Metaphysical, religious and poetic perceptions of Bronislaw Huberman

Avior Byron

The state of Israel of the Twentieth Century is immersed in great struggles regarding its identity. A mixed population of immigrants brings with it extremely diverse cultures and values. The young age of the state, as well as the so-called "emancipation" process, leads to debates on the place of religion in relation to the state and how should Jews conduct their lives in relation to the non-Jewish world. 

The modern Jewish-Arab conflict started at the end of the Nineteenth Century when the first Jewish immigrants came to Israel. For many Arabs, the conflict is seen as a battle field between the West and the Islamic world. [1] Similarly, struggles on the identity of the new state started at that time. Arnold Schoenberg wrote a play entitled Der Biblische Weg which contains a description of the arguments between various Jewish streams. Schoenberg, despite his pretensions to be active in political activities, did not succeed to materialize his plans. Huberman, on the other hand, managed to found the Eretz-Israel Orchestra, which was renamed after a few years as the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO). The IPO is not only an important orchestra for the creation of culture within Israel. Huberman was well aware that it represents Israel's culture when touring the world. Often it was said to be 'Israel's best ambassador'. [2]

Bronoslaw Huberman is considered to be one of the most important violinists in the history of Western culture. Important musicians admired him: Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Isaac Stern, Emanuel Feuerman, Hans Keller and many others. His manner of performing was controversial, yet few did not recognize his greatness.

In this article I argue that Huberman's importance was well beyond being an extraordinary performer or an efficient administrative. The IPO was a tool to fight about the future identity of the Jewish settlement in Israel. Unlike many others, he did not want Israel to be disconnected from Europe’s humanistic culture. In the book The Rosendorf Quartet, the writer Natan Schacham puts the following words in the mouth of the second violinist: 'I think about Zionism. Huberman's goals are far reaching, but also much less realistic. I agree that we need a connection with Europe... But I do not believe that the Jews have a historic mission in Europe. That story has ended.' The struggle of the IPO continues today in a society that is partly alien to European humanistic culture and clearly does not believe in a Jewish mission outside the boarders of Israel.

As a student of Joachim and as a performer who premiered Brahms's Violin Concerto in the enthusiastic presence of the composer, Huberman was a symbol of pre First World War Europe. It was a world where Jews, such as Joachim, were at Europe’s cultural front. They were involved in close relationships with non-Jewish musicians and helped make the Jews part of the non-Jewish society. Unlike Hitler’s Europe, Huberman saw the Jews as an integral part of the continent. He refused to disconnect the cultural role of the Jews in Europe from the general culture of the non-Jewish population. Huberman was part of the European enlightenment project.

The first part of the Twentieth Century was a period of aesthetic and cultural changes. After the First World War, the aesthetics of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) promoted a restrained interpretation of the score. This was antagonistic to the Romantic performance practice which Huberman was educated upon. The Neue Sachlichkeit did not substitute the Romantic way of performing and listening. Both existed and competed side by side. Some critics blamed Huberman for playing in an outmoded manner. Others, as we will see, perceived his performance more positively. 

In the following I will focus on these positive writings in order to examine the ways such people found his performance authoritative. The following poetic perceptions of Huberman's performances show that he was perceived as doing something more than simply performing. Some of the texts were written by listeners seeking to thank the violinist. Others were written by critics, writers and performers. 

Suffering and Bildung

The Romantic period is described in the literature as the period of the 'suffering artist' where artists both translate their suffering into art and suffered from their art. The Italian writer De Amicis wrote about his meeting with Huberman in 1904:

You have the glory – I said to him – dear Huberman – but what about your health? – "…Unlike many others, who are excited before appearing before the public and quiet down as soon as they are there, I myself am quiet up to the last oment, and I become agitated when I begin to play… It seems to everybody that I am impassive, because I do not move when I am playing, except when necessary. But this relative immobility is the effect of a great effort, and the effort I am aking to uppress my emotion reacts on my stomach and ruins it. All my suffering is restrained passion. But it is only just that I pay in some way for the inexpressible joy which my art gives me." [3]

Huberman’s playing, according to the De Amicis report, is a result of retrained passion and emotion. The source of this passion is not clear at this stage of the article. De Amicis, however, leads his reader to an impression that this passion is related to metaphysical entities. He responds to the passage I quoted above in the following:

