holocaustmusic.ort.org Open in urlscan Pro
77.72.2.23  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

GET /search/

<form method="get" action="/search/">
  <div class="ui-textinput ui-corner-all ui-shadow-inset ui-textinput-text ui-body-inherit"><input type="text" name="search_box" placeholder="Search our website"></div>
  <input type="submit" value="\f002" class="ui-button ui-shadow ui-corner-all ui-widget ui-button-inherit" role="button">
</form>

Text Content

Toggle navigation
 * Themesarrow_drop_down
     
   * Politics & Propaganda
   * Resistance & Exile
   * Restoration and Restitution
   * Responses
   * Memory
     
   
 * Music
 * People
 * Places
 * Resources & References
   


 * 
 * 
 * 


 1. Home
 2. Places
 3. Jewish Musicians in Hungary


JEWISH MUSICIANS IN HUNGARY

Significant development of classical music in Hungary, including music
education, did not begin until well into the second half of the nineteenth
century.  The Philharmonic Society (Filharmóniai Társaság) was formed in 1853,
while the Opera House opened only in 1884.  Despite this relatively late
beginning, standards were high from the outset.  The highly skilled
composer/conductor/pianist Ferenc Erkel headed both institutions.

Erkel conducted the first Philharmonic concert on 20 November 1853 as well as a
further sixty concerts in subsequent years.  He remained at the helm of the
Philharmonic Society for eighteen years (1853-1871), and stability was
maintained through the fact that all the chief conductors who succeeded him
served for long periods.  Ernst von Dohnanyi (Dohnányi Ernő) was the longest
serving music director (1918-1943).  Composers such as Brahms, Dvořák, Mahler,
Mascagni, Prokofiev, Ravel, Respighi, Richard Strauss and Stravinsky conducted
their own compositions, while guest conductors included, among others, Hans
Richter and Arthur Nikisch. Programming was innovative; for instance Mahler’s
first symphony was premiered by this orchestra in 1889.  The orchestra also
served as that of the Opera House – a model still in use today – and in that
capacity one of its music directors was Gustav Mahler from 1888 to 1891.

The establishment of the Hungarian National Conservatoire (Nemzeti Zenede) in
1840 was a great boon to music education.  Standards improved further with the
opening in 1875 of the Music Academy, whose founder-director was Ferenc (Franz)
Liszt.

Jewish participation was significant in all Hungarian music institutions, as in
other cultural fields.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the
proportion of Jews at opera performances was so high that the political
right-wing objected to state subsidy for the opera.  Nevertheless, by 1888, the
Jewish Gustav Mahler was serving as music director.  Jews also participated
actively in Opera House productions.  One of the most popular singers in the
company’s early history was the Jewish bass David Ney, and repetiteurs included
Antal Dorati (Antal Deutsch, 1927-1929) and Georg Solti (1933-1939).  Solti made
his highly successful conducting debut here in March 1938 with Mozart’s Marriage
of Figaro.  On the other hand, Dorati conducted concerts with the Opera
orchestra – that is, with the Philharmonic Society – in 1932 and 1933.

Jews also made up a significant proportion of teachers and students at the
National Conservatoire as well as the Academy.  Ferenc Weisz, who later as Franz
Weisz was a leading composer and pianist in Holland (until he was deported to
Terezín and subsequently murdered), undertook all his studies at the
Conservatoire.  At the Academy, teachers included the cellist David Popper (the
son of a Prague chazzan) already in the 1880s. The Jewish pianist István Thomán
was a favourite student of Liszt before becoming a teacher at the Academy. 
Among others, he taught Dohnányi and Bartók.  Composer and chamber music tutor
Leó Weiner, one of the most influential teachers in Hungary, was on the teaching
staff from 1908. Jewish students at the Academy included conductors Antal
Dorati, Fritz Reiner and Georg Solti, pianists Louis Kentner and Ilona Kabos and
violinist Joseph Szigeti.  Many Jewish musicians who trained at the National
Conservatoire and at the Academy perished in the Holocaust.

Jewish participation in cultural fields, as in other fields, was hampered by the
numerus clausus law passed in 1920.  According to the laws, Jewish students were
to be represented at universities in accordance with their proportion of the
population.  Many Jewish students were thus unable to gain admission to
Hungarian universities, and thus left to study elsewhere in Europe.  Under
pressure from the League of Nations, a new law passed in 1928 changed the
race/religion percentage to that of class percentages, but this change still
left Jewish students at a disadvantage. However, it appears that the Music
Academy ignored, even sabotaged, the numerus clausus law.  During 1920-26, the
percentage of Jewish students at the Academy was 40.9% rather than the required
5%.

