Conductor James Conlon laments the Holocaust for all the usual horrific reasons. But he has one more.
The rise of Nazi Germany was, he says, “a catastrophe that uprooted one of the glories of civilization: that of classical music from Bach on. We have lost the direct connection that went from generation to generation, because of the suppression of the Nazis and the destruction of anyone in their way.”
More than 65 years after the fact, Conlon could not sit idly by. His Catholic upbringing wouldn’t allow him to do so. “The moral question,” he says, “is, if you can undo an injustice, isn’t it your obligation to do that?”
That’s why Conlon has for years led the classical music world in rediscovering and restoring to the repertoire music from composers banned, exiled or killed by the Nazis.
He will be conducting a program with the San Francisco Symphony that features music by two such composers. The concert takes place at Davies Symphony Hall on Friday, June 9.
The names of the two composers are not well known — Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker — but Conlon says it is his mission to remedy that.
Both Zemlinsky and Schreker were towering figures in the music scene of early 20th century Vienna. Both straddled the old and new worlds. Zemlinsky actually knew Brahms, Mahler and Schoenberg. Schreker was the director of the premiere music institute in Vienna.
But Schreker was also a Jew. Zemlinsky was a quarter Jewish and married to a Jewish woman. That was enough to have both men robbed of their careers, their music banned and their reputations destroyed.
Schreker died of a stroke in 1934 before the full force of Nazism took its toll. Zemlinsky died eight years later in New York, already a forgotten and broken figure.
But in their prime, they wrote widely acclaimed operas, ballets and concertos. Musical giants like Stravinsky, Mahler and Schoenberg sang their praises.
Conlon will conduct a performance of Zemlinsky’s one-act opera “A Florentine Tragedy,” as well as excerpts from his opera “The Dwarf” and Schreker’s ballet “The Birthday of the Infanta.” Coincidentally, both the Schreker piece and Zemlinsky one-act are both based on works by Oscar Wilde.
Currently the music director of the Ravinia Festival and soon-to-be music director of the Los Angeles Opera, Conlon is a celebrated figure in classical music. His repertoire includes all of the standard masterworks. But in the early 1990s while living in Germany, he discovered Zemlinsky.
“It was a metamorphosis in my life,” he says. “In the course of reading about him, I became familiar with Schreker. That led to all the other composers who died young [in the Holocaust]. As it developed it’s become a mission.”
Since then, Conlon has recorded the works of those two and other neglected composers from the era. When invited to guest conduct the world’s great orchestras, he requests that at least one piece by one of the composers be added to the program. And every year at the Ravinia Festival near Chicago, he includes the composers in the programming.
“The idea that only the best product survives and the weak dies is extremely dangerous when it comes to art and the quality of thought,” he says. “Classical music lives by performance. So it’s going to take time until young people know [this repertoire] and want to do it on their own.”
Conlon’s series with the San Francisco Symphony also includes standard works by Liszt, Verdi, Strauss and Tchaikovsky. He trusts his audiences are already well-acquainted with them. That’s why he hopes to shake them up with the unfamiliar music of Zemlinsky and Schreker.
“This to me is music which fulfills the criterion of classical music,” says Conlon, “in that you can go back to it over and over again and get more out of it every time.”
James Conlon conducts the San Francisco Symphony in works by Schreker, Zemlinsky and Strauss, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 9 and 10, at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. Tickets: $20. Information: (415) 864-6000 or online at sfsymphony.org.