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Kreisler was managed by his wife, the American Harriet Lies, who maintained quite a good relationship with National Socialist circles in Germany\u2014and from 1924 to 1934, the two owned a house in Berlin. Her job will most certainly have been a time-consuming challenge, one that she took on with great ambition and no less success. Kreisler\u2019s concert calendar was chock-full, and his record contract with Victor obligated him to make a great number of recordings. During this period, his so-called \u201cClassical Manuscripts\u201d garnered him a great deal of admiration\u2014though the subsequent revelation that these compositions were actually from his own pen also garnered him more than a bit of criticism.<\/p>\n
From 1933 onward, Fritz Kreisler refused to appear in the \u201cGerman Reich\u201d out of solidarity with conductors like Fritz Busch and Bruno Walter. 1935 then saw Kreisler awarded the Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna on the occasion of his 60th birthday, and radio programmes dedicated to him were broadcast worldwide. Only in Germany was he ignored. The Nazis went on in 1938 to ban all recordings and performances by him due to his Jewish origins. Kreisler received French citizenship, which was initially not recognised by Germany, but he did manage to emigrate to America together with his wife in 1939. He would become an American citizen in 1943. A 1941 car accident forced Kreisler to drastically cut back on his performing, and his final public performance took place in 1947. This magnificent soloist, whose eyesight then gradually deteriorated toward blindness, passed away in New York in 1962.<\/p>\n
Yehudi Menuhin said of him: \u201cThe typical Kreisler sound was subtle and insistent, filled beneath its surface with emotion and impulses, with hints and allusions that the primitive recording technology of those days as well as I did our utmost to capture.\u201d And Menuhin continued: \u201cI yearn desperately to play \u2018Sch\u00f6n Rosmarin\u2019 and \u2018Caprice Viennois\u2019 with such refined elegance.\u201d (Yehudi Menuhin, Unvollendete Reise. Lebenserinnerungen<\/i>, Munich 1979, p. 68.)<\/p>\n
An exhibition by the Exilarte Center for Banned Music at the mdw with a wide range of images, sheet music, and documents from Kreisler\u2019s life as well as a simultaneously published catalogue will celebrate the ongoing Fritz Kreisler Memorial Year by highlighting aspects such as Kreisler\u2019s family history, his period in Vienna, and his special knack for media relations (as exemplified by his interactions with record companies, newspapers, and broadcasters). Kreisler\u2019s style of violin playing (in connection with the great violin concertos and Beethoven\u2019s sonatas) will likewise be a theme, as will be his arrangements and his way of composing. Of interest are also the over one dozen violins by Stradivari, Guarneri, and other outstanding luthiers that he called his own (including mention of today\u2019s owners). And finally, attention will be given to the historical component of Kreisler\u2019s banishment by the National Socialist state on \u201cracial\u201d grounds as well as\u2014in keeping with now-traditional practice at Exilarte exhibitions\u2014to other exiled and proscribed violin virtuosi and string quartets of that era (Alma and Arnold Ros\u00e9, Carl Flesch, Bronislaw Hubermann, Ferdinand Adler, the Busch Quartet, the Rostal Quartet, etc.).<\/p>\n
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Fritz Kreisler \u2013 A Cosmopolitan in Exile<\/b>
\nOpening: 16 September 2022, runs until May 2023
\nExilarte Center for Banned Music
\nLothringerstra\u00dfe 18, 1030 Vienna
\nexilarte.org<\/a><\/p>\n