Your quiet attitude could not mislead me. I watched you intensely when you played. I saw when your eyes sparkled and when they grew moist, and I saw the shiver running through the muscles of your pale face. Sometimes, when you pressed the violin, you seemed to press a living and adored thing, which inebriated and tormented you; and when you took it from the shoulder, you made a movement as if you were tearing off a vampire sugging [sic.] your blood; and then you took it back to your breast and re-embraced it with even more passionate love and pressed it under your chin with the tenderness of a mother who presses her face against the face of her creature. Oh, I was not misled. I understood, I felt when from the depths of the soul welled up the lamentations, the sighs of love, of joy and sorrow, the sound of the nightingale and the voices of angels, which you poured forth into the theatre; and which out of your two thousand listeners made one single soul; a soul which palpitated, throbbed with you and which loved you. [4]

 This was written by an Italian writer. However also listeners wrote Huberman similar things. The following was written in 1929 'Yesterday, listening to your sounds, the soul …trembled like a chord; It …included everything: enthusiasm and suffering, and a wild wave of happiness.' [5] Neville Cardus, a noted music critic from Manchester wrote on 17 January 1936 to Huberman: ‘You purified me with your own suffering.’ [6]

Indeed, not only Cardus feels that Huberman’s performance is purifying. A theme that appears in the following review by Max Brod from 1927 is the impression that technical difficulties are ’swept aside and completely subordinated to the revelation of the music’s soul.’ [7] Brod describes such technical passages as ‘daemonic speeding’, and ‘an ascent in search of God and deliverance’. He suggested that in Huberman’s performance, ‘one is at peace, one is awakened to the best in one.’ This echoes the romantic 'bildung' concept of the ethical power of music to improve people.

Connection with God

Some irrational aspects of the Romantic period can be traced back to earlier periods. Violinists have an interesting history with regards to the connection of performers with metaphysical worlds. Josepha Tarantini who lived at the beginning of the Eighteen Century composed a Sonata after he dreamt that he sold his soul to the devil. The work, so he claimed, was written as a documentation of what he heard, namely, the devil playing the violin. Similarly, Paganini nurtured stories concerning a contract he had with the devil.

An invalid listener wrote the following letter in 1932:

Last evening for one blissful half hour I ... lay back on my pillows entranced, pain forgotten, everything forgotten but the one lovely picture which you were weaving with those unspeakable beautiful notes – a picture of the future of our weary world when the Divine promises are fulfilled and out Lord reigns, and all is harmony and beauty.

I hope in the next world to be permitted to thank you adequately; I cannot find words here, but can only pour out my soul to God in hearty thanksgiving for such beauty as He has given us through you, and also in a prayer that He will reachly [sic.] bless you. [8]

On 26 January 1933 she wrote to Huberman thanking him again for his concert from the Queen’s Hall. She wrote:

Music of that kind is beyond words, and conveys Divine truths that can hardly be spoken, but if I may try to tell you how I read God’s message to me though you, it was this: - if God’s love gives us such  beauty as that, then we can trust Him for all the rest, and need fear nothing, and we can face life with a good courage. [9]

Another listener wrote to Huberman from Hague in 1932 claiming that he enjoyed the ‘great Soul’, with a capital S, ‘who spoke straight to my heart.’ He described Huberman’s playing as ’sublime’. [10] It is interesting that the writer of the letter confesses that he doubts whether the composer ’really was conscious of the gem he composed’. After raising this tantalizing authorship problem, he immediately answered: ‘but then he knew no Huberman to play it and show him what it contained.’

A women living in Sydney, confessed in a letter in 1937 that her ‘friends have all called [her a] cold and heartless’ person. However, she realized ‘that "Only the Perfect is Real" and that "God is Perfection and Love", also that one must love the Highest when one "sees" it.’ She immediately confessed that she acknowledges ‘the final sense of liberation and ecstasy your music has inspired me with.’ [11]

L. R. from Camberwell, Victoria (Australia) wrote on 12 July 1937 that a radio broadcast of Huberman had awakened something in her. She was probably not even aware that Huberman was Jewish. She confessed the following:

Have you gone to church often, because it made you strong and good? – You love kneeling before God and listening to the words of good counsel and kindliness. And then there comes a day when you realise, that you never really knew God at all. You just worshipped blindly. All of a sudden your eyes and heart are opened, and you see and feel God as He really is. Such a revelation was your music to me. [12]

L.R. admitted in the letter that she could not afford to buy a concert ticket, so Huberman sent her two tickets. After attending the concert she wrote to him another letter dated 16 July 1937: ‘That concert was the most wonderful thing in my life… Brahms Sonata … was played with God in your fingers.’ [13]

Performance as philosophy

Huberman’s technique was an issue that was discussed in various newspaper reviews, and letters from listeners. In the following review for The Manchester Guardian, dated 13 December 1933, Neville Cardus discussed this issue in his normal poetic manner, and suggested that Huberman’s technique points to metaphysical issues.

