Vienna in the Twenties

Crawford:In another interview we were talking about that group of young intellectuals in Vienna that were against the establishment, of which you were one. When did you first sense that you were going to take that anti- establishment position?

Khuner:Well, it happened in 1918, when the Austrian Republic was formed. We were, of course, very liberal, not to say communist, and we were very on the lookout for the Old Guard at that time, which we didn't like. So that was with politics; it had nothing do with music or with art. We were always on the lookout for the new things, and not to continue the old.

Crawford:Your thinking then extended to politics, too.

Khuner:That was with politics.

Crawford:And who were the people who were involved?

Khuner:Well, that was all very vague in general. We were always very suspicious, like Mr. McCarthy was suspicious of communism. We were suspicious of every conservative, old monarchists, you know? And then we were also suspicious of--the German nationalists between 1918 and 1933, [and the] ascending power of the Nazis.

Crawford:And what form did that take?

Khuner:Well, that was all very informal.

Crawford:You met in coffee houses, you talked with other students?

Khuner:Very little. As a teenager, no, I had no time for that. That was only meant for political groups; and the other Zionist groups--of course that was a little detached from Austrian politics. That was something else--No, I had no time for that; I had to go to school, I had to do my violin practicing, I had to play quartets, I had to go to concerts, I had to go to operas. On the weekend I would go skiing, or swimming or hiking. In the evening we had the Zionist youth groups. So--

Crawford:So you didn't have time for politics per se. But you read?

Khuner:Well, of course I read a lot about music, and literature, and whatever was accessible to me. The libraries were very poor, in the Academy. We had very little worthwhile things. But I discovered [Heinrich] Schenker, and then I discovered the music of Schoenberg. And then, of course, there I was a rabid Wagnerian.

Crawford:Shaw said, "You can't love Wagner unless you are a revolutionary yourself." Is that true?

Khuner:At that time, not any more. No, that was twenty years before, around 1900. But by that time Wagner was very well established. He was still of course--people said that Wagner was too dull, and they couldn't sit through a five- hour opera. Like my German professor says, "You cannot sit through five hours of Parsifal," and I said, "But you can go through four volumes of the old medieval German epic!" That's what he wanted us to do, you know. He had a volume like that about Parsifal or Wolfram von Eschenbach that was standing there. That you want us to read! That takes five months to read! But five hours in the opera is too much for you!

Crawford:How about Schenker?

Khuner:Well, Schenker I discovered--I'll tell you how- -I took violin lessons of a young violinist, Mr. Schiffer. Did I tell you that? Ja? Well, Schiffer was an absolute nobody! He was a young violinist, and he had a little string quartet; I played a couple of little performances with him. And it seems to me that he knew quite a lot about violin playing. I don't think that he was a very inspiring or inspired teacher, but he knew something about violin playing. And he was probably the first one who really told me how bad I was.

Crawford:He said you were bad!

Khuner:Ja. And I remember there was in one instance--I asked about holidays or vacations, and [he] said, "I'm not going to get a vacation, I have a book to study first. When I have studied that book, then my vacations will begin." That was Schenker's analysis of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which probably you are not aware about. It's a very interesting book. That's where I heard the name of Schenker first. And then I found some of Schenker's books in the Academy library. New Ideas and Fantasies. Ja, Neues Ideen und Fantasien. And then I found the first book about harmony, and so on.

Crawford:So that was an influence for you.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:And was that of the Schoenberg school?

Khuner:Well, he was not an admirer of Schoenberg, because he wasvery conservative. Schoenberg admired him, and said he was a very fine [player]--unfortunately, he had a wall against contemporary music. And Schoenberg told me that was wrong, because all his ideas, and all his research, and all his discoveries apply just as much to new music as they apply to old music.

[tape break]

Crawford:Was Schoenberg attached to Karl Kraus' political philosophy?

Khuner:Oh, Ja, Schoenberg was an admirer--right. He told me once that he had a grudge against Kraus. Because when Schoenberg was a very young man he wrote a letter to Kraus. What it was, I don't know. And Kraus rebuffed him in some way or other. And Schoenberg was very hurt by that. And I said that's too bad because if Kraus would had been more understanding--I don't know what it was--they would have had a much better relationship, at least to the benefit of Schoenberg. But I don't know what the topic of this was.

Crawford:But you read Kraus's newsletter, his publication?

Khuner:Of course, yes. I had a complete Fackel, which was destroyed; my parents destroyed it before they left Vienna.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Oh, they were afraid. There was a whole shelf of Fackel there; if that could be discovered--I mean, that was just a waste of Die Fackel-- Kraus died in 1936. It was still Austria. I had the complete, all the issues of Die Fackel up to his death. You know? Which I could sell now for half a million dollars.

Crawford:You surely could!

Khuner:Ja. But my parents, in 1938, before they left, they burned it.

Joining the Kolisch Quartet

Crawford:You joined the Kolisch quartet in the twenties.

Khuner:That's correct, 1926. I was born in 1906, and I was nineteen.

Crawford:According to Mr. Lehner, it was a continuation of another quartet.

Khuner:There was a quartet that was called the Neues Wienerstreichquartett. And there was Kolisch, and Mr. Rothschild was the second violinist; Mr. Marcel Dick was the viola player, you know that. And Joachim Stutschewsky was the cellist. Now Rothschild was a local violinist in Vienna who was playing, little recitals, little jobs, I don't know--I met him later in New York. He was not much to brag about. Marcel Dick was a very intelligent, very musical viola player. He later became professor of composition at the University in Cleveland. Stutschewsky was the oldest of the group; he was also a free-lance cellist in Vienna, who later emigrated to Israel, and was also a very intelligent and musical and above-average musician, not a very good cellist. Not a very pleasant person.

Crawford:How so?

Khuner:Well, he was very self-centered, and nothing else mattered but himself. He said, "Why should I be polite to Mr. Schoenberg; I am just as good a cellist as Schoenberg is a composer!"

Crawford:Oh, I see! Ego problems!

Khuner:Ja! I don't know how that quartet was formed, I have no idea. But they had played already two or three seasons.

Crawford:When you came along.

Khuner:Ja. Then Mr. Rothschild didn't like it for some reason or other, there was some kind of personal [friction] I don't know anything about. And Kolisch went to Mr. Professor Egghardt, whose name you remember, who was my teacher and had also been Kolisch's teacher in his early years. And Kolisch went to him and says, "Can you recommend any of the young people that you have in your class who would be interested in my quartet?" And he described it. And Egghardt said, "That must be Felix Khuner--" He said, "Not an extremely good violinist, but interested in the music." And Kolisch phoned me, and I said, "Well, I don't play violin any more. I still play a little, I play in the Opera orchestra, substituting, and play a little chamber music at home with semi- professionals. But otherwise, I'm going to go to the University for mathematics and chemistry studies. I have no time to play quartets." So he said, "Come over, we'll talk it over anyhow." I told you that--and Schoenberg entered the room--

Crawford:Yes, you didn't know who it was!

Khuner:I didn't know who he was! And I said, "What has he to do with you? Who is that old man?" And he said, "Well, that's Mr. Schoenberg." I had never seen a picture of him before. Well, I said, "Has he any connection?" He said, "He's my brother-in-law, and of course, when we perform, when we rehearse, he comes and talks with us, and so on." And I said, "Well inthat case, of course I want to play with you!"It was at the end of the school year. He said, "Can you rehearse?" and I said "No." I had arranged with my cousin to make a hiking tour through Switzerland, in the summer of '26. So, that's what we did. It was a very nice three or four weeks; we hiked through Switzerland, we went up some mountains, and swam in the lakes, and southern lakes, and so on, it was very nice. And then when we came back, Kolisch said, all right, let's practice a little. The other other two people of the quartet had already left for whatever they did during the summer. Marcel Dick played, I think, in some summer orchestra, Stutschewsky was out of town some place. So we went through the repertoire, just the two violins of us. And that was in Schoenberg's house in M"dling. And Schoenberg had a piano and a harmonium, and we there played Wagner operas, and Tristan, and Walk re, for piano and harmonium!

Crawford:Where is M"dling?

Khuner:M"dling, it's a suburb of Vienna. It's about, I would say, twenty miles south of Vienna.

Crawford:And so you spent the summer, or part of the summer--

Khuner:No, no, I went there for a day, twice a week.

Crawford:And was Schoenberg there?

Khuner:No, no. Nobody was there except Kolisch.

Crawford:And your repertoire was mixed, then?

Khuner:Ja. Well, the classical repertoire, of course, I was acquainted with; I'd played a lot of it, I'd heard a lot of it. But the other quartets I didn't know. We played the first and second Bartok quartets, and the first two Schoenberg quartets, and by Toch, and by Szymorowsky, and also the first things of Webern. But they were the string quartets they played.

Crawford:So then you began the season, the regular season--

Khuner:Ja, but before that, there was one rehearsal that we had with the other two. Of course, they wanted to know who is that young fellow, nineteen-year-old fellow, who wants to play in our quartet. So we played, and they said, "Well, he's a good sight-reader, he'll do--Kolisch, you practice with him! You, you study the repertoire, and then we can have the season."

Crawford:Now, what were the ages of the others? Rothschild, and Dick?

Khuner:Well, Kolisch was ten years older than I, Rothschild must have been--I don't know. Dick was a little younger then. Stutschewsky was about six or seven years older than Kolisch.

Crawford:Spell that name for me, would you?

Khuner:Stutschewsky? (spells it) Transliteration of the Russian.

Crawford:And then, so then you began this '26 season with the quartet.

Khuner:Ja, well, of course, I said, "I have to go to school, so I can't play." They said, "Well, we have only a few concerts, in October, and then we have a few concerts in February. So you go." So, I registered at the University, and went to a few classes of mathematics in September and October, and did a little rehearsing to brush up the quartets we played. And then we had the tour--just a few concerts, I think--where was it? We played also in Berlin, I remember that. We played in Prague. We played a few concerts in Switzerland, that Stutschewsky arranged, because he knew people. We had some concerts in the north of Italy. But I don't know how that was arranged, because I had no idea. They just told me "We play there, we play this."

