Violins of Hope Read online

  Huberman was also aware that he was doing more than just building a world-class orchestra. He was saving lives. When the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem expressed concern about the long-term viability of the orchestra, Huberman countered by outlining a rationale for bringing musicians to Palestine under any economic circumstances. “Why should we dread to think of that future when the present state of about fifty musicians (out of the seventy-five to compose the orchestra) is right now worse off in Germany and Poland than we could imagine them at the worst in Palestine?” he asked.18

  Immigration Visas

  Once the musicians had been recruited, all that was left was to secure immigration visas for the orchestra members and their families. This turned out to be much more difficult than Huberman had anticipated. It also proved to be the most important thing he accomplished.

  Jewish immigration to Palestine had been on the rise ever since the British government—which had controlled the territory since 1917—had issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. This was the document that confirmed England’s support for the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine. In the 1920s, the British had issued unlimited immigration visas to Zionists from all over Europe, as well as to Jews fleeing persecution in Poland and Russia.

  By 1929 tensions between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine had escalated into Arab attacks on Jews and Jewish property. England had responded with the Passfield White Paper of 1930, which had called for a limit to Jewish immigration. Since then, the British government had scaled back the number of visas it allocated to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the organization responsible for coordinating Jewish immigration. The Jewish Agency was forced to adopt a selective policy that carefully scrutinized every candidate for immigration, including the musicians who were coming to Palestine for Huberman’s orchestra.

  Had the musicians been wealthy, there would not have been any problems with securing visas. The Jewish Agency was granting unlimited visas to “capitalists” who owned assets totaling at least 1,000 Palestinian pounds. At the time, this was equivalent to approximately 20,000 reichsmarks—a good deal of money considering that members of the Berlin Culture League were only making around 200 reichsmarks a month. Huberman was well aware that musicians were unlikely to have that kind of money. He quickly dismissed the capitalist certificates as an option. He preferred to find a solution that would not cause financial difficulties for members of the orchestra. He was specifically interested in workers certificates, which allowed their holders to also bring their spouses and underage children.

  In the absence of potential applicants who would qualify as capitalists, the Jewish Agency only agreed to offer the musicians visas for one year. The agency believed that the performers would not want to stay in the country for very long. They preferred to award the few permanent visas they had been allocated to workers who would be more likely to settle in Palestine. This was another plan that Huberman found to be unacceptable. He insisted that he could not ask musicians to leave their jobs and homes in Europe and move their families and belongings to Palestine without securing full immigration rights. To make matters worse, a temporary visa would require the musicians to pay customs charges on their families’ furniture. If this was the only option, Huberman threatened, then he would not proceed any further with his plans to establish an orchestra.

  Throughout the process of securing immigration visas for the musicians, Huberman was always careful to look out for their families. When Polish musicians were struggling to cover the cost of moving their families, Huberman arranged for the orchestra to pay for half of the travel expenses of their wives and children. Those who could not afford to pay the other half of the expenses would receive it from the orchestra as an advance. Knowing that the initial costs of moving were the greatest, Huberman deducted the advance from the musician’s salary in ten monthly installments, starting with the third month of employment. Musicians with children even received an increase in salary of half a pound per child every month.

  While Huberman was struggling to find an answer to the visa problem, another development threatened to put an end to his plans: the escalation of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine. Another Arab revolt had begun on April 21, 1936, after six rival Arab leaders had come together to rally against the continuation of mass Jewish immigration. A general strike and a boycott of Jewish businesses quickly intensified into a severe economic and political crisis, as well as bloody attacks on the Jews and the British. The British authorities responded by further restricting the number of visas they would issue for the remainder of the year and by calling in military reinforcements from Egypt and Malta.

  Concerned about bringing musicians to Palestine in the middle of a civil war, Huberman had no choice but to delay the orchestra’s first concert. After learning that Arab unrest tended to subside in November, when the Arabs had to return to work for the beginning of the orange-picking season, Huberman postponed the inaugural performance from October 24 to December 26. The first rehearsal was also delayed for two months, from early September to early November.

  In the meantime, the Jewish Agency continued to propose solutions to the problem of immigration visas. One idea was to offer temporary visas that were valid for two years instead of one, but Huberman again insisted on permanent visas. Another suggestion was to admit the musicians as “small capitalists” whose instruments would be accepted as proof that they owned assets worth at least 250 Palestinian pounds (5,000 reichsmarks). Huberman rejected this as well, since some musicians did not possess their own instruments. Those who did would not be able to pretend that their instruments were anywhere near that valuable.

  Failure was not an option. As Huberman explained to Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization and the future first president of Israel, an inability to help the musicians immigrate would not just embarrass the Zionist community but would hand the Nazis an unexpected victory.