Cardus talked about Menuhin’s ‘perfect’ technique, who was only seventeen years old and performed in England during those days, and claimed that if his ‘playing remains for ever sensuously satisfying, flawless in line and tone, he will remain outside the secret places of the imagination.’ [14] The critic reported that a remark was made in the audience that Huberman’s tone was not as consistent as that of Menuhin. Cardus argued that there is not only a difference of age between the two violinists, but also a psychological difference: ‘Huberman is a searcher, a chaser of ideals’. He suggested that if Huberman would be given Menuhin’s technique, he would find it ‘a prison for his spirit.’ Cardus told his readers that several years ago Huberman reached the peak of his technique, and at that very moment he stopped playing for a year, and went to study philosophy during that pause period, at the Sorbonne. Cardus suggested that Huberman is neither a slave of ‘beautiful sounds’ nor ‘the allurements of the fiddle’. Just like Max Brod, Cardus compares Huberman to Beethoven. He suggested that their similar great quality is in ‘penetrating and penetrating’ beyond the mere beautiful sound. He hinted to Moses when he wrote that Huberman ’strikes music out of his instrument as though with the rod on the rock.’

Cardus argued that if Huberman can make an ‘exquisite’ violin sound in one place, surly his ‘hard’ sounds are not an outcome of technical flaw. This ‘hard’ sound, so he claimed, is connected to the idea of music. Cardus regretted that in England, music is regarded as something beautiful that is a part of life, while Huberman’s playing is a ‘criticism of life’.

Huberman’s performance of the slow movement of Beethoven’s violin concerto was described by Cardus in the following: ‘Never before have I heard the figuration sound so unearthly, so spiritual in its mazeful transitions.’     

Several people have related to Huberman's physical features with relation to the spiritual meanings of his performance. The violinist, Henri Temianka gave a detailed description of Huberman's physical imperfections. He argued that when Huberman performed, a transformation occurred and all these imperfections disappeared. He became pure 'spirituality', a 'messenger of the God of music'. [15] Tamianka claimed that Huberman's 'inner conviction' made the listeners ignore his physical imperfections. Similarly, the violinist Ida Haendel performed as a small child before Huberman. She noted that he smiled to her gently and that she did not notice his imperfect physical features: the fact that he was crossed-eyed, his large lower lip and his head that was 'too big'. All that she could see what a 'great soul' that made her think of Beethoven.

On 16 June 1947, three days after Huberman's death the orchestra that he founded in Israel performed Beethoven's Eroica in his memory. After the United Nations made the resolution for the emergence of Israel, the same orchestra performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in various special concerts dedicated to this event. The connection between Huberman 'as Beethoven' during performance and the aforementioned concerts is not by chance.  

Conclusion

Huberman’s performances were perceived by various people from different times and places, as something that is more than sound. They experienced his performances as an expression of suffering, as a purifying act, as an expression of great philosophical truths, and some saw him as a medium between the listener and God. For these people Huberman was an integral and important part of their culture. Any analysis of his recordings and performance technique will benefit from a broad cultural understanding of what his performance, at it height, signified to listeners.  

Notes

1. See Benny Morris, 1948: Ahistory of the First Arab-Israeli War (Am Oved, Tel Aviv: 2010).
2. [This footnote is missing. Editor.]
3. Ida Ibbeken, ed., The Listener Speaks: 55 years of letters from the audience to Bronislaw Huberman, 16A
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 77.
7. This source is from a collection of newspaper clippings from the Felicia Blumenthal Library in Tel-Aviv, labeled B. I will refer to this collection as Huberman, Clippings B.
8. The listener Speaks, 56.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 58.
11. Ibid., 90.
12. Ibid., 92.
13. Ibid.
14. Huberman, Clippings B.
15. Henri Temianka, ‘The Triumph of a great personality’ Etude magazine (February 1957).