Crawford:Had you been in those other places?

Khuner:No. No.

Crawford:You had been in Switzerland?

Khuner:I had been in Czechoslovakia visiting my mother's family, but I'd never been in Germany, Berlin was quite new to me. Quite impressive, of course. Berlin! Well! And I had never been in Italy. But I had been in Switzerland, south Switzerland.

Crawford:Did you like Berlin?

Khuner:Well, I cannot say. I was very much impressed. First of all, the subway. We had no subway in Vienna. And the signals, the traffic lights, green and red traffic lights! There was none in Vienna! I mean, to go to the Leipzigstrasse, and see the whole street, a traffic light at every corner, every intersection! Fabulous!

Crawford:That's interesting. Interesting that that made such an impression on you.

Khuner:Ja, then--wait a minute--I really don't know-- we had another tour in Europe. By the time I came back, and went back to the school, everything was gone, I couldn't keep up with the classes. So, I had to give it up.

Crawford:So you gave up the University? You didn't continue?

Khuner:Well, I gave it up for the time being, see, and the first two terms, semesters, I didn't do anything. I was a drop-out! Yes!

Crawford:Well, in a way! You had once a hundred and twenty concerts. Did you usually have that many?

Khuner:That was later, ja, ja.

Crawford:In 1927, yes.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:But, were there a great many concerts that you did?

Khuner:In the first year? Not more than about thirty. Ja, those tours--oh, we had some concerts in Vienna, and so on, ja.

Crawford:Also. And were you playing all classical repertoire that year?

Khuner:Oh, ja! In those concerts in Switzerland we didn't play anything that was contemporary. We played all Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert quartets.

[Portion of tape missing]

We were in Mantua, and Mantua is a little, you know, a little city in Italy, and it was adelightful day. It's a wonderful little city. We were walking around, absolutely one delight after another, every street! Then we had a little hotel room, there was a little balcony out there, and Lehner and I, we took a chair out and we played chess all afternoon. And I remember that afternoon. So if you ask, what did you do, that's what we did.

Crawford:Did you notice any difference with Italian audiences?

Khuner:No. No. They liked the slow movement of the Dvorak F Major Quartet best. [sings the theme] That always brought down the house! We played once Casella, in Milano; it was a great thing. And they hissed, they didn't want it! They said, Beethoven! Beethoven! Beethoven! No Casella! [Alfred Casella, 1883-1947] No, they didn't like the Italian music, I mean the contemporary, like Malipiero and Casella, and Alfano.I would say that the best performances were played when we knew it was totally lost. Totally unwanted. I remember once we played the Lyric Suite in a private concert in Paris, and we knew it would be totally lost on the audience. We just did it because the hostess for some reason wanted it. It was the best performance we ever played! It was totally lost on everybody.

Crawford:Why? Maybe because you weren't worried.

Khuner:What? No! It was a performance that would have been acclaimed by every knowledgeable listener. But not by that audience.

Crawford:How did you feel about that?

Khuner:Didn't care.

Crawford:You didn't care that you didn't record it?

Khuner:I never cared about it. No. The only thing is, are we going to get re-engaged? Because when we played in different places in Italy, we played in Mantua and Padua, and in Ascona, and in Rome, and Florence. So we would take a nice tour, two weeks. Or in Holland, or in England. Ja. We played in Scotland every year, we had to play in Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, and in Inverness. And in Glasgow [and] in Aberdeen we played--In Elgin, way up in the north. But the thing is this, we had to have all those cities. Otherwise it would be expensive to go there.

Crawford:So, you wondered--

Khuner:We wondered, are we going to be engaged again?

Crawford:And did you ever fail to be re-engaged because they said, "We don't like your approach?"

Khuner:We don't know. How could we know? For example, sometimes we asked [the representative] Mr. Bechert, "We were so successful, let's say, in Elgin last year, why couldn't we--" He said, "Well, they couldn't fit it in their time schedule." Say you could play only Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday that week, and the hall was already taken. It would happen. It happens here too. In the opera. Why do we get this singer, why don't we get a better one? It was not available for that day.

Crawford:But generally you were re-engaged, because you were kept pretty busy.

Khuner:No, we were not kept very busy. We could have played many more concerts if we would have had them.

Crawford:You could?

Khuner:Oh, ja. Not that I would have been extremely happy, because I enjoyed free days! Really.

Crawford:You liked to have the free days.

Khuner:Well, sure! Say, you are in Florence, you would like to spend two days, but you can't, you have to leave tomorrow morning to play in Spezia.

Crawford:You traveled everywhere by train, I'm sure, in those times?

Khuner:Oh, ja, no planes, except a very few times. In fact, we took a plane once from [somewhere] in Poland, and I took a plane once from Strasbourg to Czechoslovakia, because we would travel over Germany, not go through Germany. Those were the only two times I went by plane. Those were big planes at that time, twenty passengers! Ja. Most airplanes had only six, eight or ten.

Benar Heifetz and Jeno Lehner Join the Quartet

Crawford:Yes. So when did you start with Berg and Schoenberg, and so on?

Khuner:That was part of our, of at leastmy interest, you know? We played that in Vienna itself. We had, I remember, one recital where Schoenberg was present; we played the first two string quartets. And the singer, Maria Freund, sang the opus fifteen.

Crawford:And he was there.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Was the work well received? Was that a premiere?

Khuner:That was not a premiere, no, no. No, no. That was already played before, by the Rosé Quartet.

Crawford:Did you get large audiences?

Khuner:No, that was a very small audience, the smallest hall, yes.

Crawford:Was his Society for Private Musical Performances still going on?

Khuner:I was never participating. My aunt was there. Did I tell you that?

Crawford:No.

Khuner:That was actually my first introduction to Schoenberg. My aunt, the piano teacher, told me, when I young, I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, that she was a member of this thing. And she played some of the very, very avant garde music, by Debussy and Ravel, for the piano. And I was very interested in that. Because that was performed a lot at the Verein [f r Musikalsche Privatauff hrungen, 1918].

Crawford:And so she was involved, but you weren't really involved with it?

Khuner:I was not. I was too young.

Crawford:I think that was begun in 1918, as I remember. Was there also a Society for Creative Composers? [Union of Creative Musicians]

Khuner:Not that I know of.

Crawford:I think Zemlinsky was responsible for founding that--

Khuner:Well, undoubtedly they performed a lot of the music of living composers, and local composers. Naturally. But the emphasis was on performing. I don't think they in any way sponsored or encouraged composers, except by performing them.

Crawford:Well, that's one way.

Khuner:Well, that's of course a very important way. But that's not like here, where present day sponsors, they pay the composer to compose and don't care about the performance.

Crawford:So then, Jeno Lehner?

Khuner:Then, at the end of the first season, after these two short trips and a few concerts in Vienna, Berg had finished his Lyric Suite, and we were faced with the important thing, to rehearse it. And there were only two violins in the quartet! So we met Mr. Benar Heifetz, who was also a so-called free-lance cellist, in Vienna. Ja? He couldn't get a job in any orchestra. The only income he had was playing professionally with amateurs, who appreciated a good cellist in their quartet.

Crawford:He was a Russian, was he not?

Khuner:He was also Russian. He was an immigrant, an emigrant from Russia. So we had Heifetz, Heifetz was interested. And Kolisch played two piano trio recitals with him. I was not involved. And he thought that he was a very fine cellist. But we couldn't play quartets, we had no viola player. And all the local viola players were out of the running.

Crawford:Because you'd lost your viola player?

Khuner:Ja. Marcel Dick left. He said he couldn't continue because he had to stick to his orchestra job. He couldn't rehearse in the summer because he was in a spa orchestra somewhere in the Austrian countryside. Ischl.

Crawford:Very lucrative, I suppose.

Khuner:Well, not lucrative. It was very bad money, but it was a living, modestly.

Crawford:So then?

Khuner:Well, I could play, because I was supported by my parents at that time.

Crawford:So your revenues by no means provided a living.

Khuner:Oh, no! At that time, not at all! And what I earned in these two seasons was just to buy myself a few books!

Crawford:Music books?

Khuner:Not necessarily, no! Then there was a Mr. [S ndor] Jemnitz, a composer in Budapest, whose, I think, string trios or string quartets we had performed in our first season, and who was interested. And Kolisch must have mentioned that we are on the lookout for a viola player. So he said, "Well, there's a young viola player in Budapest who is not exactly a great viola player, but he's interested in music, and very intelligent, and so on." So he sent Jeno Lehner to Vienna and we rehearsed with him a couple of times. And we saw that he was--the right material!

Crawford:So, really, you all of a sudden had a much younger group.

Khuner:So the group was much younger, ja. Heifetz was younger than Stutschewsky, Lehner was younger than Dick. And we had a very, very young quartet. The total age was less than one hundred years. And Lehner also could come to Vienna because he also had support, he had a patron, some aristocrat friend of his parents, who was very much interested in furthering his talents; and when she heard he would become a member of an uncommon, internationally renowned string quartet--hopefully!--she said, well, she would support him, until he--

Crawford:Was the Kolisch Quartet then renowned?

Khuner:No! Not at all, that was all a calculation. But Lehner was very enthusiastic, and of course Kolisch was there, and Heifetz had nothing to lose. I had nothing to lose; I said, "I'll do it."

The Repertoire in the Twenties

Crawford:According to Lehner, the Lyric Suite made your fame.

Khuner:I'll tell you about that now. The Lyric Suite was not printed yet, it was only in the proofs. So we started working on it. It was quite difficult. Not only this; also the Third Quartet by Schoenberg, which had just been completed. Now, the question came: we were all there; nobody really hadserious financial support. We hadnosponsors. So how do we go on? Now, there was a Mrs.--what was her name? I forgot her name.--a singer, who was interested in singing contemporary music. She commissioned The Wine by Berg. You know the aria of this opera? The Wine? Der Wein. You know? Drinking.

Crawford:No, I don't.

