart
2013/14: For the Archive of Vienna’s University of Music and Dramatic Arts: facilitating the acquisition of musical estates the “Musiksammlung der Stadt Wien” was unable to take
2014: Forbidden Music was awarded the Prize for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research by the Association of Recorded sound Collections
2013: Co-chair of the Erich Wolfgang Korngold Society in preparation for Korngold critical edition to be jointly administered by the Music University in Vienna and Schott Music Publishers
2011-2015: Honorary Research Fellow UCL Hebrew and Judaic Studies
2014 – present: Advisory Board member of Wittgenstein Initiative – an initiative to restore Vienna’s intellectual inheritance
2007 – present: Recording producer for the label ‘Opera Rara’; also productions for DGG and various independent labels
2014- present: Honorary Research Fellow: Royal Holloway University of London
2016 Ph.D submission at Middlesex University, London on Music Resitution (to be accorded in April 2017)
2017: January 1st, Senior Researcher at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts’ exil.arte centre
Publications:
Contributor to the Cambridge Companion to Conducting, 2003 and the Cambridge Companion to Recording 2009; Editor of Exhibition catalogues for the Jewish Museum house publisher/Mandelbaum Verlag: Continental Britons – Österreichische Musiker im britischen Exil (2002); Franz Schreker: Grenzgänge – Grenzklänge (2004); Erich Zeisl – Endstation Scheinheiligenstadt (2005); Die Korngolds (2008); Hanns Eisler – Mensch und Masse (2009); Ernst Toch Das Leben als Geographische Fuge 2010); Contributor to catalogues Mahleriana – das Werden einer Ikone (2005); Lorenzo Da Ponte Aufbruch in die neue Welt (2006) and Quasi una Fantasia (2002); Das Jahrbuch des Jüdischen Museums Wien 2006 Musik und Widerstand; Das Jüdische Wien und Richard Wagner (2013);
Regular contributions to Orel Foundation website
Contributions to exil.arte Publications: Und werde in allen Lexika als “British” aufgeführt…” (von Bockel Verlag 2015)
Music-Lost and Found, (Appel Verlag, Wien, 2017)
Forbidden Music – The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis Yale University Press 2013
Presently translating into English the memoirs of Luzi Korngold and Korngold family correspondence to be published by Toccata Press, London
Forbidden Music – The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis Yale University Press 2013
Blog: www.forbiddenmusic.org
Languages:
Bilingual in written and spoken German/English; Fluent Italian and Spanish; Serviceable French (meaning the conducting of recording sessions and/or press and television interviews); Russian studied for four years in 1980s with considerable spoken and written fluency – at best, now only revivable.
Awards:
25 years of working for major recording labels at a time when there was little competition from independents, means that barely a year passed without nominations or awards coming for one or more Michael Haas recordings. A partial discography can be viewed at: http://www.coralfox.com/discography.php
A selection of the most important awards, prizes and notices are listed below:
Grammys in 1986, 1987, 2000, 2001
Ranked in London Evening Standard’s ‘Millennium List’ of 300 must influential Londoners: 1999
First awarded Grammy Latinos in 2000 & 2001
Midem Classical Award: Rusalka 2000
Brit Award: Otello with Solti and Pavarotti 1992
Gramophone: Entartete Musik series 1993
First awarded Echo Preis: Boris Godunov Claudio Abbado, Berlin Philharmonic 1995
LJCC (London Jewish Cultural Centre) Award together with Steven Spielberg and Roman Polanski: 2001
Theodor Körner Preis for services in Austria to Science and History: 2009
Just found your fabulous site and am enjoying your writing–will continue to follow your blog.
I thought you might be interested in a documentary produced in New York in 1988 by filmmaker Richard Kaplan entitled THE EXILES. The story of European artists, scientists and intellectuals who escaped (and were recused through the efforts of Varian Fry and New York’s New School) Nazi totalitarianism and emigrated to America before the outbreak of World War II.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Exiles-Richard-Kaplan/dp/B004XSVW8Y
Thank you for your vote of confidence! And thank you for the link. I’ve heard of this film but have yet to see it. I shall be adding to the site more regularly in the future. At the moment, I’m preparing a talk for the Holocaust Research Centre at London University on Music Restitution – I’ll post it in early February.
Thanks for you quick reply–I look forward to future posts. Are you on LinkedIn?