By 1920, antisemitism was more evident on the streets, and it also reached the
Opera House.  In April, during a performance of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre, an
anti-Semitic demonstration in the auditorium was directed against the Jewish
baritone Lajos Rózsa.  Rózsa accused some of his right-wing colleagues of
organising the demonstration.  He left the Opera House and immigrated to
America.  Although under less dramatic circumstances, other Jewish artists – for
instance conductors Fritz Reiner and George Szell – also left.

As a result of pressure both from within Hungary as well as from outside, in
1938 the first Jewish law was passed in the Hungarian parliament.  Article XV
specified areas where the Jewish workforce could not be larger than 20%.  The
term Jewish here meant people of the Jewish faith.  In 1939, a second Jewish law
tightened the noose.  By now, a person with at least one parent or two
grandparents born into the Jewish faith was classified as a Jew.  In cultural
fields the 20% quota was reduced to 6%, although in exceptional circumstances a
further 3% could be employed.  In theory, Jews were not allowed to work in state
sponsored institutions at all.  In practice, until the German occupation of
Hungary in March 1944, Jews continued to work in the above mentioned
percentage.  Nevertheless, the second Jewish law forced the Opera House to
dismiss 37 of its Jewish performers.

The Jewish laws did not eliminate Jewish participation from Hungarian musical
life.  The database for Budapest concerts – in autumn 2012 under construction at
the Hungarian Institute for Musicology – shows Jewish artists in evidence in
public concerts.  In 1939, distinguished pianists Ignaz Friedman, Lajos Heimlich
Hernádi, and Annie Fischer and violinist Joseph Szigeti all performed on
Budapest concert stages; Imre Ungár and Annie Fischer appeared in 1940.  The
Music Academy’s public concert stage continued to serve Jewish students and
ex-students such as singer Vera Rózsa, composer Sándor Vándor, and pianist Jenő
Deutsch.  Annie Fischer performed at the Music Academy in 1941, and Imre Ungár
appeared as late as 1943 and 1944 in the prestigious Pesti Vigadó concert hall,
as did composer-pianist György Kósa (although the latter at the Scottish
Mission).  [The Scottish Mission, a Protestant group, had been active in
Budapest since 1841. They opened their doors to everyone during the Jewish
persecution.  Their leader, Jane Marianne Haining was arrested by the Gestapo
and deported to Auschwitz.]  Gradually, however, Jewish artists were squeezed
out of public concert life.

Right-wing individuals and press made the most of the Jewish laws.  Andor
Tolnay, a theatre director in Pécs, broke his contract with Jewish conductor
Vilmos Komor on racial grounds in 1938, despite the fact that within the 1938
law Komor was entitled to continue his work.  Journalist Zsolt Ihász attacked
conductor Komor in Összetartás, a weekly newspaper published by the fascist
Arrow-Cross Party, on 7 August 1938.  Ihász accused Komor of employing an
excessive proportion of Jewish artists for his longstanding orchestral series
and charged that he was anti-Christian.

The musical press seems to have maintained a neutral attitude.  The Magyar Zenei
Almanach, reporting on and summarising Hungarian music life for the period
1942-43, lists musicians and singers as individuals as well as ensemble members
for 1942-43.  Their list of 500 individual artists does not seem to include a
single Jew, not even bass Mihály Székely, who was the only Jewish principal
singer appearing in the Budapest Opera House right until the German occupation
in March 1944.  (On the other hand, the list of artists supplied by the Opera in
the same Almanach does include Székely).  The Almanach’s list of about 900
choirs ignores the choir led by Jewish composer Sándor Vándor.  The Hungária
Zenei Lexikon (published in May 1945, apparently without alterations, although
with additions after the main text) includes Jewish artists without mentioning
their Jewishness and subsequent fate.  For instance, this is what the Lexikon
states about two outstanding singers: 'Andor Lendvai, 1902-, opera singer,
baritone. He was member of the Munich and Budapest opera houses.' 'Gabriella
Relle, 1902-, she studied with Anthes at the Music Academy and was employed
already as a student by the Opera until 1939. Excellent dramatic soprano.' Not a
word is offered as to why Lendvai and Relle were no longer members of the opera
house.