Khuner:You don't know? Well, it's one of the few compositions of Berg. She commissioned it. And in order to appease his wife, so she would look away from his affairs, [her husband] founded a concert and opera agency, international, I don't know, called "Ithma." It was specially funded with his money. He was a very wealthy industrialist. He wanted to please his wife, so he founded that in order to promote her career. And because she sang the Second Quartet by Schoenberg, except the fast movement, we studied it with her. To launch her career in foreign countries. She would come with us, she would sing, we had concerts, and the Ithma sponsored it. On a very modest scale.And Schoenberg and Berg also said, "Now we have a young quartet." In contrast to the old string quartet with Rothschild and Stutschewsky, who were always, so to say, a little dragging; there were two young players, a young second violinist, a young viola player, and a cellist who was also younger that Stutschewsky. They said, "We give you the exclusive rights for one year of those two pieces." The Third Quartet by Schoenberg and the Lyric Suite.Now, through the Ithma we got an engagement at the music festival in Frankfurt, that was the big German music festival; and the music festival in Baden Baden. And there we were very successful with the Lyric Suite. We had to repeat it at request. And so we got known through the commercial circuit of string quartets.

Crawford:Were the German audiences more open to contemporary music?

Khuner:Well, in Baden Baden, that was an audience for contemporary music. That was especially--like later on in Donaueschingen.

Crawford:That it was a festival for contemporary music, so people came because they wanted to hear it?

Khuner:Exactly.Well, of course we tried to play Berg, Webern and Schoenberg as much as we could. But there were other composers who also hoped that we would play their quartets.

Crawford:Didn't you have exclusive rights to one of Webern's works? A string trio he wrote?

Khuner:No. Well, Webern knew that the string trio wouldn't be played a lot. Although it was performed here at the university once, with students. Miserable performance.

Crawford:His music was banned in 1933?

Khuner:I'm sure it was--I'm sure it was, yes, but I don't know--Kulturbolshevism.

Crawford:Did that take the form of a statute prohibiting performance?

Khuner:I don't think so. It was just that performers made all the efforts to toe the line. Not to perform contemporary music.

Crawford: Was Berg involved in rehearsals of theLyric Suite?

Khuner:Oh, ja, Very much. Oh, yes.

Crawford:What are your impressions of him?

Khuner:I don't know! He was the composer of a very important piece of music. I was on very friendly terms with him, but I was a very young man! Berg was a towering figure of contemporary music, and I was a little fiddler who was privileged to play his music!

Crawford:So you don't really have any personal recollections?

Khuner:Oh, I have a lot of recollections of him as a person! But I cannot describe it! Do you know the story of the Jewish tailor who went to Rome to see the Pope? And he comes back, and people say, "Well, you saw the Pope?" "Yes!" "You mean, you went into the same room with the Pope?" "Yes, sure! sure!" "Well, how far away were you?" "Well, about five, six feet, he was standing right in front of me." "Well, what kind a person was he?" "Well, I would say, number five, short!" [Laughter.] You don't know that story? Yes, you know that story!

Crawford:No. Now I do.

Khuner:Well, to the tailor, that was important, number five, short.

Crawford:What is the story about the Lyric Suite; it's supposed code for the name of one of Berg's amours.

Khuner:No, there was only [her] daughter. Her name was Do. And there is in the second movement a repeated C, which is Do in Italian. That is supposed to be the daughter of the girlfriend.

Crawford:Let's talk a little bit more about repertoire now. The Fourth Quartet of Schoenberg was commissioned by Mrs. Coolidge, is that right?

Khuner:I believe so, ja. Well, I think she paid for the concert, for the first performance, which was, I think, at UCLA. I believe so, ja.

Crawford:That was the premiere?

Khuner:That was the first performance, ja. The way I remember it.

Crawford:And how was that received? That was 1937.

Khuner:I didn't pay any attention to that.

Crawford:You never read the criticisms?

Khuner:Occasionally, ja. I collected them and if it seemed that, maybe, some of those things you cut out and put in next year's brochure. As I always say, you get a review and it says, "A first class ensemble!" But the review says, "A first class ensemble they are not!" But the "they are not" you leave out.

Crawford:Quote unquote!

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:Well, but, on the other hand a good review, sad to say, might mean a re-engagement.

Khuner:Not necessarily. The re-engagement is placed on the impression we make. But the review in the brochure influences the people who don't know us. They go by the lies that we put in the brochure. Like Mr. Norrington's Beethoven symphonies will be bought not because people like it but because they hear about it, they read it in the music magazines.

Crawford:Is that true?

Khuner:Of course. And since few people will read Mr. Lippman's review in the Sunday paper, and many will read the reviews of the great music magazines, a lot of people will buy the recordings. I don't have it. I gave it to Edgar Braun. Well, it's ascathing review. It said that the only word that really described those recordings is "scandalous." With all due respect of the knowledgeability of some of the critics, they are influenced to please the people who pay them money. If a guest conductor is very widely acclaimed somewhere else and he asks a high fee, and you go to those people and say, can we have the $20,000 to get him, hemustbe good. You just cannot help it.

Crawford:So that it's a business like any--

Khuner:All the time.

Crawford:Did you have first, exclusive rights to any of the Bartok works?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:But you did the premiere of the Fifth Quartet?

Khuner:We did the premiere of the Third and the Fifth. The Third was in Hamburg and the Fifth was in--and the Sixth, too, the Sixth was in New York--and the Fifth was--I don't know.

Crawford:And then Webern also, you played his string works? [Five Movements for String Quartet] Everybody makes much of the fact that you memorized the music in these concerts.

Khuner:Well, I told you how it happened. We happened to be in Berlin, that was in 1927 or 1928, I don't know--and we rehearsed the last movement of Beethoven opus 59, number three, for quartet exercises. We could play it by heart, just because of repetition. We played it by heart for Schoenberg; he was very excited. He said, "That's the way to play quartets." So we did it!

Crawford:So after that, you did it. Did that tax you?

Khuner:What?

Crawford:Did it tax you to learn all the music by heart?

Khuner:No, we didn't learnall the music. We had only one quartet the first season, only that Beethoven quartet. Ja? But during that season we played a lot of the Death and the Maiden by Schubert. So we found out that we almost knewthat by heart, by just playing it so many times. So we said, "Next time we'll play that [by memory] too."

Crawford:What are the mechanics of that?

Khuner:To learn by heart? Well, you have to know the music, that's all there is to it.

Crawford:Know the music. But does it free you, then, when in performance?

Khuner:Oh, enormously! Of course!

Crawford:So that the performance is better.

Khuner:First of all, I knewmy part well. I could improvise on my own part. Could experiment with a different fingering, and so. Lots of people don't; they play what's written in the music. And I knew the whole quartet much better. I knew every nuance of every other instrument.

Crawford:Yes. Mr. Lehner said so, he said that you could cover for the other instruments.

Khuner:Ja, if somebody missed a note, I could play it, sure, naturally! I can do it in every opera.

Crawford:Because you're listening to it--

Khuner:Because I hear what's going on.

Crawford:So if somebody loses their way, you can pick it up?

Khuner:No. People play with the exclusion of their ear. They are taught from the beginning to play with their fingers.

Crawford:And their eyes.

Khuner:First comes the ear, then come the fingers. Ja? As I always say, I write down for you CAT, and say, "What is that?" They say, "Well, the C I do by putting my tongue up there, and the A I say by doing this, and T is--CAT? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it!" No, you don't speak like that. You know the sound, and how you produce it before you announce it.

Crawford:Mr. Lehner said that you played in cold blood, no mistakes.

Khuner:Very few mistakes. No reason to make a mistake. Did you ever go in your bathroom instead of your bedroom? I'm always asked about those things--things that you want to learn you can learn. People don't want to learn. Maybe I'm specially talented for learning, or all my colleagues couldn't learn.

Crawford:But isn't it true of musicianship that you either have a very, very refined ear or you don't?

Khuner:People generally become performing musicians because they have goodfingers!

Crawford:That's what I'm saying.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Not everybody has a good ear, a great ear.

Khuner:Well, I believe the ear can be trained. If you want to have something to do with music, train your ear. Mostly the ears of players are good enough to play the instrument. If you are completely at bay about rhythm or pitch or quality of sound, or distinguishing dynamics, you won't get any place. I mean, in a couple of years, you quit right there, like most of my pupils do!

Crawford:What was the significance of the quartet, musically, in the 1920s, say?

Khuner:Well, it was that we played differently than the run-of-the-mill quartets. At that time.

Crawford:Was anybody else specializing in the Second Viennese School?

Khuner:No, no. Well, the Rosé Quartet was interested in Schoenberg, because when the Rosé Quartet played the first Schoenberg quartets and the Sextet, Schoenberg was a very young man. And Rosé was a decent musician, a good violin player. The quartet was a good quartet, as far as I remember, and they played it. I think Rosémadethem play it. It was against Mr. Fischer and Mr Rugiska.I have a little quotation that I found in the Reader's Digest. It says, "If you call on a thoroughbred he gives you all the speed, strength of heart, and sinew in him. If you call on a jackass, he kicks." I see it in my pupils. I have some pupils, a right number, who really work, and try and try. And some other ones who when you ask them to do something say, "Oh, what for? I don't think I can." Jackasses!Now, for instance, these two members of the Rosé Quartet are the ones who kicked about everything. But Rosé was not, Rosé was a thoroughbred.

Crawford:What was the meaning of Wozzeck to you--to that generation?

Khuner:Well, you see, I knew Wozzeck, I knew B chner, ja?

Crawford:The playwright.

Khuner:The playwright. I knew B chner very well, because I was, so to say, specializing in German romantic literature. And B chner was a real Communist. B chner was one of those that we admired. So I knew the play. And then when I heard that Berg had composed an opera, I was very interested. And I heard the performance in Vienna. I think it was a bad performance.

Crawford:By the Staatsoper?

Khuner:By the Staatsoper, yes.

Crawford:And what was the reaction?

Khuner:Well, I don't--what do you mean by reaction? You think that I should say, "Oh, it's just as beautiful as Butterfly?" Oh, no.

Crawford:No! But more provocative!

Khuner:Well, of course! It was that thing that we looked up to, that we admired, and that we studied.

Crawford:But not by the general population.