Yes: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=16427753&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile
I don’t know if this is the right link or not, but it’s the one I have to access to view my own Profile. Should you need further Information please contact me on michaelhaas@coralfox.com
Michael – your blog ‘Forbidden Music’ is absolutely wonderful. Meticulously researched, beautifully written and presented. I’m not Jewish but I am very interested in music and the 20th century, I look forward to each new post. Do they have awards for such things? ‘Forbidden Music’ certainly deserves many…. Thank you
Dear Steve, Thanks for your Kind words! I have absolutely no idea about such things as awards – I only put the blog together as best I can – and there is certainly more to come. Encouragement from readers makes it much easier – as you can guess, the articles demand a good deal of research and input. It gives me enormous pleasure to know they are appreciated and perhaps shine a bit of light on a forgotten corner of 20th century music.
Thanks again – Michael
I’m listening to the Centaur disc of Hugo Kauder’s first four string quartets. This music makes me think of what Schubert might have sounded like had he lived into his 90s.
The Euclid Quartet has told me that they will not be recording Kauder’s remaining string quartets (all told he wrote nineteen). I wish the Maggini Quartet would get on this. I sent them a tweet about it and got no response. As for me, I’m sorry I’m not wealthy. I’d produce such a recording project if I could.
I totally agree – Kauder was a surprise for me as well as he very much breaks many of the stylistic expectations of the period. However, Dr. Karin Wagner is writing a Kauder monograph and at Exilarte, in Vienna, we are sponsoring a Kauder evening which will be broadcast in 2016. I suspect we shall be hearing more of his music in years to come.
Thanks for this information. Do get back to me when there’s more to report — and if there’s a link to that broadcast. Thanks!
Thank you for a wonderfully interesting post. The audio samples are a treat. Korngold was a tremendous pianist. I shall be following your further news.
Dear Michael, This is a wonderful blog on so many levels. Are these concerts finally exposing
these composers broadcast in the US on radio, or webcast during the performance, or online?
What about Medici TV, maybe, a dedicated webcast can be established from the new facilities?
Do check out the CBC in Canada. On Sundays around 11AM EST, forgotten performers and/or composers are featured in an hour program. It’s referred to as reviving them. Some of the composers and performers whom you discuss in ” Forbidden Music” have been featured this
year. They, also, have a weekly program on Sunday, ” In Concert,” in which various concerts in Canada but also in Europe are aired in their entirety. It has many Classical Music online outlets.
You must know about the two documentaries on the Israel Philharmonic’s formulation by Hubermann. One, is ” Orchestra in Exile.” The other’s name eludes me at the moment.
Would you be so kind as to provide a ground mail address to contact you?
Permit me to say, I have sincere admiration for your body of work as well as your
work on those who were victims of the Nazis. As a writer, myself, I have researched and written
about this tragedy from many perspectives as well as about individuals, who were exiled, and/or, incarcerated and survived, including those from the former Soviet Union, and who lived under its Occupation under the Nazis and, then, the Soviets in Post WWII. Chinese history, especially, during the time of the Cultural Revolution continues to be important. ( See the latest news.)
There are serious lessons – warnings- found in this history from which we in the US must learn.
I do hope, you will answer my request.
Dear Mr Goldstein, Thank you for your Kind words of encouragement! I’m aware of various broadcasters starting to wake up to this chapter of repertoire loss. My own work as recording producer, and now co-director of Vienna’s Exile Music Centre – exil.arte Zentrum – keep me from pursuing many media possibilities, or even following what’s happening in different parts of the world. I have been asked recently to participate in documentaries under development on the pianist Arthur Schnabel as composer and Karol Rathaus, about whom you might have read more recently on the blog. Please feel free to contact me – as indeed any and every reader may do – on michaelhaas@coralfox.com
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Michael, thank you for your reply to a previous posting re Korngold. I have since read in depth your Korngold site, listened to the audio samples and learned so much. I found the recording of Korngold playing the piano and humming wordlessly as he went along very moving. How I wish I had been able to visit the exhibition in Vienna ! I watched a very interesting documentary, “Le Maestro”, about the work of Francesco Lotoro who has travelled the world for the past thirty years searching for music wxritten by composers imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps. I expect you know him. I have also just finished reading “The Tin Ring” by Zdenka Fantlova who was a Terezin prisoner and who describes the incredible music activity in the camp. What courage these people had ; for example it is hard to imagine that in the two years he was at Terezin Viktor Ullmann wrote 16 major works. I am currently reading “Le Ghetto de Wilno 1941-1944” by Abraham Sutzkever. There again, music is eminently present. The simple words Sutzkever uses to describe the fate of the singer Lyuba Levitzki, who had studied music at the Vienna Conservatory, only goes to underline the brutality and cynicism of the Nazi regime in place there.Thank you for your wonderful site/blog. There is still much more to discover.
