En god tysker! Karl Amadeus Hartmann 1905-1963Citat fra:
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/0 ... html#ed_op#br>
One spring evening 60 years ago, a German composer looked out of the window of his father-in-law’s villa overlooking the Starnberg Lake and saw a column of 20,000 Dachau prisoners being force-marched by the SS, away from the approaching Allied armies. Next morning the line was still being whipped along the road.
‘Unending was the stream, unending the misery, unending the sorrow,’ wrote Karl Amadeus Hartmann at the head of a fresh sheet of paper on which, over the following tense days, he composed a piano sonata titled ’27 April 1945’, its opening rhythm dictated by the shuffling feet of the final victims of Nazi tyranny.
Unending was the stream, unending the misery, unending the sorrow,’ wrote Karl Amadeus Hartmann at the head of a fresh sheet of paper on which, over the following tense days, he composed a piano sonata titled ’27 April 1945’, its opening rhythm dictated by the shuffling feet of the final victims of Nazi tyranny.
Hartmann is a figure unique in German music - the only composer to stay put and defy Hitler for the duration of the Third Reich. ‘My brothers and I managed to keep our distance from the army, the militia, labour battalions and other such pleasures,’ he wrily reported. ‘We are known as one of the few truly antifascist families in Munich.’
Their dissidence originated in the First World War when, as cultured Francophiles, the Hartmanns refused to submit to xenophobic hysteria. By 1932, one brother was distributing anti-Hitler pamphlets while the youngest, Karl, was playing jazz. When Hitler came to power, Karl wrote asymphonic work, Miserae, and dedicated it to ‘my friends … who sleep for all eternity; we do not forget you (Dachau, 1933-34)’.
Its premiere in Prague provoked a diplomatic protest and Hartmann was mildly harassed by Nazi bureaucrats. He resolved never to let a note of his music be played under Nazi rule. His wife, with whom I briefly corresponded, insisted that he was a passive resistant who would never have taken risks with her life or their son’s, but others told me that he actively helped fugitives flee the country across unguarded Alpine passes.
His centenary is being marked this year by 150 performances in central Europe and very few in English-speaking countries - which says more about our linguistic arrogance and isolationism than about the quality of Hartmann’s music, which is variable but by no means negligible. It is, in fact, a vital link in the symphonic chain from pre-Hitler modernism to post-War abstraction, a bridge from Paul Hindemith to Hans-Werner Henze. ‘Without Karl Amadeus Hartmann,’ Henze once said to me, ‘there could have been no Henze.’
J
eg hører hans 1. symfoni ”Versuch eines Requiem” med Bamberger SO dirigeret af Ingo Metzmacher på EMI 5 55424 2 fra 1995.
Hvis man synes at sommerens aggressioner, vold, mord, trafikdrab og anden danskhed er i overkanten, så er der trøst i at hente ved at høre Hartmann.
mvh. SES.
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also. Igor Stravinsky
Vi har alle lært at skjule vore fordomme, og vi viser ikke vore forkerte meninger. PO Enquist 1976.