Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online, Vol. 16, 2019 Yulia Kreinin – On Gustav Mahler’s Reception in Israel: The Fourth Homeland? On Gustav Mahler’s Reception in Israel: The Fourth Homeland?1 YULIA KREININ Hebrew University of Jerusalem Abstract: The performances of Mahler's music all over the world never elicited a unanimous response of delight. Quite naturally, performances of his music in Israel also generated ideological discussions, in the context of the Jewish Eretz-Israeli culture of the 1930s and into the early 1950s, after the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel. The range of opinions mirrored the arguments about the essence of Jewish identity in the evolving Promised Land. Despite the disagreement about Mahler’s place on the spectrum of Jewish-Israeli culture, his Resurrection Symphony was performed at three crucial junctures in Israel’s history: during the War of Independence in 1948, after the Six-Day War in 1967 (both times under the baton of Leonard Bernstein), and at Masada in 1988, marking 40 years of Israeli statehood (this time under the baton of Zubin Mehta). On January 22, 2007, a square in Tel Aviv was named after Mahler. Thus Mahler acquired one more home, in addition to Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, in recognition of Israel’s appreciation of a great European composer who had been born a Jew. Keywords: Mahler’s reception, spiritual homeland, Israeli culture, Jewish identity For more than one hundred years, both Mahler’s music and his Weltanschauung have remained subjects of intensive debates. Irrespective of the time and place of his music’s performances, Mahler never enjoyed a unanimous response from the audiences: either acclaim or dismay, but never indifference. The persistence of intense discussions about Mahler’s music suggests that we cannot evaluate the responses as a series of separate events, each having its own specific reason; instead, the controversy about Mahler in the outside world can be seen as a mirror of his highly ambivalent inner world, giving rise to a diversity of interpretations. Among other issues, one of controversial points has for a long time been Mahler’s ambivalent attitude toward the spiritual Israel, id est, his Jewish heritage. Mahler’s connection (or lack thereof) with his Jewish spiritual roots remains a thorny issue, despite 1 This article was first published in the “Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts / Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook” XI, 2012, pp. 283-298, Herausgeber/Editor Dan Diner, and is reprinted with kind permission from the editors. 58 Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online, Vol. 16, 2019 Yulia Kreinin – On Gustav Mahler’s Reception in Israel: The Fourth Homeland? much interest in the subject and the many publications that have focused on the topic.2 When we examine the question of Mahler’s national and cultural identity, however, we must distinguish between his self-identity and his reception by various audiences, both Jewish and Gentile. The attitude of non-Jewish audiences varied widely, from racist anti-Semitism to enthusiastic delight and admiration (“the man who, as I believe, expresses the art of our time in its profoundest and most sacred form” – Thomas Mann, after the premiere of the Eighth Symphony in Munich, 19103). Jewish audiences also reacted to Mahler’s personality and work in different ways. Their most common attitude was a dual one of love and antipathy: partly due to Mahler’s conversion to Christianity, partly to his seemingly exclusive affinity with Christian culture. Naturally, therefore, performances of Mahler’s music in Israel generated ideological strife and were the subject of animated discussions.4 To gain a picture of the historical background for these discussions, we have to take into consideration the historical facts connected with the performance of Mahler’s works in Israel. The Newly-Created Palestine Orchestra Performs Mahler The initiative for Mahler’s performances came from the Jewish violinist and conductor Bronisław Huberman (1882–1947), who founded the Palestine Orchestra in 1936.5 Huberman’s ideological beliefs did not remain static during his lifetime. In the 1920s, before he became involved in the Palestine orchestra project, he was one of the adherents of the pan-European movement and “went so far as to define himself as a European in his national affiliation.”6 Nevertheless, during three touring visits to Eretz Israel (“Land of Israel - Heb.) from 1929 to 1934, he was greatly inspired by the warm reception given to him by the local audiences, as well as by his observation of the egalitarian nature of culture in the Zionist project for the entire community. “I believe firmly that Palestine will in a short time be the first country where the human humiliation of a culture limited only to one class or section will disappear, the first country where we shall witness the miracle of an entire community culture.”7 2 Among recent publications, “Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna” by Carl Niekerk (Rochester, New York 2010) is of special interest owing to its wide cultural context and view. 3 Cit. in Norman Lebrecht, Mahler Remembered, London 1987, 310. 