Dear Margaret,
Thank you for your words of encouragement. I need to write something again soon, but we’re on the brink of opening our centre at Vienna’s Performing Arts University where we are collecting the musical estates of those musicians who lost careers or lives due to the madness of Nazism. It’s been fascinating seeing the enormous range of styles and means of expression that made the inter-war years the most dynamic of any period. After our opening on May 22nd, I hope to return to the site, and hopefully, given your interest in Korngold, it will be something that you’ll enjoy reading. I shall certainly check out Sutzkever and his comments on Lyuba Levitzki as our opening Exhibition is about former students and faculty of the University (former Conservatory, then Academy). Thank you for the recommendation.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
Michael
Dear Michael,
I want to thank you for your blog ‘Forbidden Music’ which I found by chance when I was writing a short diary piece for our synagogue newsletter (Edinburgh LIberal Jewish Community).on the forthcoming performance of Hans Gal’s opera, ‘Song of the Night’ in Edinburgh on 4 June.I understand that this is the first time it’s been performed since 1930. I hadn’t hear of Hans Gal until recently, through a member of our community who happens to sing in a choir with Hans Gal’s granddaughter (I assume the sister of the Simon Fox- Gals whose recordings you included?).
I really appreciate your well-written, well-researched, thought-provoking blog and the subtle crtique that it offers.Thank you so much. I will continue to read it.
Very best wishes,
Sue
Dear Sue,
Thank you for the positive feedback. Of course, you’re singing with Tanya Fox who has tirelessly worked to have the works of her grandfather returned to their rightful place in the history of 20th century music in Central Europe. I haven’t written on the blog for a couple of months as we’re preparing an exhibition and the grand opening our exil.arte centre at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, and where Hans Gál’s musical estate will ultimately be housed.
Do let me know if you need further information.
Warmest wishes and thank you for taking the time to get in touch!
Michael
Dear Michael
Thank you for your kind reply. I expect you are getting ready for the opening of your new centre at Vienna’s Performing Arts University. A big event after much hard work ! Good luck and best wishes for May 22nd.
THANK YOU!!
It is planned to publish a german translation of the book “forbidden music”? Thanks a lot for your information.
Ich würde eine deutsche Übersetzung von „Forbidden Music“ sehr begrüßen – allerdings liegen diese Übersetzungsrechte samt Vertrieb bei Yale University. Deutsche Verlage sind entweder auf großes Bildungsbürgertum gezielt oder akademische Veröffentlichungen, die selbstbezahlt werden. Als Yale mir den Vertrag darbrachte, war es mir nicht klar, dass sie Übersetzungs- und Veröffentlichungsrechte an dt. Verlage verkaufen. Anscheinend, gibt es im deutschen Sprachraum keine Plattform, die den anglo-amerikanischen Universitätsverlagen, wie Oxford, Yale, Cambridge usw. gleicht; d.h. nicht nur ein akademisches Publikum ansprechen aber auch das s.g. Bildungsbürgertum. Böhlau wäre bereit das Buch zu veröffentlichen, und Geld für eine Übersetzung sei auch vorhanden, nur möchte Yale jene Rechte veräußern. Hinzu kommt die Tatsache, dass das Buch auf Englisch nur €12-€15 als Taschenbuch kostet, während eine Veröffentlichung bei Peter Lang bzw. Böhlau auf mindesten €30-€50 käme. Da Interessierten das Buch billiger auf Englisch erwerben können, wäre die deutsche Übersetzung kaum rentabel. Trotzdem, wenn es irgendwie möglich wäre, würde ich mir eine Übersetzung sehr wünschen. Die meisten Briefe und Zeitungsartikel, die vorkommen und zitiert werden sind sowieso auf Deutsch und nur meine Zwischentexte müssten übersetzt werden.
Dear Michael; first all real music-lovers must be grateful to you, and those then responsible at Universal Music, for the Entartete Musik series. My partner and I have all but one Cd, and have now found it, and will buy it. Also your research, and the book, into other banned composers. Really a work of ‘Love’. I read your writings on Berthold Goldschimidt, and in particular about The Performing Edition of Mahler 1O.
