A Jew in Music

It’s ironic but this smallest state is blessed with a great symphony orchestra. Larry Rachleff wields the baton, in this his bar mitzvah year with the orchestra. We chatted a couple of weeks ago about being Jewish, about how being Jewish affects his work, his sensibilities, and about his decision, to play works by Richard Wagner.

As a boy in New London he grew up the son of a Conservative Jew who started attending minyan when his father-in-law died and then kept on going until his own death at age 82. “He was the minyan man and he would open up the synagogue.” During that time he developed a relationship with a rabbi with whom he studied Torah, especially what Rachleff calls the “integrity” of Torah which was passed on to him and which he is trying to imbue in his own child, a boy of 5. “We talk to him about his Jewishness and will continue to,” he reports.

Rachleff defines himself as “more spiritually oriented than religious.” His wife was raised Anglican but has Jewish roots on her father’s side and has lived in Israel so she has a wonderful component of both.” When I asked if he celebrated Christian holidays as well as Jewish ones, his answer again reflected his spiritual, non-denominational perspective. Yes Christmas, and yes, he’s gone to church on Easter. In all his travels he participates either directly or indirectly in what he feels is the deep spiritual faith of people. “I’ve always been moved by it. We’ve spent days in Assisi so we can sample the energy of St. Francis.” And does this spirituality influence his music? “It would be hard not to be who you are without all of the influences. It’s there; you can’t erase who you are.”

Inevitably the conversation turned to Wagner and his decision to perform him. First some background. Wagner, one of the 19th century’s most magnificent composers of magisterial music, was also one of the century’s outstanding anti-Semites who, by lending his name to the movement made Jew hatred culturally respectable. Judaism was inherently alien and inferior to European culture, he preached. In his notorious Das Judentum in der Musik (Jews in Music) Wagner denied the existence of any Jewish cultural creativity. Musical originality was totally inaccessible to the Jew. The Jew is the most heartless of all human beings, alien and pathetic in the midst of a society he cannot understand, whose history and evolution are foreign to him. There’s more, but you get the idea.

Rachleff has been quoted as saying that “it was important to do this,” to perform Wagner. But why, I asked? “Well, it’s been an enormous struggle for me. Mostly out of the deepest respect for my family and my family’s family. “So it wasn’t just Wagner I couldn’t bring myself to do. Some of the music of Richard Strauss—nearly a Nazi—I don’t know if he was a sympathizer or he was just protecting himself… And so I waited and waited and then I started to see some revered maestros—Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim bringing to Israel the music of Wagner and Strauss.” And while the reaction there was at best mixed, “the point they were making was ‘Listen, this is music of grand and great worth. And what others did with it, perhaps was not necessarily completely their own doing.’ To this day I’ve only conducted and performed one piece of Wagner. But I haven’t made a night of it. And I’m delighted that we did do it because the prelude of the Liebestod [from Tristan und Isolde] is enormously gratifying and deep and wonderful music. I guess the point is our message is to present all these issues and things with the fullest of our integrity.”

The rest of our conversation covered music and what it means and why we listen and how black notes on white pages are transformed into soul stirring glory by the skill of the musician who can take a piece written by Mozart (“Probably the single greatest creature who has ever lived on the planet,”) and bring it to life. But those remarks are for another time when more column inches are available.