The rich classical musical program of the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) 2023 is dominated by Music Under the Swastika: The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz, by Christian Berger, screened on Friday. The other contributions give pride of place to contemporary music, but also to disguised promotion.
The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz is based on the testimony of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, whose letters inspired Pascal Amoyel’s musical performance Block 15 or music in resistance.
The destiny of the cellist is placed in parallel with that of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, denazified after the war, but whose “case” continues to raise debate, since by remaining to defend an idea of timeless and apolitical German culture ( “the music says of us, Germans, who we really are”, he affirms on the radio of the Reich), it served at the same time the political propaganda. Music had become a veritable “marker of race” for the regime, as sociologist Albrecht Dümling puts it. Wagner’s anti-Semitism is also placed in a relevant historical context.
The documentary shows how the Nazi regime put music under control. The subject has already been covered, of course, but the spectacular aspect of Christian Berger’s film is the sumptuous colorization of ideally relevant archive images. According to a skillful process, widely tested, individual and collective destinies mingle. Thus, when the young Anita, who no longer finds a teacher in Breslau (Wrocław) willing to teach the cello to a young Jewess, goes to Berlin, she bears witness to the turning point that was Kristallnacht. “Alas, it was already too late,” she says. What we then learn about the Auschwitz orchestra in this essential 85-minute film twists the heart and also greatly rehabilitates the memory of Alma Rosé, daughter of Arnold Rosé and niece of Mahler.
contemporaries
Generally speaking, the FIFA 2023 emphasizes music creation. Thus will be broadcast To Stage the Music, by Giulio Boato, made for the 70th birthday of Heiner Goebbels. The German is one of the most eminent representatives of the “ex-avant-garde”, open to history and all musical forms. We follow the creation ofA House of Call by this musical experimenter, the film retracing his career in parallel. It’s classic and well done.
Xenakis Revolution, by Stéphane Ghez, a didactic biographical procession led by the omnipresent daughter of Xenakis, the unmissable guardian of the archives, complete with image and sound our portrait drawn up for the composer’s centenary. The essential is said and well converted into images, accompanied by a statement that best clarifies complex concepts.
In Organ seekers, by Pascale Bouhenic and Bernard Foccroulle, the organ is seen through the prism of the breath and the singularities of the voice in a journey through Europe and the centuries that is not confined to churches. Mission accomplished with this “model” documentary: we really understand the instrument and its history better through eloquent examples ideally chosen.
recomposed past, promotional film, suffocates in modesty: “A prodigious conductor and a composer of great renown unite to create the timeless”. We are talking here about 16 minutes documenting the recording by Francis Choinière of the music of François Dompierre. As a promotional film, it’s very well done and the music is beautiful.
Whether recomposed past announces its color, the farce of the 2023 vintage, Metanoiaadorns in intellectual garb an operation attempting to create a “post-Tar » around Italian-Brazilian chef Simone Menezes, 46, artist Askonas Holt, who is launching her first CD by gargling the Greek concept of metanoia (beyond the intellect). Before Madame Menezes, musicians like Ansermet or Celibidache and philosophers like Husserl reflected on the phenomenology of music. We’ll talk about it again one day, without having to widen our eyes in front of a self-promotional monument that smashes all the limits of ridicule: “Talking to you makes me think of Palestrina,” says one interlocutor to the chef.
“You can’t break music,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. If the Nazis failed, the steamroller of marketing, the promoters of elevator music who adorn themselves with the revival of the classical and the false prophets of a fake “democratization” will not succeed either.