Khuner:Of course not! No. When we played Wozzeck here, I remember afterwards I was walking up to my car, and a group of opera goers saw me with my violin and said, "Did you play the opera?" I said, "Yes." They said, "Do you like this stuff that you play?" And I said, "Yes I do!" They said, "[Does] all the orchestra?" I said, "No, only I!"That was the first time we played Wozzeck here [1960].

Crawford:Mr. Adler had wanted to do Wozzeck for years, and [Robert Watt] Miller said no.

Khuner:Of course.

Crawford:Like the Lulu.

Khuner:Ja. Much more than Lulu! Wozzeck is much simpler than Lulu. It's a much simpler piece than Lulu. According to Jonathan, Lulu is a much finer work, but I prefer Wozzeck!

Crawford:So, really, the Kolisch was the standout in terms of a balanced repertoire, and trying the challenging new works.

Khuner:Ja. But of course we played the old repertoire also, slightly different. First of all, we played in the Beethoven quartets the real tempi. In Europe, especially in Vienna, where a lot of amateur music was going on, the amateur musicians played everything slow in the fast movement and fast in the slow movement. Everything was equalized, no character. Just play, try to get the notes! So when we played in different tempo than the amateurs, they said, "Well, that's wrong, we play it differently."There was this incident in Paris when we played opus ninety-five of Beethoven. That the piano teacher in the balcony shouted, "Tout est trop vite!" Everything is too fast. Very loud, after the performance! There was some applause, and when the applause died down, he shouted, "Tout est trop vite!"

Crawford:C'est trop vite!

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:How did the critics respond to what you were trying to do?

Khuner:I don't know.

Crawford:You don't--you didn't care?

Khuner:I don't care. No. Sometimes they were a little knowledgeable, sometimes stupid, sometimes non-descript--who cares? The only thing that we were interested in was, can you take an excerpt and put it in your next brochure. Like everybody else did. It doesn't make any sense. It's silly.

Composers and the Quartet

Crawford:Tell me now more about the participation of the composers with the Quartet in the 1920s.

Khuner:I would say, they always said, "An excellent string quartet they are not," but the "they are not" you leave out!

Crawford:What was the extent of Schoenberg, and Berg, and all the composers' involvement with you, with the quartet?

Khuner:Well, Berg and Schoenberg were, of course, friends. There was an almost continuous correspondence. Not very frequently, but every few months we would hear from them. If we didn't hear from them, Kolisch wrote letters. Sometimes months went by and we didn't know what they were doing.

Crawford:But did they come in to rehearsals?

Khuner:Whenever possible. When we were in Vienna, Schoenberg would be there wherever we were. When we, in 1931, spent the summer in Holland, Schoenberg was there, also on vacation. I told you.

Crawford:The entire summer?

Khuner:Yes.

Crawford:What was he like as a personality?

Khuner:Well, I don't know, actually. He's one of my dearest friends, so I cannot tell. I cannot tell. Everybody complained that he was, I don't know--

Thoughts About Audiences

Crawford:Let me go back and ask you to amplify some questions. First, what was the muscial impact of the quartet.

Khuner:The influence, the impact of the Kolisch Quartet was small on a small segment of the consuming public. We never had the engagements, continuing engagements of the big societies in whatever it was, in Mannheim, or Frankfurt, or K"ln [Cologne]. Occasionally we had it. But [usually] we didn't. Because there were other quartets who specialized in Borodin and Smetana, and were much more successful.

Crawford:Because the music was more accessible.

Khuner:Ja. Ja.

Crawford:Which ones?

Khuner:Oh, the Dresdener Quartet, and the Guarneri Quartet, and maybe also the Rosé Quartet. And they played much smoother. They eliminated everything of interest in the performance in order to get the most pleasant performance, the most even performance, the most uncontroversial performance. I always give as an example the following thing: When we played in the Pops season with Mr. Fiedler, we would play a waltz or a polka, and he encouraged the people to clap. They clapped very happily. And he made a little ritenuto; their faces fell, they didn't know what happened. Generally all this is, as long as it goes smooth, absolutely nothing happens, it's beautiful. If something interesting musical happens, they are disturbed.It's true generally, everywhere, with practically every audience. With few exceptions. And when I judge a performer, most of the performers emphasize the ordinary, the things that you know anyhow. The ritenuto at the end, the accent on the tonic. Everybody expects it in that way. Anything that is interesting is eliminated, or played down.

Crawford:But this was not true of the Kolisch Quartet?

Khuner:We did the opposite. We emphasized the interesting things, the ones that the music really is about. Not the packaging. Every music has packaging and the stuff that's inside the package. And what's inside the package is the interesting thing. The packaging is necessary, it makes the piece. But as I said before, people play the packaging and forget the contents.

Crawford:And this approach you all agreed on.

Khuner:That you have to have all the time, even in a little Haydn minuet.

Crawford:Is there a string quartet like that today?

Khuner:I don't know, I don't listen to them. They are all very good; as long as I don't listen to them, they are very good. The Guarneri, I had one experience; that was sufficient for me. One of my friends in San Francisco, with whom I play occasionally, not now, any more, because she's very sick--she says, "I would like to play a Dvorak quartet." I say, "All right, I don't know it, but we'll play it." So I was there about half an hour before we were supposed to play, and she says, "Well, we play the Dvorak quartet, I have a recording of it with the Guarneri quartet. I also have a score." So I said, "Well, let me [go] through it. Since I don't know the quartet, I might get acquainted with it." So she gave me the score, and I listened to the recording. The same thing. Everything that was interesting was not audible. Every important change of tempo, and change of character was not there. The notes were all there.

Crawford:Is that because they don'tknow,or because they--

Khuner:Because they don't know. I know that Mr. Toth is afabulous manager by himself. Avery good violinist, has a beautiful tone, and a very nice right hand.

Crawford:But for that reason, you didn't attract large audiences, is what you're saying? Because your playing was controversial?

Khuner:Well, the audiences that we attracted were prefabricated; those were subscribers to a series. When we played in Frankfurt, the museum concerts had eight chamber concerts in each season. And the "Societa del quartetto" in Milano had two thousand people five times, or six times, or eight times a year. They were notouraudience. The question is, are you successful so they want to re- engage you?

Crawford:But my point is, you didn't change your playing to get re-engaged.

Khuner:No, no, oh no, no, no, no, no, no (several no's!) !!! Thorough contempt for the audiences! I had thorough contempt--not individually, but for the audience in general.

Crawford:But they did re-engage you?

Khuner:Sometimes they did. For what reason I don't know, I didn't ask them. We always used [to] say, when did we play here for the last time? Today! It might be that one of the members of the board of directors of some organization got the idea of what we were playing and insisted that we might be re-engaged. Ja? Sometimes it was the other way around. They had a free date that we could manage, and they couldn't get anybody else in. That had to do with our managers.

Performance Styles

Khuner:Well, Kolisch was a very difficult person. He was completely oblivious of his surrounding. He was completely introspective, although it seemed to be that he was friendly, very well mannered, very considerate, never a harsh word to anybody under any circumstances.

Crawford:But he was detached.

Khuner:He was completely detached.

Crawford:When you rehearsed, what was the mechanics of your rehearsing?

Khuner:Well, it changed from the early [days]--we started out conventionally. We played through a piece and said, "A little faster here, a little slower here, play together, remember I have to--" like all the quartets rehearse. Later on when we played by heart, everybody had to know the piece before we started rehearsing. That was no great shakes.But we played very much in detail. When we played with other people, quintets, sextets, for instance, the Schoenberg sextet, or Mozart quintets, with Mr. Primrose, or--what else did we play?--piano quartets, Schumann Piano Quintet, Brahms piano quintets, [we played] with nothing but--guests! guests! That's when the jackasses came in!

Crawford:They would say, "Not like that."

Khuner:"No, no, no, no, we don't want to do that."

Crawford:What happened?

Khuner:Well, you make the best you can. Afterwards we had to play. We had to play the Schumann Quintet in Columbus, Ohio, with Mr. Hirsch, who became quite a well-known pianist. It was the same thing. We tried to do something-- impossible! Impossible.

Crawford:So they didn't play up to your level.

Khuner:No. They were not interested. And the reason was mainly that it required lots of time and attention, [and] concentration to work like that. Oh, I have that with my pupils. But again, the thoroughbreds of my pupils accept that. The jackasses quit. I have the same thing all the time. I have an elderly lady. She is very much handicapped, mentally, because I think she has Alzheimer's disease, beginning Alzheimer's disease--I might be wrong, I'm not a doctor--because she has a very poor memory. Her fingers don't really work, although she has played viola. But when I come and say, "Now we play this piece by Vivaldi, or whatever," note by note and explain it to her, what to do mechanically, what to do about the sound, rhythmically, and so on, she works, and works, and works like a thoroughbred.

Crawford:That's amazing.

Khuner:Ja, but that's what you have to do if you really want to get everything out of a piece that you want to do. I remember we played once the G minor Quartet of Mozart, but with Primrose, who was a great viola player. You know, [sings the opening theme]. Which should be very a austere kind music.

Crawford:Yes.

Khuner:It is never played like that, it's played schmaltzy, and that's why it's so popular with amateurs, ja? So we rehearsed it, and Kolisch played it that way because the first violin plays it, and then the viola plays it. And Primrose was very interested, he said, "Oh, ja! oh, ja" [imitates Primrose, singing the theme], in other words, it's Mozart-Kolisch. Answered Kolisch, "No, it's Mozart! Ja?" This is the kind of thing you cannot--you have to play it--So he seemed to be very cooperative, and did it. And came the performance, [sings very schmaltzy!] and ruined everything! Jackasses!

Crawford:He seemed to understand.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:But he didn't translate that into his performance.

Khuner:Oh, I don't know whether he seemed--he wanted to be polite, with a little dig. But he was a businessman. So since he was engaged by the New Friends of Music in New York, we played all the Mozart quintets with him.

Crawford:And he never played in your style?

