Honoring Holocaust victim and Austrian musician Viktor Ullmann

Herbert Gantschacher has a personal vested interest in Viktor Ullmann. 

Ullmann was a celebrated Austrian pianist and composer who was incarcerated for two years at Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, where he wrote some valuable scores before being sent to his death in Auschwitz.

Gantschacher, a 67-year-old resident of Salzburg, Austria, has made several trips to Israel in recent years. Primarily, that has involved collaborating with the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (JAMD), in an agenda comprising lectures and concerts. 

A director and producer of an eclectic range of musical and other projects and productions, as well as putting out and contributing to an impressive number of tomes, Gantschacher is back here to take on a packed schedule. During the course of this week, he will enlighten JAMD students, staff, and visitors about Ullmann, at a couple of lectures he is due to give at the academy.  

Feted father-and-daughter Jewish Austrian violinists Arnold and Alma Rosé, who share plenty of common ground with Ullmann, will also feature prominently in the discourses. 

The program culminates in a concert at the YMCA in Jerusalem, on February 8 (8 p.m.), under the auspices of JAMD Dean of the Faculty of Performing Arts Prof. Zvi Semel, and Austria-based Arbos – Company for Music and Theatre. Assisted by Israeli conductor Keren Kagarlitsky, Alexander Drčar, from the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, serves as conductor and music director, with the Mendi Rodan Symphony Orchestra putting the sheet music into sonic form

The repertoire for the occasion appears to be pretty diverse. But, as Gantschacher points out, there is a strong thematic thread that runs through the selection. The concert opens with the Overture to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro followed by Bach’s Suite Nr. 2 in B minor. After the break we get to hear the Overture from Ullmann’s The Broken Jug, closing with Mozart’s Symphony Nr. 40. 

The Bach element comes courtesy of the fact that the Rosés performed his works frequently. Rosé Sr. was a bona fide A-lister in classical music circles of the day, serving as leader of both the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, for half a century, and of the Vienna Hofoper (Vienna State Opera), the national opera house ensemble. He also founded the internationally lauded Rosé Quartet. 

Alma was a famous violinist in her own right, founding and leading the hugely popular Die Wiener Walzermädeln (The Waltzing Girls of Vienna) women’s orchestra, which packed concert halls all over Europe in the 1930s. The Rosés managed to escape to England but, tragically, Alma decided to go to the still unoccupied Netherlands as, unlike her father, she was unable to find work in Britain. When the Nazis invaded Holland, she was caught and sent to Auschwitz. There she established and maintained The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, which included now 98-year-old cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Alma did not survive.

For Gantschacher, the YMCA concert has a strong local musical core to it. He grew up and attended school in the southernmost state of Carinthia, which is a supporter of the current program here and contributes to other projects that Gantschacher spearheads. Ullmann also had formative experiences in the vicinity, and the Rosés too, have a link with the region, albeit indirect. “Viktor Ullmann did his military service in the area during World War I,” he explains.

“And the Rosés are connected, through [Gustav] Mahler, to Klagenfurt.” The close bond plot thickened when Gantschacher later learned that his own grandfather, Friedrich Eggarter, was a comrade in arms of Ullmann during the Great War.

Sharing a hometown with Mozart

One of Gantschacher’s lectures at the JAMD will be devoted to useful techniques for curating concert repertoires. Topical ties between the various pieces, be they stylistic, historical, or otherwise, are a good way to go about programming. The YMCA concert is a prime example of that approach. 

“In principle, the works I chose are all related to Ullmann, and to Arnold and Alma Rosé,” he notes. “In principle, the works are something like a musical biography of Viktor Ullmann.” 

THE MOZART-ULLMANN interface is also a natural development. For starters, Mozart was born in Gantschacher’s long-term home base of Salzburg. There is also a significant musical overlap. 

“Ullmann was involved in a production of The Marriage of Figaro by [Jewish Austrian composer and conductor] Alexander Zemlinsky, as a choir conductor,” Gantschacher says. 

“Later, he conducted it himself. And in the 1927-28 season, Ullmann produced The Marriage of Figaro himself as conductor and musical director of [North Bohemian] Theater [of Opera and Ballet] in Usti nad Labem [in Czechoslovakia].” Things did not go entirely to plan for Ullmann there, and his employment was curtailed as his choice of repertoire was considered to be too modern for local tastes.

Despite living in the first half of the 20th century and creating contemporary works such as the now lauded Emperor of Atlantis one-act anti-war opera he wrote while interred at Theresienstadt and which, unsurprisingly, the Nazis did not allow to be performed, Gantschacher was at pains to point out that Ullmann had a strong classical streak to his oeuvre. 

That came to the fore in the flurry of musical activity at the concentration camp. 

“Ullmann was the head of two sections there – Studio for New Music and, what is always neglected, the Collegium Musicum. At the Collegium Musicum he produced concerts which are related to classical music. The second big mistake made by musicology is to reduce Viktor Ullmann and [fellow Theresienstadt inmate composers] Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, Pavel Haas [and] Zikmund Schul to their activities at Terezin.” 

Hence the YMCA lineup. 

“This is why I compiled the concert in this way,” says Gantschacher. “We start with the overture of Figaro, then the Bach which is related to the Rosés. Then we have an overture to Ullmann’s contemporary work The Broken Jug. The program is like a mirror. We start with Mozart, then overture, overture, and we finish with Mozart Symphony no. 40.” The geographic and creative symmetry notion is complete when one takes into account the fact that Ullmann worked on his own reading of the Mozart symphony during his military service in the environs of Carinthia.

Gantschacher has, for some years, worked tirelessly to expose the work of Holocaust victim and survivor composers to the world. One can only hazard a guess at what Ullmann may have gone on to write and produce, had his life circumstances been kinder. At the very least, hopefully, this week’s lecture and concert series will help to introduce more Israelis to the genius of Viktor Ullmann.

For tickets and more information: tickchak.co.il/57603