James Conlon: Recovered Voices

After being hailed as “one of the great musical talents of our time” by Brandeis Office of the Arts Director Scott Edminston, Maestro James Conlon presented the focus of his classical music recovery project, entitled “Recovered Voices,” to a crowd of nearly one hundred at the Brandeis Faculty Center on November 17th .

“Recovered Voices,” as explained by Conlon on Monday night, operates as “an attempt to revive the works of those composers whose music has dropped out of the repertory…to whom the loss of their position in the great line of classical music tradition is due exclusively or directly to the crimes of the Third Reich.” As a result of the atrocities committed by the Nazi Regime from the 1930’s to 1940’s, many well-established European composers’ works were destroyed or barred from the general public throughout the decades, leading to what Conlon referred to as an “enormous omission” of works from the classical music repertory.

“Most of these names are unknown, at least to the general public,” Conlon explained to the audience. Of the composers that managed to survive the heinous conditions and brutality of concentration camps, many returned home to find their music entirely forgotten by the general public, leading these musicians to fade away into complete obscurity. As a result, the challenge for Conlon’s project “is only partially about finding lost music, but rather performing it.”
James Conlon’s speech comes at a particularly poignant time in recent history, as November 9th marks the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, the precluding act of atrocity in Germany that ignited the events of the Holocaust. The anniversary was solemnly marked with major events of commemoration held in the United States, Israel, and Germany. Just one week ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gathered alongside a crowd of 1,200 outside the newly renovated Rykestrasse synagogue in Berlin, Germany’s largest synagogue, to silently pay tribute to the lost Jewish victims of Kristallnacht. The synagogue’s complete renovation has been hailed as one of the many signs of Germany’s sincere efforts to restore and bolster relationships with its rapidly increasing Jewish communities. As James Conlon further noted in his speech on Monday, “There has been no country more dedicated to the recovery than Germany.”

Conlon notes historical importance and accuracy as one of the major factors of “Recovered Voices.” According to the conductor, whenever new knowledge is gained from a past era in history, it is a historian’s responsibility to “look anew into an era; to revisit an era in new light.” With the newly found, previously unheard music being rediscovered by “Recovered Voices,” Conlon believes his project has the ability to drastically alter current assumptions about music in the twentieth century: “We will be able to revisit and rewrite [history] more correctly to reveal that the years between 1920 and 1945 would have been far more varied and rich, had it been uninterrupted.”

Yet aside from Conlon’s involvement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Opera, his personal motivation for bringing these composers’ works to international consciousness remains relatively unknown. As a result, some critics have grown wary of Conlon’s intentions for “Recovered Voices,” ranging anywhere from pity to self-involvement and promotion. “I am not interested in tokenism or novelty,” Conlon rebutted against critics earlier this year in an interview with the New York Times, “This is an integral part of German music…they have the same roots and came out of the same environment as everyone else in their time.”

While the lost composers’ works may indeed be integral to German music, Conlon is still quick to acknowledge the incredible difficulty involved in attempting to introduce unknown artists into the classical world. As he explained of his efforts, attempting to market a performance by an unknown composer such as Schreker or Schulhoff against that of their more reputable competition, such as Mozart or Beethoven, is a nearly impossible task within the classical world.
Still, Conlon remains confident that the community will eventually embrace these newly rediscovered talents. “I can’t believe that people in the classical music tradition aren’t curious about what’s out there!” he exclaimed. Using a metaphor to describe the experience of finding lost music, Conlon argued, “I have great difficulty in believing that if anyone found paintings that represented a new, rich movement, that nobody would be interested.” The conductor went on to list the names of the most prevalent and respected composers of the art form, including Mozart, Brahms, Wagner, and Shubert. “This is a part of that world,” Conlon said with confidence, “All they are waiting for is a committed performance.”

To promote his efforts and the works of these forgotten artists, James Conlon himself has led several of these performances. As the musical director of the Ravinia Festival, Conlon has showcased a different musician each summer with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2005. In addition, Conlon has hosted and narrated “Shadows in Paradise,” a 2008 PBS documentary tracking the various musicians that were forced to flee during this chaotic chapter of Europe’s history.