“Mengelberg and Mahler”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - June 2010

“My art is public property. I am not supposed to withhold it from anyone. I have no interest in politics.”

- Willem Mengelberg in his defense before the Dutch Council of Honor in the Arts

Willem Mengelberg (1871-1949) was a Dutch conductor of international renown. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was an Austrian composer and conductor of even greater fame. Today, it is Mahler’s name, not Mengelberg’s, that is familiar to most Americans. The two men were good friends and colleagues. While Mengelberg was only eleven years younger than Mahler, he outlived him by forty years, and it is on those years that this play focuses.

Mahler was a German-speaking Jew from Bohemia. Mengelberg was not Jewish, and when the Nazis occupied Holland from 1940-1945, he worked with Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss Inquart and continued to conduct the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and took a position in the German Culture Cabinet. He agreed to cease performing Mahler’s music when the Nazis declared it “degenerate,” and allowed his Jewish musicians to first be moved to the back of the orchestra (an awkward spot for the First Violin), and then removed altogether. Three of them were exterminated in the death camps.

After the war Seyss Inquart was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. Mengelberg was tried before the Dutch Council of Honor in the Arts and exiled to Switzerland, forbidden to practice his art. He died a few months before he would have been allowed to return home.

Robert Lohbauer, a fifteen year member of Shakespeare & Company, plays Mengelberg in Mengelberg and Mahler, a 75-minute one-man play by Daniel Klein and directed by Dutch journalist and filmmaker Emile Fallaux (1944- ). The script is an adaptation of a screenplay on which the two men have collaborated. Fallaux’s interest in Mengelberg’s is obvious – he was born in occupied Holland. Klein happens to be married to the American correspondent for the Dutch weekly, Vrij Nederland. According to Fallaux’s program note, he and Klein share “an interest in the moral dilemmas that people face during times of war and repression.”

The play is set in Switzerland towards the end of Mengleberg’s life and exile, but during the course of it we relive encounters with Mahler, Seyss Inquart, and others as Mengelberg recalls the events that brought him to this place.

According to Harold C. Schonberg (1915-2003), Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for The New York Times, in his 1967 book The Great Conductors, Mengelberg and Mahler were both talented and highly opinionated men who felt free to rework scores to suit their idea of how the music should sound. Mahler was the more tyrannical and dramatic of the two, Mengelberg the more garrulous – Schonberg describes him as “a compulsive talker.” This makes him a natural subject for a “talking head” one-man show.

It is nice to see Robert Lohbauer take the spotlight. He is a character man generally relegated to “funny old uncle” roles with the company, but he is a strong actor and he brings Mengelberg vividly to life here. Except for the fact that he seems unable to conduct in time with music, he is thoroughly believable and makes smooth transitions as Klein’s script moves the composer through different times and places.

It is unusual to shine the spotlight of history on a coward who took the easy way out in order to save his own skin and, theoretically, his orchestra, although that changed dramatically once the Jewish artists were removed. In exile Mengelberg states that being banished from his art and from the musical community is a fate worse than death to him, but it is the fate he clearly chose. Standing up for his deceased friend Mahler and other Jewish artists would probably have cost him his life. The choices he made saved his career in the short-term by deprived him of both dignity and pleasure once the war was over.

But ultimately Mengelberg’s story is much better history than theatre. Even with the assistance of period recordings and projected photographs and films, we are just hearing about, not living, Mengelberg’s life. There is no drama, no build up, climax or catharsis. Without Robert Lohbauer’s strong performance there would be little to recommend this show to any but scholars of either classical music or Dutch history.

Robert Lohbauer’s wife, Govane Lohbauer, has designed the sets and costumes. She makes excellent use of the long, narrow performance space in the Bernstein Theatre with Fallaux uses to good effect, dividing it into clearly defined playing spaces – the podium at the Concertgebouw, a study there, Mengelberg’s Swiss abode, and other, more generic locations – aided by Stephen Ball’s seamless lighting design.

No one is credited with the excellent coordination of the audio-visual elements of the production with the live performance. I assume they are a collaboration between Fallaux, Govane Lohbauer, and sound designer Michael Pfeiffer. They added greatly to the clarity of the storytelling. And I even found that I enjoyed the music (I am not much of a classical music kinda gal) which included selections from recordings of Mahler’s 1st, 2nd, 4th & 5th Symphonies; the selections from the 4th Symphony being conducted by Mahler himself and including a soprano solo by Jo Vincent.

Over the years I have enjoyed many plays, films, and books which give accounts of the war time experience and art of individuals. They have helped me piece together a clearer and clearer view of those terrible times as I view them through British, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Danish, and American eyes, just to name a few. Ideally Mengelberg and Mahler would have added another piece to that increasingly complete jigsaw puzzle image, but I left feeling only minimally enlightened. I enjoyed the performance, but I learned more from reading the chapters on the two composers in Schonberg’s book.

The world premiere of Mengelberg and Mahler runs in repertory through September 10 in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on Shakespeare & Company’s Kemble Street campus in Lenox, MA. Tickets range from $16-$48. S&Co.’s usual range of discounting options are available for this production, including discounts for groups, students, Seniors, and the very popular 40% Berkshire Resident Discount. The Bernstein is wheelchair accessible and hearing aid assisted. Contact the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or boxoffice@shakespeare.org to order tickets or learn more about discount availability, or order tickets from www.shakespeare.org. The Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre is wheelchair-accessible.

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