4 My research of this subject was supported by a research grant from the Municipality of Vienna. The results were partly presented at conferences in England and Greece (2003), and later in Israel (2006). 5 In 1948 it was renamed the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Thus, the orchestra is twelve years older than the State of Israel. For more detailed information about the Palestine Orchestra, see Jehoash Hirshberg, Music in the Jewish Community of Palestine 1880–1948. A Social History, Oxford 1995, 122–139. 6 Ibid., 123. 7 Ibid. Hirshberg cites here from Ida Ibbeken/Tzvi Avni (eds.), An Orchestra is Born, Tel Aviv 1969, 11 (Heb.). 59 Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online, Vol. 16, 2019 Yulia Kreinin – On Gustav Mahler’s Reception in Israel: The Fourth Homeland? Apparently, the final incentive for his idea to establish an orchestra in Palestine was the rise of Hitler to power in Germany, which was followed by the dismissal of many Jewish musicians from their places of work. Most members of the future Palestinian orchestra were Jewish refugees whom Huberman had recruited through auditions in Europe. In fact, Huberman conducted a rescue operation that saved nearly one hundred musicians and their families from extermination.8 The best local musicians joined the new immigrants to form the first professional orchestra in Palestine. As early as April 1937, during the orchestra’s second season, Mahler’s First Symphony had already been incorporated into the repertoire; it was performed in Palestine three times (under the baton of Hans Wilhelm Steinberg): in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.9 Significantly, the status of Mahler’s music in Israel has evolved considerably in the more than seventy years that his music has been performed. At first, Huberman was convinced that one symphony by Mahler per season would do; he did not see a reason to play Mahler’s music more often. His position was based on two points. First of all, Huberman preferred to perform Classical and early Romantic music, which was more popular in Palestine at the time. His preferences were based on his acquaintance with the local conditions in the Palestine of the 1930s: as hard as it is to believe today, even the most educated Palestinian Jews had little opportunity to listen to a live orchestra performance on a regular basis (although chamber music was performed frequently, giving the needed background for their reception of Classical and early Romantic music, but not Mahler’s). In Huberman’s view, “it would be foolish to perform two Mahler symphonies and two or three works by Berlioz during the second season in such a country, while only three symphonies by Beethoven and one by Schubert are included. Our audience consists of all classes of society, and we will be able to preserve and even broaden our audience only if we succeed in ‘planting’ a feeling that they come to us not out of a sense of duty […] but simply to enjoy the concerts and to get from them inspiration.”10 The second point is even more revealing, and even surprising. Reading Huberman’s correspondence, we realize that he never considered Mahler a Jewish composer. In his opinion, Jewish music had to be popularized in Israel through performances of the works of living composers who had settled in Palestine.11 For Huberman, looking from the Tel Aviv of the 1930s, Mahler was 8 At the same time, we must remember that many of the musicians who auditioned for the orchestra were not accepted. In one of the episodes in the novel The Rosendorf Quartet, the main character repeats the sentence he heard from one of his colleagues who was unlucky: “I am going to die because I am a mediocre oboe player.” Nathan Shaham, The Rosendorf Quartet. Trans. from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu, New York 1991, 35 (Germ.: Nathan Shacham, Rosendorf Quartett. Aus dem Hebräischen übersetzt von Mirjam Pressler, Frankfurt a. M./Leipzig 1994). 9 From this point on, all information about Mahler’s performances in Israel is taken from the archives of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (Tel Aviv). I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Naama Ramot, who searched for relevant materials in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) archives. 10 Ibbeken/Avni (eds.), An Orchestra is Born, 44. 11 Ibid. 60 Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online, Vol. 16, 2019 Yulia Kreinin – On Gustav Mahler’s Reception in Israel: The Fourth Homeland? appreciated as a Viennese figure and a symbol of European culture. In Israel, such appreciation proved to be rather influential in the years to come, and was reflected in Israeli literature as well.