  It was not until August 11, after the British high commissioner for Palestine intervened on Huberman’s behalf, that the Immigration Office announced that the Jewish Agency would receive forty visas specifically earmarked for musicians of Huberman’s choosing, along with those musicians’ wives and children. By the end of the month, the British authorities would also approve visas for the parents and siblings of members of the orchestra. Additionally, workers visas were granted to musicians’ adult children over the course of September. Once Huberman exceeded his allocation of forty permanent visas, he completed the orchestra with musicians on one-year visas that were converted into permanent visas in the following year.

  The significance of solving the immigration problem cannot be understated. Through his uncompromising dedication, Huberman had saved an entire orchestra of musicians and their families from Nazi tyranny. Without his help, they may have never been able to leave Europe. The vast majority of them might very well have died in the Holocaust.

  The Musicians Arrive

  Although the musicians had been guaranteed their visas, it was still not clear when they would arrive in Palestine. Rumors were rampant in the summer of 1936 that the British were going to capitulate to Arab demands that all Jewish immigration be suspended. This prompted Zionist offices throughout Europe to start urging all prospective immigrants to leave immediately. Huberman considered asking the musicians to move up their arrival dates to early September, but this would have created a financial crisis. The musicians would not have been able to support themselves and their families without getting paid for the two months prior to the first rehearsals. Once again, the high commissioner came to Huberman’s defense by promising him that the musicians would be able to immigrate in October regardless of any changes to England’s overall immigration policies.

  All of this uncertainty caused a great amount of confusion and anxiety among the musicians. Erich Toeplitz had yet to receive a contract on July 15, 1936, when he received a letter from Huberman announcing that the first
rehearsals and performance had been postponed by two months. Two weeks later, another letter inquired whether it would be possible for Toeplitz to leave prior to November 1. One week after that, a third letter informed Toeplitz that there was no need to arrive early, after all. It was not until September 1 that a contract was sent.

  Toeplitz finally arrived at the Palestinian port of Haifa on November 2, along with ten other musicians from Austria and Germany. They had sailed aboard the SS Tel Aviv, which was making its final journey from Italy to Palestine. Like so many other Jewish enterprises during that time, the Palestine Shipping Company, which owned the ocean liner, had proved to be a failed venture. At least the trip had been a success. During the voyage, many of the musicians had come together for a benefit concert for the Jewish National Fund, which financed the purchase of land in Palestine.

  At Haifa, the musicians boarded a bus to Tel Aviv, which was no easy journey in those days. Since there was no direct road along the coast from Haifa to Tel Aviv, the bus had to travel through the Arab-controlled West Bank. Their journey had already been delayed for two months by the Arab revolt. Now they were heading into Arab territory during a general strike. The Arabs were protesting the signing of the Balfour Declaration exactly nineteen years earlier. To the musicians who were accustomed to the cosmopolitan atmosphere of European capitals, even the desolate, rocky landscape across which the bus traveled seemed hostile.

  When the musicians reached Tel Aviv, everything changed. After living in constant fear in Europe and traveling through the unwelcoming West Bank, they gazed at the blooming citrus groves and the young people strolling leisurely through the streets. The disparity in the landscape reminded the musicians of how far the Jewish community in Palestine had come in such a short time. It was in this same pioneering spirit that Huberman had established a major symphony orchestra in less than three years.

  In addition to quickly familiarizing themselves with a new location with tropical weather and exotic food, the musicians had to acclimate to each other in a very short period of time. Every orchestra has a distinct sound that allows careful listeners to distinguish one ensemble from the others. When a new musician joins an orchestra, he or she has to quickly adapt to the practices of the existing ensemble to blend into that sound. In this case, the entire orchestra was composed of musicians from different countries, with dissimilar educational backgrounds, who had never played together before, and who did not even speak a common language. It was no easy task to achieve a uniform sound in the weeks prior to Toscanini’s arrival.

  At first the orchestra rehearsed in smaller sections: strings, woodwinds, and brass. This allowed the individual instrument families to establish their own sounds. It also gave the city of Tel Aviv the time it needed to complete their concert hall. The presence of a professional symphony orchestra and the appearance of superstar conductor Arturo Toscanini required a stage and a seating capacity larger than had ever existed in Palestine. To accommodate this demand, the 1,500-seat exhibition hall in which Huberman had performed in December 1935 was combined with an adjacent hall to form one concert hall that could seat 2,500 audience members. The creation of such a hall in such a short time span represented yet another testimony to the passion and resourcefulness of the Jewish community.

  On December 4, the orchestra moved into the new hall and finally played together for the first time. United in exile, the musicians started to sense the strong collaborative relationship that results in a cohesive sound. But there were concerns about the acoustics in the hall. Huberman was concerned that the first violins—which by all rights should have been the strongest section in a Jewish orchestra—were not projecting properly. They tried raising the chairs, but this did not help. The problem persisted until Toscanini arrived one week prior to the inaugural concert. He seemed to fix the problem by lowering the chairs, but it was difficult for the musicians to tell whether the sound improved because of the new seating arrangement or because of Toscanini’s inspirational conducting. Regardless, Toscanini wasted little time in developing a beautiful orchestral sound, accomplishing in one week what usually takes many years.

