July 29, 2007
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Variations on Truth and Fiction
Nordic Truth: Jewish Fiction: Snowball In Hell From The New York
Times in 2005:
PITTSBURGH“HE’S the hottest conductor you’ve never heard of….
In music, as in most other pursuits, one person’s misfortune can be
another’s opportunity. Many a podium career has been built on
successful substitutions…. typically, the process is cumulative and
measured.In Mr. Remmereit’s case, it seems a sort of spontaneous combustion….
he seems destined
for big things, and soon.Regarding his sudden change in stature, he spoke as if from afar.
‘The snowball has reached such a size that it has started to roll,’ he
said matter-of-factly….‘It’s terrifying when it happens,’ he said, ‘but I can’t tell you
how naively happy I am when it goes well. These are such major
steps
that I wasn’t even hoping for a few weeks ago.’ARILD REMMEREIT (pronounced AHR-eeld REMM-uh-right, with the r’s
heavily rolled) was born in a village in Norway, between Bergen and
Trondheim, and has lived in Vienna since 1987. Slim and fresh-faced at
43, he has had a busy but low-level career in Europe….So here he was, on April 15,
conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony… in a vintage… Germanic
program…. Wagner’s ‘Siegfried Idyll,’ Schumann’s
Fourth Symphony and Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto….”Württemberg Philharmonic February 2004
Nielsen, Sibelius, Grieg.
Reutlinger Nachrichten.
“Distant closeness, close distance.Arild Remmereit as a guest conductor: ‘As when the sun rises in the
North.’ The Philharmonics and their brilliant guest conductor fetched
the mind-blowing, tempting and exciting Scandinavia.It was like a lucky strike to see the Norwegian conductor on stage with
the Philharmonic. When he conducts the Dane Nielsen, the Finn Sibelius
and the Norwegian Grieg, one can really feel that this man has the
locally marked music floating in his blood.”From The New York Times today:
Discussion of
a new novel:
Variations on
the Beast,
by psychoanalyst
Henry GrinbergAn interview with Henry Grinberg conducted by James R. Oestreich:
“For those who find inspiration and edification in great art, it is
always painful to be reminded that artists are not necessarily
admirable as people and that art is powerless in the face of great
evil. That truth was baldly evident in Nazi Germany and in the way the
regime used and abused music and musicians, to say nothing of the way
it used and abused human beings of all kinds.[A new novel touches on] these issues…. In Variations on the Beast (Dragon Press), Henry
Grinberg, a psychoanalyst, posits Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder, a powerful
maestro, as a fictional rival of Wilhelm Furtwängler (whose qualms
about working under the regime he does not share) and Herbert von
Karajan (whose vaulting ambition he does).”GRINBERG:
“And it soon occurred to me… that, my God, a lot of the famous, the notable, the
moving, the magnificent composers in the 18th and 19th centuries and
earlier were Germans. And I tried to understand, how did such a nation
turn out to be so bestial and cruel, so indifferent to the suffering of
others? And I have no explanation for it.As
a practicing psychoanalyst, I can see individual expressions of
rage and their causes and their so-called justifications. But for a
whole nation to be consumed, to be seduced by an overwhelming idea–
well, there are rationalizations, I guess, but not explanations.
There’s no forgiveness for this. And I tried to put together a story of
a person who was a participant and a causer of these kinds of
things….So I sort of poured my feelings of contempt and rage into the
character I was devising. And I have to admit, after having been
psychoanalyzed myself in preparation for the training, that something
of Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder exists in me. I shudder to think that this
may be so, but I have to accept the possibility. Murderous thoughts may
have occurred to me, but, thank God, I’ve never killed anyone.”