Khuner:No. Well, more or less, but this one, he couldn't resist it! Ja? Very schmaltzy, that's where he belongs. Schnabel used to say, if somebody plays music seemingly decent, and then gets totally vulgar,that's where he belongs. Because the one who belongs in the decency wouldn't play vulgar. When I hear somebody who plays quite decent, and suddenly he becomes this kind of low, low, low level musicianship, low level interpretation, that's where he belongs.

Crawford:And you found that more often than not.

Khuner:Oh, yes, yes. One very interesting thing was Mr.--what's his name, this Italian conductor who's now in Germany? Navarro. Navarro. Did I tell you that? Navarro conducted La Bohème for the Opera. And that was typical--everything that was lovely, you know, the real sentiment of La Bohème, which is very wonderful, was sentimental and schmaltzy, and totally vulgar. And everything that was lively--there are a lot of lighter things--was hysterical and harried. Ja? That's the level of his basic music.

Crawford:And the conductor draws that from the musicians.

Khuner:Well, the musicians do what the conductor says--if you conduct with a long schmaltzy tempo, and that sort of thing, that's what they do.

Crawford:Do you approve of Mr. Blomstedt's Mozart?

Khuner:I don't know him.

Crawford:You haven't heard him.

Khuner:No, I have heard the recordings--I think I told you that--where he made quite a few musical mistakes. Small ones. But those small mistakes are very indicative. Because, as I say, you can go through a piece of music and play quite well, until that--the moment comes when you go wrong. So I say, well, I drove very well to San Francisco. Beautiful! Absolutely! Only around Emeryville, I killed somebody. [laughter]

Crawford:Did you pick up some musicians for quintets that you approved of?

Khuner:Oh, quite frequently, sure. Generally, they didn't want to rehearse. They would say, well, I have played this quintet before, just play through it, don't think about any musical ideas or have any responsibility towards the piece. As long as you play the notes, one-two-three-four, that's all you have to do.

Crawford:In the '20s, when you came to the Kolisch Quartet, did you ever have controversy about your approaches with the others?

Khuner:No! No! that was the way I wanted to play.

Crawford:The way thatthey wanted.

Khuner:Of course! As I said, when I listened to the musical performances, I always thought that the people didn't know what they were doing.

Crawford:Yes, you told me that. Was there any conductor that appealed to you?

Khuner:Well, conductors appealed to me because they had the--how do you call it?--the charisma. Furtwängler.

Crawford:How much of conducting is charisma?

Khuner:For Furtwängler? A lot! I cannot say percentage-wise! Something is really wrong. But it was always very interesting. His enthusiasm and his emotional--how do you say--glowing emotionalism, that always comes through. I was always very disappointed when the performance was really dirty. It happened. The orchestra fell apart because his conducting was just not clean.

Crawford:And you said the same of Strauss, that he could conduct from the living room--

Khuner:Ja, Strauss was just sitting there--

Crawford:Did you never hear a great Strauss performance?

Khuner:Well, I played only very few, just when I was substituting.

Crawford:How about Wagner?

Khuner:Oh, when we played Wagner! No, with Strauss, I played only Strauss and Mozart. I don't think I played a Wagner with Strauss. Ja! Tristan, of course I played Tristan. Ja. Well, he was whipping it through without much interest. Very fast tempi. But again, I wasn't very critical. At that time I didn't know how critical I would be sixty years later!

Conductors and Musical Architecture

Khuner:There is no such thing as a great conductor. There is no such thing as a great performer. A performer has to be adequate, but not great. He has to be knowledgeable. He has to be skillful. He has to be of some experience. He has to have a certain kind of skill in seeing what is in a piece.

Crawford:That's what I'm asking.

Khuner:Schnabel used to say, nobody can see in a piece more than he can see. If you don't see it, then you cannot see it.

Crawford:Well, who sees it?

Khuner:Maybe you can be told, but that is already second hand. Like I tell my students. Right now my son is conducting this horrible orchestra, the Second Brahms Symphony. Now, the Second Brahms Symphony is awonderful piece, as far asconstruction is concerned, not because itsounds so pleasant. But people want to do Brahms' Second because it sounds so pleasant. It's a "sunny piece," you know?

Crawford:Of course. But you expect conductors to see something in the work.

Khuner:Ja, ja! And I have played with lots of conductors who didn't see anything. Mr., what's his name, Ozawa, didn't see anything in the piece. But he conducted it very well. Ja? This is where Schenker comes in. There is the foreground of the music, the middle ground, and the foundation of the music. You have to go to the foundation. Good music has a good, solid foundation. Bad music has very appealing, compelling foreground, but nothing else.

Crawford:You're talking about architecture?

Khuner:Ja, I'm talking about what music is about. Appealing foreground--lots of music has appealing foreground, all the musicals--light operas that you see at the Curran Theater. They all have very pleasant music, Ja? Carousel, or whatever you have, all those things? Annie Get Your Gun--

Crawford:Oklahoma!

Khuner:Oklahoma!

Crawford:La Bohème!

Khuner:No, La Bohème is a little more. A little more. Puccini's ok. He would be a good symphonic composer. Something that nobody really appreciates in the first scene of Butterfly is a very fine scherzo. Averyfine scherzo.

Crawford:Yes.

Khuner:You don't even listento the first part! That's not where the opera begins. I bet you didn't hear the scherzo! The very first scene of Butterfly. (sing's the scherzo theme, and CC sings with him). Well, you know that. But look at it this way--there are some other things that are well composed, for instance, Il Tabarro. And then of course the master craftsmen for opera composing, that should look like something--which Wagner didn't have. Sometimes in the first act of Walk re he had it--Occasionally he had it, but lots of times he didn't. The craftsmanship of composing for the theater was not his primary end. The whole duet in the second act of Tristan is nothing but accompanied philosophy.So, now, since the primary aim of Puccini was to compose appealing music, convincing music for a certain situation on the stage, he was super. So that is something that is not like Oklahoma! I mean, Oklahoma! has something in it, but on a much lower level.

Crawford:What opera composers have architecture?

Khuner:Well, not much, because again the primary aim for opera isnot the architecture of a symphony.Now, Stravinsky is, of course, again, a very, very strange case. With an enormous imagination and skill, and originality, it is not really music. It is music about music. I always compare it to a flower arrangement. A flower arrangement is not a plant.

Crawford:Well, that's a very interesting metaphor.

Khuner:Ja? But it's not a grown plant. And I like music that's grown. Opera can be also grown with. Mozart is grown in individual parts, you know, in arias, and in ensembles. But opera cannot be grown by itself because it serves a different purpose.

Crawford:A theatrical purpose rather than a musical purpose?

Khuner:Ja. Now, Stravinsky, in The Rake's Progress, is of course an opera about old music. Ja? Whether it works as an opera, I don't know. So far I have had no handle to the Rake. It bores me intensely. I've played it quite a number of times now.Now, Wozzeck is somewhat like it. Wozzeck is most musical of all these operas, and also most dramatic, it's a very, very high class of combination.

Crawford:How about The Marriage of Figaro?

Khuner:No, Marriage of Figaro you cannot compare, because Marriage of Figaro hasindividual musical pieces. An aria starts and ends. It is a grown plant all by itself, a small plant. Though the whole opera could be a collage. But not the individual pieces.There is a very good opera by Verdi, La Forza del Destino, is also a collage. It's not a consistent drama either, not like Rigoletto, which is a consistent drama.

Crawford:Musically?

Khuner:No, because it has so many different aspects, you know? The love affair with someone, the scenes of the populace, the revolution, there are all sorts of things in it.

Crawford:That's true of Rigoletto, too, though, isn't it?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:No?

Khuner:Rigoletto goes absolutely straight into the drama. It's only the drama of the father with the innocent child, the seduction, and the killing. That is all a consistent drama from the first to the last note. That is a real opera. La Forza del Destino is not. That is patchwork.

Crawford:Any other Verdi--[Simon] Boccanegra, maybe?

Khuner:I don't know Boccanegra too well; although I played it, but I never listened to it!

Crawford:I'm interested in the idea of architecture.

Khuner:Now, Otello is also a drama. Of course it's not by Verdi or Boito; it's by Shakespeare.

The Instruments

Crawford:Would you talk about the instruments that the quartet used?

Khuner:Well, Kolisch had trouble with his instrument, because it had to be rebuilt for his finger. So he was always on the lookout, "What can I do?"

Crawford:Oh, that's right, he had been injured, hadn't he?

Khuner:Ja, he had the injury as a youngster, and he lost this part of his left hand. The middle finger. So he could not use the left hand for fingering, he could use the left hand for bowing. Ja?

Crawford:It didn't affect his playing?

Khuner:No. I bow also, I bow like this [demonstates bow grip]. But lots of violinists bow like this, [demonstrates another bow grip] so they don't need this part of the finger. He could hold the bow like this, because he didn't have this part. So, he was on the lookout for violins. And there was a gentleman by the name of Fissltaler. Did Lehner mention him? No? Fissltaler. Well, he--I met him only after he was already quite well-known-- ##

Khuner:[He]--I think, sanded off part of the inside of the violins where he thought there was a disturbance in the resonance. And I have done it frequently. It was absolutely amazing that with little sanding off (which he did in private, nobody saw him), with help of mirror and sand, and so on, that the violin was much smoother than it was before.

Crawford:The tone?

Khuner:Ja, the tone. Ja. Now the violin sound itself was nothing to brag about, because those were cheap violins. He had a fellow who made violins according to some kind of model, and he played them before they even were varnished, so the varnish had nothing to do with the quality. It's just that those violins were very evened out, and very pleasant to play with.

Crawford:He made the violins?

Khuner:No, somebody else made them. He just modified them.

Crawford:Did I read that you had a Stradivarius? A Gasparo de Salo?

Khuner:No, that was later, that was later. The trouble with [these instruments] was that the objective sound was not very entrancing. These violins were very well balanced, it was very good to play quartets with them. Of course it was easy for Kolisch to have a violin built right the wrong way, naturally. So we did that for quite a few seasons. Then--I had a fairly good violin, I still have it. It sounded much better at that time than it sounds now, because it hasn't been played. And there was a gentleman in Frankfurt who owned a very good Stradivarius, who encouraged Kolisch to use it, have it rebuilt, and play on it. That was the Stradivarius.Then, there was another incident. Lehner met the family of his present wife, and there was some grand-uncle who built stringed instruments. Very rough-looking instruments, sounded quite well. And the story goes that he, after he built the instruments, he attached them to some kind of a windmill so that they got played hours, hours, days and weeks and months, one note at a time. And that made them sound so good. How true that story is, I don't know.

