Ildebrando PIZZETTI Symphony in A Harp Concerto Margherita Bassani Harp Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai Damian Iorio Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) who received the commissions from their respective parents, with no mention of the Japanese anniversary; the governments were intriguingly varied – which must have use of Latin headings from the Catholic Requiem Mass for Symphony in A (1940) • Harp Concerto in E flat major (1958, 1960) been pure accident: with three of the countries at war, there its three movements; delays, lacunae and misunderstandings The series of concerts in Tokyo in December 1940 at which Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (1892, 1899-1900, rev. 1901-10). could hardly have been international liaison on the matter. in communication – virtually inevitable in two unrelated Pizzetti’s Symphony in A was first heard were the culmination The president of Japan’s 2600th Anniversary Celebration The grand old man of German music, 75-year-old Richard languages across three continents amid escalating global of one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of Committee was Hidemaro Konoe’s older brother, Prince Strauss (1864-1949), whose relations with the Nazis were hostilities – including Britten’s description of Prince Fumimaro the ever-fraught relationship between music and politics. Fumimaro Konoe (1891-1945; he was also Prime Minister of complicated but sometimes beyond excuse, was reportedly Konoe as ‘Mr’ Konoe (it is not impossible that Britten and/or The story of that episode is complex, and it remains in some Japan from June 1937 to January 1939 and from July 1940 selected by Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels his advisers may have confused the Prince with his conductor aspects murky, but it is essential to a full understanding of to October 1941) – in which context it is understandable that in person; some sources state that Strauss accepted the brother); and the fact that by late 1940, while the Japanese Pizzetti’s Symphony. the Committee should decide to mark the Empire’s putative commission (and waived his fee) only because the Japanese were still officially neutral, Britain stood alone in the War in The 1940 Tokyo concerts were one element of a major 26th centenary by commissioning new music from western agreed to help protect his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice from Europe against Japan’s allies Germany and Italy; word may programme of events staged in Japan that year to glorify composers. anti-Semitic persecution. Italy handed the commission to also have reached Tokyo of an interview published by the the 2600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese But the story becomes stranger the closer you look. the 59-year-old Ildebrando Pizzetti, who looked to have the New York Sun on 27 April 1940 in which Britten declared that Empire. 11 February 660 BCE, according to tradition, saw When in September 1939 the 2600th Anniversary Celebration perfect pedigree: since the mid 1920s Pizzetti had given he planned to make the piece ‘as anti-war as possible’. the enthronement of the first Emperor, Jimmu or Jinmu, a Committee contacted six western governments – France, every appearance – admittedly in common with virtually every And then there were four. The Japanese authorities descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. The inconvenient Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy and the United other Italian composer – of being a good Fascist; he ran the certainly accorded VIP treatment to the four works they judged fact that Jinmu never actually existed was not permitted to States – to request a new overture, suite, symphonic poem elite composition course at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in acceptable, arranging four concerts in Tokyo’s huge Kabuki impede the celebrations – one prominent Japanese historian, or symphony from whichever one of their leading composers the Italian capital Rome; he had written the score for the epic Theatre (two for invited audiences including the Imperial Sōkichi Tsuda (1873-1961) was even put on trial during the they chose to nominate,1 three of those countries were filmScipione l’Africano (Scipio the African, 1936-37; known in family on 7 and 8 December 1940, and two open to the public Second World War for daring to suggest (correctly) that already at war with each other. Germany and Italy were English-speaking countries as Scipio Africanus or The Defeat the following weekend, 14 and 15 December), followed by revered ancient accounts of the Empire’s first 900 years were doubtless top of the Japanese Committee’s list – not only for of Hannibal), which glorified Fascist Italy’s imperial expansion further performances for radio broadcasts and a commercial almost completely fictitious. Since the accession in 1926 of musical reasons (as representing the two foremost traditions in Africa by analogy with the ancient Roman Empire; and in subscription recording; and assembling for the purpose an the dynasty’s latest scion, Emperor Hirohito (1901-89), the of western music) but for political ones: Imperial Japan, Nazi June 1939 he had become the latest