Ipo Postpones Wagner Concert in Order to Poll Subscribers

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has canceled a special concert scheduled for Friday that was to have included music by Richard Wagner.

The orchestra decided last Friday to post-pone the concert, so that its Public Committee, an advisory group, could poll the thousands of IPO subscribers on the issue.

Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli concert pianist and conductor who was to have led the IPO’s Dec. 27 concert, said it could not take place because the poll results would not be known in time.

Wagner is not on the IPO’s repertoire because it is unacceptable to a large bloc of Israelis that a Jewish state-sponsored orchestra should perform the works of the 19th-century German composer, who was rabidly anti-Semitic and venerated by Hitler.

The announcement, made Dec. 15, that the IPO members had voted by large majority to include Wagner in the upcoming concert stirred fierce protests.

Knesset Speaker Dov Shilansky, a Holocaust survivor, was one of several public figures who urged the IPO to reconsider. But many music-lovers supported the orchestra’s decision. They argued that great art should not be banned because the artist was evil.

They noted that many other 19th-century composers were known anti-Semites, including the Polish Frederic Chopin, whose music nevertheless is regularly performed in Israel.

Wagner, who died in 1883, left a body of work that is regarded as integral to the development of modern music. He became an idol and icon of the Nazis, who took power in Germany 50 years after his death.

The IPO’s conductor and musical director, Zubin Mehta, agreed with Barenboim that it was ludicrous for a symphony orchestra of world repute such as the IPO to deliberately boycott Wagner.

The Indian-born Mehta was widely criticized in 1981 when he tried to include Wagner as an encore piece at a public concert. Much of the audience walked out.

Barenboim planned to include the overture to the operas “The Flying Dutchman” and “Tristan and Isolde” in Friday’s program.

In anticipation of protests, the concert was scheduled as a special event, rather than part of the regular season. IPO subscribers therefore would not feel Wagner was being forced on them.

Now they are being asked to decide the issue. Should the poll show that a majority has no objections to Wagner’s music, the concert may be rescheduled.

But Barenboim, an authority on Wagner’s music and one of its foremost exponents, will not conduct because of prior commitments.