I had as a young man correspondence with Deryck Cooke, about Mahler 10, when he was being criticised about his work on it. I have the feeling, from his letters, and from hearing him talk, that others were at work to put Mr. Goldschmidt into the background. He was such a mild-mannered man, and so many good things done, back then for the Mahler Centenary, on the BBC. (I still have the letters. Interesting story how he got my first). and later in his continuing literary reviews etc.
They both would be more than happy to know that their version, is still the most performed, and recorded, despite small additions, or ‘new’ versions.
As a young man in Liverpool in 1963, I wanted to hear Mahler 8 at Liverpool Cathedral, but it was outsold, and so I went back to my digs, and listened on the radio.
Also I had the great privilege to correspond with the late, Henri Louis de la Grange. First whilst he was preparing Vol. One, of his magnificent Mahler Biography. My partner and I met hi personally at the Mahler Symposium, at The Queen Elizabeth Hall, in the 1980’s, and wrote to him again later, after I met a Mr. Mahler, through my work then, for The Salvation Army, in Frauenfeld Switzerland. He was Patent Lawyer, and was indeed related to the Mahler family. I gave his information to Henri Louis, but never knew if they made contact.
It has been a great ‘Musical’ life, owing to my outgoing, and adventurous nature, and therefore to correspond with, and. to meet famous people. We are at present in Mexico (Guadalajara) for our winter solstice ,and we live right next door to a famous Mexican classical guitar player, Enrique Flores. He and his wife Marcella, have a photo of her father, and the very young, not yet known, Placido Domingo. The Filharmonica de Jalisco, here had become very fine, but now with the new government, Marco Parisotto’s contract has not been renewed. Some very fine concerts here in the past, and Opera.
Here we have come to know Abdiel Vasquez, pianist, and his composer friend Juan Pablo Contreras, who composed a concerto for him, ‘Piramid del Sol’, now recorded here, but waiting to be released by some recording company.
‘If music be the be the food of Love, play on’!!
Thanks also for the article about Manfred Gurlitt, we cam across his music by chance, the nit linked to you. Wozzeck, is certainly a must, despite in the shadow of Berg. We feel concert programmes are so conservative, and so many diserving composers and their music, are never played. But we have adventurous recordings companies still. Capriccio, .BIS, Chandos, Lyrita, Hyperion etc.
Talking of Wozzeck, have you seen the Fabulous Zuerich production, not to be missed?!
http://accentus.com/productions/alban-berg-wozzeck
Best wishes from us, for all of your future, ‘creations’.
Peter and Andreas
Dear Peter and Andreas,
I hardly know how to respond to such a kind and considered appraisal in an open Forum. Please send me an email to my university address so that I may respond more personally. My address is haas-m@mdw.ac.at With warmest wishes,
Michael
HI Michael, Im Maria Noel a musician from Argentina.
I had the honour of playing in the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires the saxophone part in Viktor Ullman s ¨The Kaiser from Atantida¨, which we also took to Brasil and L´ opera Comique in Paris, as well as SCHULHOFF Hot Sonata for saxophone and piano.
Maybe you know that here in ARGENTINA we also had our dark times with non less than 30,000 persons which were ¨disappeared ¨ during the last military government in the 70¨s. Last Sunday we commemorated a new anniversary of this horrible events and this made me think again about all those musicians who had to go through the second world war, and I realized that we remember the names of the composers , and fortunately we have their music and are able to play it giving in some way, life again to all those who lost their lives during this dark period of the human history, but I also realized that we don’t even know the names of the musicians who played those pieces in the ghetos… and I think its really sad and unfair that we don’t even know their names… in the case of the Kaiser from Atlanta , I understand that they were all killed after the general rehearsal because the soldiers of the SS thought that it was a kind of parody of Hitler,,,,
By any chance can you give me a clue of how or where to search for this information_¿?
I would really be very grateful with any information about how to get their names…
Well, thank you very much for your time!!!
SINCERELY
So happy to finally register for the blog which I followed on facebook before leaving that platform.Every article is so beautifully written and informative and I also really enjoy the musical extracts.Looking forward very much to the next one Michael.
Hi Michael,
This is a wonderful essay on a branch of our family that I’m still trying to understand. Walter and I spoke some years ago and he told me of how that branch came to Vienna, I’d like to speak to him again but I’m afraid I’ve lost his contact information. Could you put us in touch?
Adam Aptowitzer
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i remember michael hayes as DONELO in the production of the MERRY WIDOW still available by going to franz lehar THE MERRY WIDOW on you tube new york city opera filmed live at the lincoln center in new york state theatre. i think that michael was 32 years old at this time.
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