Crawford:Would that improve them?

Khuner:It probably would, ja. I cannot believe it, because in order to play on the instrument, you have to modify the way you bow it. Just mechanically, I think, wouldn't do it. But obviously, for this instrument it did. And he got two or three of those violas, and it sounded very good. And then Heifetz, I think, he borrowed the Gasparo de Salo. Is that what it says?

Crawford:It says Lehner had the Gasparo de Salo, and Heifetz had an Amati.

Khuner:Oh, the Amati Heifetz had was much later, it was in 1936. He bought that in New York.

Crawford:I see. So you used those rather rough instruments.

Khuner:The Fissltaler instruments, we used for three, or four, or five years, I cannot remember how long.

The Sponsorship of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Quartet Administration

Khuner:Well, gradually we got more concerts, by Mr. Ithma, this gentleman. And then we met Mr. Bechert, who became our representative. And he was also the representative of Brailowsky and Milstein. So we had quite good connections.

Crawford:And he got you the post at the Library of Congress?

Khuner:No, that was through Mrs. Coolidge.

Crawford:Oh, Mrs. Coolidge. Talk about her, because she was really a patroness.

Khuner:Well, Mrs. Coolidge we met right in the beginning, in 1927, after we had played the Third Schoenberg Quartet. We played it for the first time for Mrs. Coolidge. That was--the first performance was for the Coolidge Concerts in Vienna.

Crawford:Oh, she sponsored concerts in Vienna?

Khuner:All over the world, yes.

Crawford:Who was she?

Khuner:Mrs. Coolidge was originally a sponsor of the Chicago Symphony. Well, she's [from] a very wealthy [family].

Crawford:She heard about you?

Khuner:No, she didn't particularly hear about us, she heard about everybody. She was informed about every composer and every performer.

Crawford:And she liked contemporary work?

Khuner:Well, when she told Schoenberg that she wanted to have his new quartet performed, he recommended us in Vienna, in 1927.

Crawford:So she sponsored that performance?

Khuner:Yes, that's where we first played it. We were in contact with Mrs. Coolidge later on, too, very casually. And then finally, I don't know how it happened that she said, "All right, I'm going to invite you to the United States, you have never played there." That was in 1935. That was eight years later. We had the backing of the Ithma, the agent, and then we had Mr. Bechert. Mr. Bechert was very active in our behalf.

Crawford:Did you have an administrator?

Khuner:No, Mr. Bechert was our personal representative. The agent was the local agent. It was the agency in Czechoslovakia; it was Mr. Dobblauch in Germany, our agent in Frankfort; it was Ibbs and Tillet in London; it was Del Grange in Paris; it was Moltrasso and Luzatto in Milano, it was--what was his name?--in Spain. So those were the local agents.

Crawford:Mr. Bechert did your revenue, he did your billings, your budget, whatever?

Khuner:He didn't do budgets, he just contracted for the concerts. And it was like that: Mr. De Koos was in Holland, and it turned out we played, let's say, twelve concerts in the country, twelve concerts in Spain, from June 4 to June 20. So the first two concerts went for the ten percent to the agency. Is that correct?

Crawford:Yes, like always.

Khuner:Ja, of course! Then the next twenty percent were for the traveling, for the railroad. And the next twenty percent for the hotel and taxi. And then twenty percent for food, and by that time the 100 percent were gone! That means we played for a vacation.

Crawford:But you played all year around?

Khuner:Well, with some interruptions. We didn't play in the summer. And there were some interruptions. Around Christmas there were very few concerts. Don't forget, music life was much thinner at that time than it is now. All over the world.

Crawford:It had been more before the war?

Khuner:No, no. That I don't know. But I think it was nothing before the First World War. When we came to San Francisco--do you know how many string quartet concerts there were, in addition to the local? Two a season. I remember that because we played, and they said, "Well, we had another string quartet last October." And it was March already.

First Performances in the United States

Crawford:When did you first come to San Francisco?

Khuner:The first visit was 1936, when we didn't play. We played 1937 in Berkeley. Oh, no, we also played in San Francisco in 1937.

Crawford:Where?

Khuner:Marines Memorial. Which had a different name at that time.

Crawford:Was the 1935 concert, which Mrs. Coolidge sponsored, your U.S. debut?

Khuner:That was our very first concert, was this concert, yes. We played in New York--we played in Washington.

Crawford:And what were your impressions?

Khuner:I made a mistake right in the beginning of the fugue. Played an octave too high!

Crawford:Oh, you do make mistakes!

Khuner:Ja, I played the right notes, but an octave too high!

Crawford:Of what composition?

Khuner:Beethoven opus 130, the fugue, opus 133. Ja. We were a little apprehensive. These our very, very first notes that we played in the United States. But it was quite successful, and I can remember, I went out in the afternoon and said, "Well, those are very nice people in the United States."

Crawford:So then did you have a United States residence?

Life in the United States: 1937 - 1942

Applying for a Visa

Khuner:No, that's a totally different story there. After we had come here for the first time in 1935, gradually the situation in Europe became, began to deteriorate. Hitler was already firmly in power in 1933, you know that. And the situation in Austria became very critical. Kolisch was married, or almost married, to an American citizen. Lehner had a Czechoslovakian passport. I had an Austrian passport. Heifetz had an international passport. A so-called Nansen passport, that was for emigrants, for displaced persons who had no home nationality.

Crawford:And Austria would accept him?

Khuner:You had to have a resident's permit, in any country, and you were given, it was called a United Nations, V"lkebund sponsored--Fridtjof Nansen. Nansen was this explorer of North Pole. He was a philanthrope, and he initiated that those stateless persons could get a United Nations passport so they could travel around, provided they had a country of residence. So Heifetz had a residence in Austria, and that passport. And he had to have a visa for any country, that was given only under the condition that he would not stay. It wasawfullydifficult to travel.We had always lots of trouble. I remember once we had to go to Holland, and the permit to enter Holland, the visa, we could not get in time, in Paris. And finally our concert agent said, "We will arrange that it will be at the entrance of the border between Belgium and Holland. Just tell the passport agent there that, look out, we will have it there." It wasn't there. And we had to get off the train, we couldn't enter Holland. And that train had left about five minutes when a telephone call came from the Hague, giving the permission to go. We had to take the next train.Finally we decided since wemight probably be more successful, and have more concerts in the United States, and the United States would accept immigrants, we would immigrate. So we all applied for immigration. And that was in 1937. "Well," I said, "I don't have to immigrate. I have my Austrian citizenship, I have an Austrian passport, I can travel practically wherever I want, I can get a visa easily, you know, a tourist visa, a temporary visa." But my mother insisted that I do it, and she did it because she wanted me to stay in Vienna and not go hiking in the Alps, the mountains.

Crawford:I don't understand.

Khuner:We had a vacation in the spring of 1937, and I planned to go to Italy to hike in the Dolomites, all by myself, I did it every spring. My mother was always afraid, and it was really dangerous, but I didn't know that!

Crawford:Dangerous because you were by yourself?

Khuner:All by myself, not a soul in sight, and everything full of snow! Then I went to the American Consulate and said, "[I want to] apply for immigration to the United States." He said, "Well, you have to wait four weeks, until the commission comes and examines the applications." I said, "Four weeks? I cannot wait here four weeks." I told my mother, "I can't wait four weeks, I have to go to Italy." She said, "You wait four weeks here," because she didn't want me to go to Italy.

Crawford:So you did.

Khuner:So I did, and I got my immigration visa. Lehner got the immigration visa also. But he wanted it because he was sick and tired of being a Czechoslovak--because he was a Hungarian. He was aforced Czechoslovak.

Crawford:But now, Mrs. Mann, I think it was, told me that at some point your mother wrote you a letter and said, "Don't come to Vienna."

Khuner:Well, she didn't have to write me, I knew I shouldn't come to Vienna because Hitler already had taken over. That is in 1938.

Crawford:And what did she say in that letter? There seemed to be a story about that.

Khuner:Well, no, there's no story--that we have a code, we had a code. You say something and mean the opposite. That was always, since our childhood. Ja? My mother never said a white lie that we could spot. She always told the truth to us, but the lie to somebody else. As I told you, she would say, "We have to go home, your father is waiting--Uncle Kisev is waiting." "Kisev" was the word [meaning] it's not true. We knew that she wanted to go home, but the story that she told others was a lie!

Crawford:So when she said, come to Vienna?

Khuner:That means, do not come to Vienna. I got a letter when I was in the army [too]. My mother wrote me a letter, we are so proud that you are in the United States Army, Uncle Kisev is proud too!

Crawford:You applied for your visa in what year?

Khuner:Spring of '37. And I immigrated. I had to immigrate, ja.

Crawford:What were the restrictions on musicians placed on you by the advent of Nazism?

Khuner:As soon as Hitler came, we didn't play in Austria any more, of course not. We couldn't play in Germany after 1935. We couldn't play in Austria after '38. And we couldn't play in Czechoslovakia after '39. That was our end in Europe.

Crawford:Anything. You couldn't play anything?

Khuner:Oh, we could play in France and London, of course.

Crawford:Switzerland?

Khuner:Switzerland. Ja, our last tour was in England, France, Switzerland, Italy, I think Spain, too.

Crawford:So you wanted to leave, you wanted to come to this country.

Khuner:Well, by that time we all had immigrated. Of course, Heifetz was the very first to immigrate, because he had no other passport. As soon as one had a residence in New York, all doors were open for you!

Crawford:So where did you settle?

Khuner:New York. Well, you cannot say "settle." There was some hotel in New York where I think there is still a suitcase in the basement there for me. I never picked it up! I don't know what hotel it is. Where we lived, that was always improvised according to our schedule. If we were in a place only four or five or six days, we went to a hotel. When we were in New York for two months, I got myself a little kitchenette apartment in the Seventies.