composer to be granted enormous ‘26th Centenary Celebration Symphony Orchestra’ Japanese authorities had promoted the myth of Empire to Germany and Fascist Italy shared authoritarian systems of membership of the regime’s prestigious Reale Accademia that augmented the New Symphony Orchestra to 170 players underpin a surge in nationalism and expansionism, and by the government, had signed a joint anti-Communist treaty in d’Italia (Royal Italian Academy) – sixty leading figures in (180 for the Strauss), including at least 46 violins, 14 horns time the War broke out in Europe in September 1939, Japan 1937, and would conclude a military alliance (the ‘Tripartite the Italian sciences, humanities and arts, appointed for and 12 percussionists. Political complications were never far had firmly established itself as the dominant power in East Pact’) in September 1940; though in August 1939 Japan life. Presumably by coincidence, the Académie de France away: according to John Morris (1895-1980), an Englishman Asia, commanding large areas of present-day China, parts had been angered by the Nazis’ non-aggression pact with (French Academy) – the model for the Italian Accademia – employed at that time as a language adviser by the Japanese of Mongolia and Russia, the whole of Korea and countless Soviet Russia. The motivation for a Hungarian commission chose to commission the composer who was their Director Foreign Office (he would later become Controller of the BBC Pacific islands including Taiwan. is unlikely to have been political: while Hitler did pressurise in Rome, Jacques Ibert (1890-1962). Hungary and Great Third Programme), the New Symphony Orchestra’s Chief The inclusion of European music in the anniversary Hungary into joining the Tripartite Pact in October 1940, their Britain opted for composers of the younger generation, just Conductor, Polish-born Joseph Rosenstock (1895-1985), festivities was perhaps not as startling as it might appear. relationship in 1939 was ambivalent; probably somebody beginning to make their mark internationally: the Hungarian was not permitted to lead the anniversary performances – Japan’s rulers had been making sustained efforts to on the Japanese committee had a particular penchant for nominee, Sándor Veress (1907-92), was a safe bet, as a because he was Jewish. westernise the country for well over half a century; western Hungary’s famous composers Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and/ former composition student of both Bartók and Kodály, and To open each concert, the Tokyo-born composer and classical music had attracted genuine public enthusiasm, or Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) – the New Symphony Orchestra also Bartók’s chosen assistant in folk music research; but the conductor Kōsaku [aka Kósçak or Kôsçak] Yamada (1886- barely dampened by the increasingly chauvinistic political had given the Japanese premiere of Bartók’s Music for British Council took what appears to have been the rather 1965) directed the Japanese National Anthem – ‘throughout climate; and Japan had already produced numerous Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) only a few months risky decision to approach the yet more youthful Benjamin which’, Morris reported, the official representatives of Nazi musicians of international stature – most prominently earlier. It seems surprising, however, that the Japanese Britten (1913-76), who was something of an enfant terrible, Germany and Fascist Italy ‘remained in the “Heil Hitler” Viscount Hidemaro Konoe [or Konoye] (1898-1973), a son of requested commissions from France, Great Britain and the nurtured unconcealed pacifist sympathies, and was not even position, much to the discomfort of those seated immediately the powerful Fujiwara clan (probably second in influence only USA – and still more so that Britain and France accepted the living in his native country, having left for the United States in front of them’. (This notorious gesture with a straight, to the Japanese imperial family) who studied composition invitation, given that both countries had just declared war six months earlier. The work Britten created, the Sinfonia raised arm had been promulgated independently by the with Vincent D’Indy (1851-1931) and Franz Schreker (1878- on Germany in response to the Nazi invasion of Poland at da Requiem (‘Requiem Symphony’, 1939-40, Op. 20), is Italian regime: Mussolini called it the ‘Roman Salute’.) The 1934) and conducting with Erich Kleiber (1890-1956): in the beginning of September 1939. US-Japanese diplomatic unquestionably a masterpiece; but it was eventually rejected programme’s grand finale, presided over by the flamboyant Tokyo in 1926 Hidemaro Konoe founded the New Symphony relations had already deteriorated so far that the Americans by the Japanese, owing to a complex combination of some Nazi-approved conductor Helmut Fellmer, was the most feted Orchestra, which rapidly became the best in the country, summarily (and uniquely) refused to provide a commission. or all of the following factors: its far-from-celebratory title and and ingratiating – even obsequious – of the four European and with which in 1930 he made the first-ever recording of So then there were five.