Moral and political dilemmas

Robert Gore-Langton

Wednesday, 23rd July 2008

Robert Gore-Langton talks to Ronald Harwood about musical life in Nazi Germany

‘The really low point for him was writing kitsch music — the hymn for the [1936] Olympic games, and the wedding march for the Japanese royal family — he found that appalling,’ says Harwood. ‘But what would any of us have done? As a writer I am fascinated by the question: how would I have behaved? It wouldn’t have happened to me being a Jew, but if Hitler had called and said, “You’re my favourite playwright, come and read to me,” I can’t say what I would have done. I can’t answer and I have never been tested.’

The seasoned actor Michael Pennington feels the same way. He played Furtwängler’s foul-mouthed American interrogator in the original production of Taking Sides directed by Harold Pinter. This time round he’s playing Furtwängler, and Strauss in Collaboration.

‘It’s great to revisit Taking Sides — it’s a modern classic,’ says Pennington. ‘But I think Strauss’s reputation has been tarnished more than Furtwängler’s, but I warm to Strauss as a man slightly more. Furtwängler is not a natural hero — he had this patrician Prussian arrogance — but you might argue that, if he did help the Jews to escape [as is claimed], then that was at least constructive. But Strauss was the more likeable, genial man. The rights and wrongs in either case are completely insoluble. To what extent anyone is entitled to make any retrospective judgment of people in their situation — that’s the question.’

Were the Nazis real music lovers at heart? ‘Yes. The Nazis had a mystical connection with music,’ says Harwood. ‘And yet Mendelssohn was banned, The Magic Flute had to have another libretto because da Ponte was Jewish — it was all utterly insane. The Germans were, I think, deeply cultured but totally uncivilised. For the British, I think, it was the other way round. Totalitarian governments always have to control the arts because they know their power.’

Collaboration and Taking Sides run at the Chichester Festival Theatre until 30 August. 01243 781 312.

Manuel Harlan