Purcell Room
Vanessa
Redgrave and Philippe Sands (narrators)
Laurent Naouri (bass-baritone)
Guillaume de Chassy (piano)
Nina Brazier (director)
A
Song of Good and Evil
received its premiere as part of the Southbank Centre’s Literature Autumn
Festival 2014. It is a piece difficult, perhaps impossible to classify – a point
not entirely without relevance to its subject matter. Perhaps it is better
simply to describe. With the help of pictures, music, and narration we learned
of the intersection of three lives in Lemberg/Lvov and Nuremberg: the lives of
two lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht, Rafael Lemkin, and Hans Frank. Both
Lauterpacht and Lemkin studied at the University of Lemberg or Lwów (the city
had, yet again, changed its name and indeed country, in the very few
intervening years); both, indeed, were taught by the same jurist. Frank visited
as Governor-General in August 1942. All three would be crucial figures at the
Nuremberg Trials, Frank of course meeting his death as a consequence,
Lauterpacht and Lemkin leading advocates, indeed international legal
originators, of the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide. The
conflict between the two concepts, between protection of individuals and that
of groups, was clearly explained – and, in a postscript, pursued in more recent
years. Frank, it should be added, was certainly in some sense responsible, and
held by Lauterpacht and Lemkin to be responsible, for the deaths of their
relatives.
Such, apparently, is part of
the material for a book by Philippe Sands, to be published in 2016. This piece
also offered opportunity for reflection on the role of music, always so crucial
to German culture and to German reflection upon culture. We all know how
indelibly pieces of music can become associated with particular times, places,
and events. There is something truly disconcerting about the thought that both
Lauterpacht and Frank derived inspiration and solace from Bach’s St Matthew Passion during the final days
at Nuremberg. Laurent Naouri, fresh from Thursday’s performance of Pelléas et Mélisande, and jazz pianist,
Guillaume de Chassy offered musical excerpts and in some cases whole
performances, one of which was ‘Erbarme dich’ (usually, of course, heard from a
mezzo, but sounding not at all out of place in a moving, direct performance).
Opening with Ravel’s Yiddish ‘L’enigme éternelle’, one of his two Mélodies hébraïques, we ended with what,
in context, we could hardly fail to consider a call for universal human rights in
Leonard Cohen’s Anthem. Along the
way, other music included a snatch, albeit for piano alone, of Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes, the beginning
of the slow movement of the Pathétique
Sonata (played by Lautenbach’s wife when they met), some Bach-Busoni (‘Ich ruf’
zu dir’), Paul Misraki’s Insensiblement
(heard by a reporter in a French café when news of Frank’s execution reached
him), and other pieces.
Perhaps the most
controversial inclusion was a setting by Frédéric Chaslin (‘in the style of
Richard Strauss’) of Wer tritt herein, so
fesch und schlank? Strauss set the words in praise of Frank in 1943, but
the music seems to have been lost. It is difficult to imagine it being sung
often, even if it had survived. Chaslin’s setting did a passable imitation of Strauss,
without truly convincing, but then that was not really the point. It was
difficult, however, to feel that Strauss, described as a ‘friend’ of Frank was
being treated entirely fairly; we might have been informed of the cat-and-mouse
game the Nazi authorities played with him, or at least of his Jewish
grandchildren. But then, one has to admit that there are far more deserving
recipients of our sympathy than Strauss.
The material was well
selected and presented. Sands and Vanessa Redgrave shared the narration; it was
certainly quite a treat, even in such difficult circumstances, to hear Redgrave’s
way with words. Naouri proved himself adept in various languages and styles, as
did his pianist. A sobering, fascinating, and in the best sense provocative
evening.