Crawford:You hadn't married.

Khuner:No, I married after I left the Quartet.

Crawford:Who handled your concerts then? Was Mrs. Coolidge still sponsoring you?

Khuner:Mrs. Coolidge worked for individual concerts. For instance, the last thing we played was in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for a musical verein [society]. Then we had a permanent address. One address was in Rue Malakoff in Paris. That was the brother-in-law of Kolisch, who lived there, who obliged us by having his address available.

Crawford:But you really were traveling.

Khuner:We were always away, ja. When we were in New York, Mr. Bechert had a place in New York where he was the center. But we always managed. We always would say, "In the next two months we can be reached there, and the next two months we can be reached there," and so on.

Crawford:You were about thirty by then.

Khuner:Well I was born in 1906, so by then I was thirty-one, yes.

Crawford:Thirty-one, and your living was traveling as a string quartet.

Khuner:Ja, that's all I did until 1941. After Lehner and Heifetz left, I still played with Kolisch, and we had a Mr. Veissi who played the viola, the very famous Mr. Veissi of Los Angeles and the movies. And Mr. Auber, the Viennese cellist. Did you know that? The last two seasons, when we had only a few concerts in the United States.

Crawford:Where else did you play?

Khuner:Nowhere. Nowhere.

Crawford:Just the United States?

Khuner:The United States. In the United States--I always lived very frugally. I had some money saved. See, I was in New York, I had a little kitchenette apartment. I enjoyed myself, ja? I met a lot of people, played a little quartet with some amateurs; very good friends, I still delight in their memory. And we had a few concerts in the United States, and that was all. In the summer we went to Los Angeles, and played in Los Angeles.

Crawford:Where did you play?

Khuner:We rehearsed in Los Angeles.

Crawford:And then the quartet disbanded?

Khuner:The original quartet disbanded after the 1939 season. And then we played '39-'40, and '40-'41 in the United States only.

Crawford:Had you returned to Europe since you immigrated?

Khuner:I immigrated in '37. I was back in Europe in '38, and back in Europe in '39. We played in England, in France. Then--the war broke out in '39.

Disbanding the Kolisch Quartet

Crawford:Talk about Schoenberg in Los Angeles and the disbanding later of the quartet. First of all, why was Los Angeles the choice of so many musicans and composers?

Khuner:Well, Los Angeles at that time was a very desirable place to live. It had a good California climate, clean air. And then undoubtedly there were a lot of performing musicians who flocked there, in the hopes of getting a job at the music studios. If you were a composer of string quartets, that was the place to go, because there were a lot of excellent string players there. But I don't know whether there were more composers than other places. I'm sure there were just as many composers in New York and Chicago as in Los Angeles.

Crawford:Well, I would imagine so, but the West Coast is a distance from the musical centers of Chicago and New York.

Khuner:Ja. Well, it's true Schoenberg was here and there were others, Toch [Ernst Toch] was here. What others? Stravinsky. But that was accidental. Originally Schoenberg wanted to be on the East Coast. He would have stayed on the East Coast, if his health wouldn't have suffered from the climate. He was very sick.

Crawford:That's when he was in Boston.

Khuner:Ja, when he was in the Malkin Conservatory in Boston. It was a very harsh winter--

Crawford:He had athsma?

Khuner:Ja, he was miserable.

Crawford:Did he ever think of going back to New York?

Khuner:I don't know. I don't think so.

Crawford:And you stayed in touch?

Khuner:Well, Schoenberg left [Europe] around 1933. And we settled down here in 1937, '38 or so. So Schoenberg was here first, before we came.

Crawford:But you were in touch here?

Khuner:Well, whenever we went to Los Angeles.

Khuner:In fact, since we had concerts here on the West Coast in 1937, '38, '39, during that time I saw Schoenberg. The first time I saw him was in 1936 in my first visit to California. He was here already for a few years and I was in Berkeley.I knew Schoenberg only in Los Angeles, except that summer in Holland, in 1931. That was summer vacation. I told you, we spent the whole summer in [Utrecht] in Holland. [We spent] our time at the beach, swimming and playing soccer.

Crawford:Yes, that sounds like a nice life! So Schoenberg was a person with a lot of different interests.

Khuner:Oh, ja! He was interested. He played chess. He made himself his own personal chess figures. He constructed his own playing cards. Don't you know the playing cards of Schoenberg?

Crawford:No.

Khuner:Oh, there are some pictures in there too. I would have to find them now. I don't know where they are. But you can buy them from the Schoenberg Institute. They are quite expensive--as a contribution to the Institute.

Crawford:I heard from Mr. Schmerl, Dr. Schmerl, that your father was a great card player. Were you also?

Khuner:We played a lot of bridge, in the quartet we played bridge. Badly. Especially, Kolisch played too slow. He wanted to think--it has to be the right card! He was never sure he put down the right card. Also, I couldn't play chess with him; he would think for two days for a move.

Crawford:I notice that you have a book of chess openings, so you like chess.

Khuner:Oh, ja, ja, well, I play chess ever since my childhood.

Crawford:What did you do when you traveled as a quartet? What was your life like?

Khuner:Well, every day was different. Sometimes we spent the whole day in the railroad. Ja? Long distances. Sometimes I could spend it sightseeing, when I was in a worthwhile place. Sometimes we visited friends; sometimes friends weren't around. Then we had to rehearse. Or I wrote letters. Or we spent the whole afternoon writing business letters. Kolisch dictated, and I had a little typewriter.

Crawford:Was it a lonely life?

Khuner:Not really. Not really, for a young man, because there was always something interesting. But later on, by the time I was past thirty, it was a little boring. Like everything else.

Crawford:Is that why the quartet disbanded in 1941?

Khuner:No, that was financial, mostly, because the situation was too difficult. And then when Heifetz and Lehner left [in 1939], Heifetz was asked by Ormandy to join his orchestra in Philadelphia. Ja, that's again a connection that I mentioned before, in 1927 when we had no viola player, I mentioned the piano trio recital, Tremandl.

Crawford:That's right.

Khuner:That was with a lady who later became Mrs. Ormandy. A pianist. She was a friend of Heifetz at that time, just before he joined the Quartet. And then, obviously, Heifetz must have mentioned somehow that the Quartet was not in good condition because of the war, [and] Ormandy asked Heifetz if he would come to the orchestra, as the principal cellist. That's when Heifetz decided he would leave the Quartet. Then when Heifetz said he wouldn't come, then Lehner was also a little worried, and he was asked to play at Boston. One day out of the blue sky he says, "Well, I'm going to Boston tomorrow to audition with Koussevitzky." That's all right. So he went, came back, and said, "Koussevitzky offered me a job in the Boston orchestra." So Heifetz said he would go to Philadelphia, and there were again only two people left. So then I said I wouldn't play either, because I was fed up. It was 1939. My sister was already in Berkeley.

Crawford:She was teaching?

Khuner:My sister? No. She was doing nothing. You confuse my sister with my aunt. My aunt at that time was in Pittsburgh.My parents were waiting in London to come to the United States. So I said, "I have lots of trouble with my sister there, and my parents are coming; the situation with the Quartet is practically hopeless." I didn't want to play.So I was here, and I got a call from Schoenberg, who had met Mr. Veissi, the viola player in Los Angeles. And Veissi was very much interested to join the quartet. And Kolisch had met Mr. Auber in New York, who was a Viennese cellist who was also an immigrant in New York. And Auber was a very fine young man, a good cellist, he had played considerably. He was playing in the Metropolitan [Opera] Orchestra.So Kolisch wrote Schoenberg whether he couldn't convince me to resume quartet playing with him, especially Mr. Veissi wants [this]. So I went to Los Angeles, and I met Mr. Veissi. Mr. Veissi was very enthusiastic, and I played with him; he was a very good viola player. I remember we played the Brahms concerto--on the viola; I had to accompany him a fifth down.

Crawford:How could you do that?

Khuner:I could do that! I improvised it, yes. If you know music by heart you can transpose it. And he played the concerto very well on the viola, too. So, I came back, and my sister says, "All right, since you have nothing here--" I was completely isolated here, I didn't know anybody. I said, "All right, I'll continue playing quartets." And that went on for two seasons. I spent the summer in Berkeley. Summer of '39. That was after the Quartet formally disbanded.Then with Veissi and Auber we continued in New York. We had just about twenty concerts, that's all. But we still made a recording of--I don't know, we made some recording, I don't know which quartet it was. I forgot. [Recordings of the four Schoenberg quartets were made privately in Hollywood for a Mr. Newman, director of a studio.]

Crawford:Do you have tapes of the recording?

Khuner:No, I have nothing.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Not interested!

Crawford:I would like to have them, for the history.

Khuner:Ja, when Mr. Guittart [of the Schoenberg Quartet] was here he also wanted to know, and I have some copies of the old Schubert quartets; he wrote down the numbers--I don't know, I'm not interested.

Crawford:The name was still Kolisch?

Khuner:Oh, ja, still Kolisch. [Kolisch after 1942 led the Pro Arte Quartet]

Getting the Family out of Vienna

Crawford:In the meanwhile, what about your parents?

Khuner:Well, my parents were in Vienna. And then I was in Holland when Hitler marched in. I remember that afternoonvery vividly; I was glued to the radio.

Crawford:You hadn't anticipated that?

Khuner:Well, not in detail, but we knew that the situation was impossible.

Crawford:What do you remember?

Khuner:I remember that I heard on the Dutch radio, which was translated by my host, that Hitler had marched in. And then I heard shortly from Vienna directly, "We are so happy in Austria that our F hrer, our Duce is coming back and we'll greet him." It was an awful shock to me.

Crawford:How did you react?

Khuner:I phoned to Vienna--I wanted to phone my parents the same evening. And my mother didn't want to talk to me. Because she didn't know that it was I. She said, "Your voice doesn't sound like you were Felix." I said, "I'm Felix, I want to know how you are, and so on." And she said, "Well, I'm sorry, I cannot talk to you, who are you?" I said, "Well, I'm Felix." She said, "That doesn't sound like your voice." So then she asked me about the names of our old dogs. So I told her the names of the dogs, and the race of the dogs, and things, and finally she knew.

