The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany

Professor Neil Gregor has just published The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025), a study of how German musical worlds were remade – and remade themselves – under conditions of Nazi dictatorship. To accompany the book he has curated a Spotify playlist that seeks to open up the worlds of performing and listening that the book describes.  He writes: 

In the 1930s and 1940s the recording of orchestral music was still very much in its infancy. Beyond the major orchestras of Berlin and Vienna few ensembles were making recordings as yet, and very little of what was recorded in the provinces survived that is good enough – in terms of playing standards or recording quality – to render it commercially viable to re-issue.  Understandably, orchestras appear initially not to have strayed very far from the core repertoire: while recordings of Beethoven symphonies abound there is little that is genuinely obscure.  That which does survive gives us anything but unmediated access to listening worlds of the 1930s and 1940s (even two re-masterings of the same recorded performance can come out at different lengths, for example). 

Yet despite these caveats enough survives, and of sufficient quality, to provide at least a sense of the musical world that this book seeks to recover. The list includes overtures, concertos and symphonies, reproducing something of the range of genres that a typical concert contained.  As well as recordings from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Berliner Staatskapelle the list includes early recordings of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonic State Orchestra of Hamburg. Similarly, as well as familiar figures such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan and Eugen Jochum it features names that were well-known then but have now faded somewhat – Max Fiedler, Hermann Abendroth, Siegmund von Hausegger or Oswald Kabasta.  

Three recordings of the first movement of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony provide insight into the range of conducting and performing styles prevalent at the time, which were more diverse than might be imagined – whilst also giving a sense of fluctuating playing standards even among the more prestigious orchestras. The repertoire featured here is not just German – the presence of Sibelius, Liszt and Grieg attest to a culture that was both Germanocentric and Eurocentric at the same time.  In this way and others, the book tries to capture something of a culture that was a little more open than is often assumed.

It would have been surprising indeed to find recordings of the specific concerts discussed in the book. But the recordings of Walter Gieseking playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto, of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berliner Staatskapelle in Cherubini’s Anacréon Overture, or Siegmund von Hausegger and Oswald Kabasta conducting the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of Bruckner symphonies – all of which do appear – provide, I hope, a starting point for imaginative immersion in the world I have sought to bring to life.

The playlist can be found at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6DtKrl2U7tzEDDhkAlO5mw