A Zene, a distinguished fortnightly music journal with excellent musicologists
among its contributors, appears to have aimed at balance.  In March 1938, it
reported on the Byzance Suite by Jewish composer György Ránki, but also reported
on the Adolf Hitler music schools in Germany.  In April 1939, the news section
reported that Vienna had changed some of its street names; hence the street
names Mendelssohn, Mahler, Meyerbeer and Ferdinand Lőwe had ceased to exist.  No
comment is added to this piece of news.  There was one article that openly took
sides against political interference in music: in March 1941, Ödön Geszler
questioned movements such as the Nazis’ Entartete Musik, which judged music on
political rather than musical grounds.  But in May 1942, a piece by Tibor
Miklósy (a Hungarian writing from Berlin) praised the principles and activities
of the Reichsmusikkammer.  It took no issue with the requirement that
Reichsmusikkammer membership was governed by the Nuremberg race laws.  However,
Miklósy mentioned that a few selected Jews were allowed to work in the Reich and
that the same principle should be applied in Hungary too.

Banned from public appearances by the Jewish laws, Hungarian artists of the
Jewish faith found refuge in the form of paid work within the OMIKE Artist
Action, which was started in 1939. OMIKE (the Országos Magyar Izraelita
Közművelődési Egyesület, Hungarian Jewish Educational Association) was founded
in 1910 and was intended to cultivate traditional Judaism within a modern
environment.  The brainchild of Géza Ribáry, a lawyer, passionate music lover
and amateur pianist, the OMIKE Artist Action aimed to provide at least a modest
income for a large number of Jewish artists.  The number of unemployed Jewish
musicians and singers was higher than that of Jewish artists in other fields. 
As a result, musical events, operas, and concerts were more numerous than
theatrical performances and events dealing with fine arts.

Initially, operas within the OMIKE Artist Action project were given in concert
performances with piano accompaniment: for instance, Verdi’s Nabucco (January
1939), César Franck’s Rebecca (February 1940), Beethoven’s Fidelio (November
1940) and Halevy’s The Jewess (December 1940).  In 1940, conductor Vilmos Komor
was appointed to be in charge of opera.  He insisted on full-blown theatrical
performances to achieve the highest possible standard.  Thus the Goldmark Hall,
a venue for Jewish cultural activities since about 1930, was reconstructed to
facilitate a theatre with a stage as well as with appropriate space for the
orchestra.  The reconstructed theatre seated only 372 people, but the standard
of performances rivalled and probably even surpassed those given at the Opera
House; thus audiences were willing to pay for higher ticket prices.

Between January 1941 and March 1944, when the German occupation of Hungary
terminated all OMIKE activities, twenty operatic productions graced the Goldmark
stage: Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, Rossini’s Barber of Seville,
Puccini’s La bohème, Verdi’s Traviata, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Puccini’s
Madame Butterfly, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Verdi’s Masked
Ball, Goldmark’s The Queen of Sheba, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Offenbach’s Tales of
Hoffmann, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Eugen d' Albert’sThe Lowlands, Verdi’s The
Troubadour, Verdi’s Aida, Donizetti’s Lucia Lammermoor, Otto Nicolai’s Merry
Wives of Windsor, Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and Gounod’s Faust. The singers
included such outstanding and experienced artists as Dezső Ernster, Oszkár
Kálmán, Andor Lendvai and Gabriella Relle.

OMIKE concerts seem to have been of a very high standard.  Song recitals,
instrumental recitals and orchestral concerts included repertoire from Bach to
contemporary music.  Pianists Jenő Deutsch, Annie Fischer, Ági Jámbor, Renée
Sándor, György Sebők, László Weiner, violinists Ferenc Ákos, Viktor Ajtay/Adler,
Róbert Gerle, György Trietsch, violist Pál Lukács, cellists Vera Dénes, Pál
Hütter and Janos Starker, flute player Pál Pollák as well as many others
including orchestra members were highly gifted and highly motivated artists. 
Orchestral conductors were also musicians of high quality: Sándor Fischer,
László Káldi, Vilmos Komor, Frigyes Sándor, László Somogyi and László Weiner
secured excellent standards. The performance of Händel’s oratorio Judas
Maccabeus in the magnificent Dohány synagogue on 23 June 1941 must have been a
truly poignant occasion.  Conductor László Weiner, solo singers Pál Fehér, Dezső
Ernster, Zsuzsa Pogány, Vera Rózsa and György Weiner as well as chorus,
orchestra and indeed the audience must have felt the significance of the
Maccabees’ victory and, perhaps, hope too was present on this occasion.

