The Political Orchestra: The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics During the Third Reich

Abstract

If Shakespeare was alive today he would probably have Hamlet tell Rosencrantz: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but marketing makes it so’. This is relevant to some of the several themes of Dr Tr€umpi’s scholarly and sobering book, which is a cultural study as much as a musical one. They include political and ideological or nationalist concerns as well as those issues of sociological and musical salesmanship. The political and amoral rivalries of the two capital cities of those two bellicose nations are always part of the glowering historical sky, as well as their compliant orchestras which unedifyingly supported the politics and jealousies of those rival r egimes. Tr€umpi puts a little quote at the head of each chapter, and the one for Chapter 3 (‘Continuous Radicalization under Austrofascism and National Socialism’) seems to me to encapsulate the gestalt of his concerns well: