According to an Egyptian proverb, a person lives when his name is mentioned. That name wipe out that damnatio memoriae, is an act of destructive forgetting that is known not only in antiquity. Hermann Levi, a friend of Brahms and an understanding of Wagner, longstanding general music director and court music director in Munich, was considered one of the most important conductors of the nineteenth century. But the aggressive anti-Semitism of the 1930s led to the neglect of his grave, the removal of the name from streets, and finally to general oblivion. Rehabilitation was overdue. The grave was redesigned and two memorial concerts by the Bavarian State Orchestra under Kirill Petrenko mark the beginning of a new examination of Levi’s artistic personality. This also includes the conflicted relationship with Wagner.
At the beginning of the concert in the Prinzregententheater there is therefore a “Siegfried Idyll” that is not idyllically smooth, but rather a controlled, quick-tempered “Siegfried Idyll”. An aria from Mozart’s “Cosí fan tutte”, Radiant and agile sung by Johanni van Oostrum, illuminates Levi’s work as translator of the Da Ponte operas. Emanuel Graf’s imaginative interpretation of Max Bruch’s “Kol Nidrei” is reminiscent of Levi’s Jewish identity, which he did not give up despite Wagner’s attempts to persuade him. Such brilliantly played concerts are steps on the way to re-establishing the name Hermann Levis in cultural memory. But the storage of the name in this institution, which promotes the next generation of musicians, is almost even nicer: The orchestra academy of the State Orchestra is now called the Hermann Levi Academy.