On 11 December 1941, A Magyar Zsidók Lapja (The Journal of Hungarian Jews)
reported that at the previous Monday evening’s OMIKE concert – presumably
referring to Monday 8 December 1941 – Bartók’s Divertimento for string orchestra
received its first performance in Hungary. The audience was overwhelmed by the
Hungarian mood and colourful instrumentation of the piece; their enthusiastic
applause was rewarded by the repeat of the third movement as an encore. Other
pieces on the programme were a Händel overture, a Bach concerto and Mozart’s G
minor symphony. The excellent conductor Frigyes Sándor was warmly appreciated by
the audience. Bartók’s Divertimento is mentioned again in connection with an
OMIKE concert on Monday 9 February 1942. According to the ten-line report by the
influential daily Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), the gifted young conductor
Sándor had not only premiered Bartók’s Divertimento in Hungary but, on this
occasion, he performed it for the fourth time. The reviewer highly praised
Sándor’s interpretation of the piece which was performed alongside Bach and
Mozart, Sándor’s other ideal composers.

The OMIKE Artist Action did not forget the significance of music education.
Under the expert leadership of music scholar Zsigmond László, the Goldmark Music
Academy was established. Noted scholars and artists contributed their skills to
overcome what they regarded as a temporary situation.

All OMIKE activities had to cease when the Germans invaded Hungary in March
1944. Some OMIKE artists survived the Holocaust. But others, as many of their
audiences, perished.

by Agnes Kory


SOURCES



A Budapesti Operaház 100 éve (Hundred Years of the Budapest Opera House), ed.
Géza Staud, Budapest, 1984

Author email correspondence with Nora Wellman, director, Archives of the Opera
House, April 2010.

A Zene (The Music), fortnightly journal, 1939 to 1944

Breuer, János, ‘Ritorna vincitor’, Muzsika, xli/3, March 1998, pp. 21-26

Horák, Magda, ‘ Kirekesztetten is előítélet nélkül, Az OMIKE Művészakció’
(Pushed Out and Without Prejudice, The OMIKE Artist Action), Múlt és jövő (Past
and Future), v, February 1994
[http://www.multesjovo.hu/en/aitdownloadablefiles/download/aitfile/aitfile_id/1182/]

Hungária Zenei Lexikon (Hungarian Music Lexicon), ed. Viktor Lányi, Budapest,
1944-1945

Komor, Ágnes, Apám, Komor Vilmos (My Father, Vilmos Komor), Debrecen, 1986

Komoróczy, Géza et. al., eds, Jewish Budapest , Budapest, 1999

Magyar Zenei Almanach (Hungarian Musical Almanach), ed. Viktor Papp, Budapest,
1944

MTA BTK Zenetudományi Intézet Budapesti Hangversenyek Adatbázisa’ (database for
Budapest concerts under construction at the Hungarian Institute for Musicology)

Ősi hittel, becsülettel a hazáért , OMIKE, Országos Magyar Izraelita
Közműve|ődési Egyesület, 1909-1944, [Válogatott dokumentumok], (With ancient
faith and honor for the homeland, OMIKE, selected documents), ed. Magda Horák,
Budapest, 1998

Tallián, Tibor, ‘Az OMIKE művészakció operaszínpada’(Opera within the OMIKE
Artist Action), Muzsika, xxxix/1, January 1996, pp. 14-18

Tallián, Tibor, ‘A Magyar Állami Operaház és a hazai operajátszás története’,
Tradíció és innováció. A magyar színháztörténeti örökség 1920-1949 (The History
of the Hungarian State Opera and Opera in Hungary, In: Tradition and Innovation.
Hungarian Theatre History, 1920-1949, eds. Tamás Bécsy, György Székely and Tamás
Gajdó, n.d.

Tallián, Tibor, ‘Egyéb opera együttesek Budapesten’ in ‘A Magyar Állami Operaház
és a hazai operajátszás története’,A magyar színháztörténeti örökség 1920-1949,
eds. Tamás Bécsy, György Székely and Tamás Gajdó, section three, par. 8, see:
http://tbeck.beckground.hu/szinhaz/htm/08.htm]

Yearbooks of the Franz Liszt Academy

Yearbooks of the Nemzeti Zenede (National Conservatoire of Music)


LEARN MORE


MUSIC IN THE NAZI CAMPS AND GHETTOS


THE CONCENTRATION AND DEATH CAMPS


THERESIENSTADT


JEWS AND MUSIC IN FASCIST ITALY


JEWISH MUSICIANS IN VICHY FRANCE


MUSIC IN THE THIRD REICH

expand_lessBack to top

CONTACTS

holocaustmusic@ort.org

ORT House
126 Albert Street
London
NW1 7NE
United Kingdom

HELP

   
 * About the Writers
 * About ORT
 * Acknowledgements
   

RELATED PROJECTS

 * Perfoming the Jewish Archive
 * The Holocaust Through Art

SUPPORT PROJECT

 * Want to support this project?

Donate

2000-2024 Music and the Holocaust.©
All Right Reserved.






LOADING