  Up until Toscanini’s arrival, the orchestra had been conducted by Steinberg, who at Huberman’s insistence had been drilling the orchestra over the course of more than sixty rehearsals in less than two months. Despite such a great amount of preparation, everyone was still nervous about Toscanini’s arrival. The conductor was legendary for temperamental outbursts. The musicians were worried about how he would react to their imperfections. Many skeptical musicians and community members were convinced that Toscanini would leave after the first rehearsal, if he came at all. But Toscanini was patient with the eager performers as they learned how to play together. According to one musician, Toscanini found the Palestine Orchestra to be more responsive to his instructions than the established ensembles he usually conducted.

  At first, Toscanini simply listened as he conducted Brahms’s Second Symphony, which was the first piece he had chosen to rehearse. As the first movement unfolded, he started to interact with the musicians in his native language of Italian, occasionally mixed with German. “Oboe: singing!” “Trumpet: a little louder” “A little softer . . . shh . . . shh . . . piano, piano, pianissimo.” By the second movement, the orchestra already sounded completely different. In the third movement, Toscanini started to demand perfection. He spent several minutes with the oboist on the grace note that precedes the third note in the very first measure. Again and again he called out, “Music is not played, it is sung, it is sung!” To make his point, he sang along with the orchestra, placing his hand on his chest when the orchestra did not meet his high standards. In the fourth movement, he chastised the ensemble for not playing fast enough, rapping his baton on his music stand and crying out, “Follow, follow!” As the rehearsal continued, Toscanini became increasingly animated, stomping his feet to spur the violinists into playing “with fire” and yelling “macaroni pie” when they got lost.19 The antics worked. The entire orchestra sounded better than ever.

  The success of Toscanini’s first rehearsal generated a great deal of excitement in the Jewish community of Palestine. Skeptics who had previously been reluctant to purchase tickets now stormed the box office, snatching up all of the subscription tickets and available seats. The demand was so great that the police were brought in to protect the orchestra staff from the mob of ticket seekers. “What has been happening around the Toscanini concerts these past few days was to a large extent not enthusiasm, but a psychosis,” wrote one member of the orchestra staff. “At times I have gotten the impression that the individuals involved have lost track of what they are asking for as they scream, beg, and threaten.”20 The plans for the seating in the new hall were continually revised to squeeze in more audience members.

  The public’s overwhelming interest and the orchestra’s proficiency in the earliest rehearsals convinced Toscanini to open up the final two rehearsals to agricultural workers, as well as to musicians, teachers, actors, and writers. The colonists were moved to tears by what they heard. They had never dreamed that their adopted homeland would be able to assemble an orchestra of such renowned musicians. They could have never imagined that Toscanini would conduct the opening concerts.

  The first official performance of the Palestine Orchestra took place in the evening of December 26, 1936. The hall was packed with 2,500 audience members, including British and Jewish luminaries from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and elsewhere throughout Palestine. Several hundred music lovers stood in the drizzling rain outside of the auditorium, pressing themselves against the wall and even climbing onto the roof to hear the concert. They had come to witness the birth of their orchestra under the baton of the celebrated conductor Arturo Toscanini. They were not disappointed.

  When Toscanini took the stage, he was welcomed with a thunderous standing ovation. Then the concert began.

  The first piece on the program was Rossini’s Overture to The Silken Ladder, a work with fiendishly d
ifficult violin parts that showed Toscanini’s faith in his first violins. The entire orchestra rose to the challenge. Next were the two German masterpieces: Brahms’s Second Symphony and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, in which the musicians played at their very best. As a calculated protest of Nazi Germany’s prohibition against Jewish composers, Toscanini followed Brahms and Schubert with the Nocturne and Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  The audience listened in silent admiration and then responded to each piece with prolonged applause and shouts of “bravissimo!” When the concert concluded with Weber’s Oberon Overture, the orchestra received yet another standing ovation. The only sour moment came when Toscanini was angered by a photographer’s flashes and refused to return to the stage for the curtain calls the audience enthusiastically demanded.

  It was perhaps the musicians who were most thrilled with the performance. After being dismissed from the orchestral positions they had earned through years of practice, after being unemployed and humiliated, and after moving their entire families to a strange country, they were not just making music again. They were doing so under the baton of a true master. “Under his conducting problem spots simply disappear. The music rises and falls, sings and laughs, thrills our hearts and brings us to tears,” wrote cellist Thelma Yellin. “We play as never before. It sounds as if we—the Palestine Orchestra—have been playing together for years, not weeks. The eyes of those of us who hold music dearest of all are wet with tears. We have finally arrived at our destination: we have become an instrument in the hands of the greatest artist of our time.”21