Siegfried's Idyll. Wagner unguarded. Kubelik live with his Bayerischen forces in 1973.

Brings to mind the Tagore quote, "God's great power is in the gentle breeze, not in the storm"

Richard Wagner

Siegfried's Idyll

Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Kubelik, Rafael, conductor

Munich 7 December 1973

In this offering, a somewhat complex plea for cease-fire. The Idyll was a birthday present to Wagner's wife, after the birth of their son, here interpreted by my perenially favorite conductor, Rafael Kubelik. His readings never lack warmth to me.

Some key bits from his Wikipedia article:

"

In 1939, Rafael Kubelík became music director of the Brno Opera, a position he held until the Nazis shut the company down on November 12, 1941. The Nazis allowed the Czech Philharmonic to continue operating, and Kubelík became its principal conductor. (He had first conducted the Czech Philharmonic in 1934 when he was 20 years old.) In 1944, after various incidents, including one in which he declined to greet the Nazi Reich-Protector with a Hitler salute — along with his refusal to conduct Wagner during the War — Kubelík "deemed it advisable to disappear from Prague and to spend a few months undercover in the countryside so as not to fall into the clutches of the SS or Gestapo" (Albert Scharf, in Rafael Kubelík: His Life and Achievement, p. 114).

Kubelík conducted the orchestra's first post-war concert in May, 1945. In 1946, he helped found the Prague Spring Festival, and conducted its opening concert. But after the Communist coup of February 1948, Kubelík left Czechoslovakia, vowing not to return until the country was liberated. "I had lived through one form of bestial tyranny, Nazism," he told an interviewer, "As a matter of principle I was not going to live through another."

"

Maybe the killing of many persons by other persons, under the excuse of one state against another, ends the violence between them all, as it is claimed by whoever starts it. Rarely so. 

Palestine and Israel. Iraq and the US. 

I think Barenboim leads the better path forward, with his orchestras that bring together people from opposite sides of the imaginary fence, while they are young. He also reclaimed Wagner, stubbornly and pointedly.

But I am here, in a safe and complacent environment, spreading pirated broadcast recordings...