Crawford:What was it?

Khuner:Well, that we had a dachshund by the name of "Lady," or whatever the name was.

Crawford:And then what did she tell you?

Khuner:Then she told me how the situation was in Vienna. So I said, "I'm going to London tomorrow morning, and I'll go to the American Consulate in London, and I'll get applications for your immigration to the United States." As a relative of a resident. Because I was a resident by that time. So, I was in London, and I had the morning free. I went to the American Consulate and there were again several hundred people already waiting. And they said, "Well, come back the day after tomorrow." I said, "Well, I can't." They said, "Sorry, there are people in front of you." So, I was sitting there and thinking what to do, and a door opened to a next office, and I saw a lady whom I knew walking past. Mrs. Konkle. So I said, (shouts) "Mrs. Konkle!" And she said, "Oh, hi, what do you do here? Come right in!" Isn't that amazing?

Crawford:What a coincidence. So you got their papers . . .

Khuner:Ja. She was working at the office of the American Consulate. So I made the application, that was transferred to Vienna. And eventhat wouldn't have helped, but one of my amateur friends in New York--ja, see, I was in London, then we returned to the United States, to New York. And my parents were still waiting in Vienna for the permission to emigrate. That is a long process. And I was of course worried about their life from day to day, because of all the stories which we heard. Kristallnacht and so on, which was at that time. So, one of my amateur friends, a viola player, Dr. Wainhaus, he was an official in the State Department. Later he became Assistant Secretary of State to Dulles. You know Dulles? Secretary of State?

Crawford:Yes, sure. I don't know the name, though.

Khuner:Wainhaus--you wouldn't know the name. So I wrote him, I don't know from where. I said, "I'm very worried about my parents, do you think you can do something?" He says, "Well I will try." And he never told me whether he did or not. But my parents got out very fast.

Crawford:So he must have helped.

Khuner:He must have helped, ja.

Crawford:And they came to New York?

Khuner:Just after the war, in 1941. The war started in 1939. First they went to England, because once you had an assurance from the United States that you would be permitted to immigrate, you could get a temporary residence permit to England.

Crawford:And your sister left at the same time?

Khuner:My sister left much earlier. She was one of the first to go out. Because they were in Vienna. Next morning they went to the American Consulate in Vienna, and they were much ahead of me in London. Well, that's a question of life and death at that time, you know.

Settling in Berkeley and Joining the Union

Crawford:How did you come to buy a house in 1939?

Khuner:Well, you see, by that time my sister and my brother-in-law had arrived here. They had left Vienna in a hurry. They were here and they were living in a small apartment, near Dwight Way, I believe. And I don't quite remember--I was walking around, for what reason I don't know, and there was a "for sale" sign on a little house on 62nd Street, and the owner was watering the front lawn. And I said, "Are you the owner?" and he said, "Yes." I said, "Can I see the house?" It was empty, it was not occupied. So I looked at it, and it looked like a nice, decent house, one of those box houses, three rooms on one side, and three on the other, kitchen, a little back yard. I asked, "How much does it cost?" and he said, "Oh, about three thousand dollars." So, I thought it might be a down payment of four hundred or five hundred dollars, which I probably had. And then we had a termite inspection made, and they said that the posts in the back porch have to be replaced, and it will cost two hundred dollars. So I phoned the owner and said, "It costs two hundred dollars," and he says, "All right, I'll pay for it, so you pay only two thousand eight hundred dollars on the house." So I bought it. For my sister. I didn't need it. I lived in New York. I mean, I was traveling around. Because I knew that my parents would eventually come. They came within a few months.

Crawford:That's right. Well, we didn't talk very much about that. What did they bring with them? That was one question I wanted to bring up again, because we talked about Die Fackel. What was so dangerous about that, that you had to burn it?

Khuner:Well, they didn't know, but they thought it might be their lives. You never could tell.

Crawford:I'm talking about the contents of it, I mean, was it that radical?

Khuner:Well, of course it was radical.

Crawford:So, how was Kraus allowed to publish that?

Khuner:Well, Kraus died in 1936, and Hitler came in 1938.

Crawford:Came, yes, but he was a presence much before then.

Khuner:Well, he was one of the most ostracized persons in Vienna.

Crawford:So, was that totally done underground?

Khuner:It wasn't underground. I have [some issues-- goes to get copy] There, of course, it was practically criminal, that in anybody else would have been tried for treason. But they kept their hands off him. Nobody took it serious. The Austrian officialdom, for them Kraus didn't exist. It was just a handful of people who read it and thought about it. Well, you can see it was censored.

Crawford:What does it say there?

Khuner:This part was censored, couldn't be printed. But they didn't change the material, just took it out of the issue. [the censored pages]

Crawford:Who?

Khuner:The printer. And there are quite a number of [things] printed that also might be criminally indicted. But it wasn't.

Crawford:But the Austrian officials chose to overlook it, to ignore it?

Khuner:Chose to ignore it. Not only the officials, but the people in general, readers. There was a page that was removed. That happened rarely, but there are some.

Crawford:So you brought this with you. Or did you get it later?

Khuner:No, that a friend of mine gave to me, who had it in his collection.

Crawford:But it was always published hard cover- -is this a whole year's collection?

Khuner:This is all 1918's. It was for sale in newspaper kiosks, like here you buy the Reader's Digest or whatever it is. Until he died, '36.

Crawford:Let's talk about your parents, then. What did they bring with them when they came?

Khuner:Well, they sent a van full of some furniture. Unfortunately there was a big chest that looked very good, and there was some valuable stuff in it that was stolen. A lot of chess books; chess sets that I had. And a love seat that was stolen.

Crawford:You didn't bring much over with you, did you?

Khuner:I had nothing. I had nothing to bring.

Crawford:You must have had a pretty good library.

Khuner:That was all in Vienna.

Crawford:I know, that's what I'm saying.

Khuner:Ja. Well, lots of it was lost, yes.

Crawford:Your music?

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:What did your parents do, did they buy a house right away, did they live with your sister?

Khuner:Here? Well, they came penniless, they couldn't take any money out, it was all confiscated.

Crawford:What are the details of their leaving after the Anschluss?

Khuner:They had to leave their apartment immediately. Because the apartment was already spoken for.

Crawford:What does that mean?

Khuner:Well, all the Jewish apartments that were desirable were already distributed among the faithful.

Crawford:Who would that be?

Khuner:Members of the Nazi Party in Austria.

Crawford:And how were they informed of that?

Khuner:Let's say there was an apartment house, like our apartment. Let's say there were twelve apartments. And the Khuners and the Geiringers and the Kobers were Jewish. So they knew, as soon as the Nazis come, [they] will get these three apartments. And Mr. Teufel will get the Khuner apartment, and Mr. So-and-so will get this. And soon as the Nazis were in and the SA came, out! Mr. Teufel could move in.

Crawford:They weren't given a date to move out?

Khuner:Well, they didn't know when it would happen, but they knew it would happen eventually. The story goes, and I think it's true, that the people, the members of the patriotic Austrian party, who were supposed to be violently anti-Nazi, they had their arm things, and what was the name of the party? I forget...Vaterländische Front. Patriotic Front. Austrian! Anti-Nazi! Anti-German! We are Austrian patriots! We don't want to have anything to do with the Nazis! So they had Vaterländische Front. And it came over the radio that Hitler marched in; and they took [their arm things] off and put the swastikas on. Had it all ready in their pockets.

Crawford:Was that a Catholic party?

Khuner:The Austrian Front? More or less, yes. That was the Vaterländische Front. So the rottenest people that you can imagine were the Austrians. Now they make believe that they were the victims of the Nazis. They weren't.

Crawford:They just "turned coat," like we say.

Khuner:Ja! That's why they also selected Mr. Waldheim as president. They are delighted to have a war criminal as the president. Rotten people!

Crawford:Never changed, though?

Khuner:Ja. But now, interestingly, they have the Austrian [newsletter]; it is a thing that is freely distributed amongst old Austrians. I get it very faithfully every month, [it is published in] New York and sent free to former Austrians, most of them emigrés, emigrant Jews. And it addresses itself mainly to the old Austrian Jews, with a little publicity for all the things that Austria wants to sell, mainly educational courses in the summer for young American students. And if you go through that (I have all that), you see a lot of essays about Jews, former Jews. An essay about Karl Kraus; about Wittgenstein, the philosopher; about Karl Geiringer, the musicologist; all Jews, and it's full of that. It's all hypocritical, it's only to sell Austria.

Crawford:What happened to Geiringer?

Khuner:He died.

Crawford: But he was a neighbor of yours?

Khuner:He lived upstairs, yes.

Crawford:And he was the curator of the museum, I think.

Khuner:Yes.

Crawford:Did he come to this country as well? Oh, I see. [looking at something] Oh, it tells everything. This newsletter is a monthly publication?

Khuner:Ja, it was, approximately. Very irregular.

Finding Work in San Francisco: 1941

Crawford:How did you go about finding work in 1941?

Khuner:In the summer of '41, the spring of '41 we quit [the quartet]. [Then] I came here, and I put in my union card to the San Francisco musician's union, and they said, "We'll notify you when you are eligible to get a job here." At that time it was a closed job.

Crawford:A closed union.

Khuner:You had to be a local to get a job. You could transfer, but you had to wait six months.

Crawford:So you just waited?

Khuner:Ja, ja. Then in the fall there was an opening in the [San Francisco] Symphony, and I auditioned. I was not a local member yet. Why was I not a local member yet? It turned out that the secretary of the union, Mr. Love, had stolen the money and never took care of the new applicants for membership. All the memberships in those months were not booked as applicants, so I, as if I had not applied for membership--my deposited money was gone with Mr. Love. It was a big to-do. He later paid back the money.

Crawford:So you weren't engaged?

Khuner:So I couldn't get the job. I got it a year later. [September, 1942]

Crawford:A year later. What did you do during that year?

Khuner:As I mentioned before, when I came in '39 I bought a little house in north Oakland, where my sister and my brother-in-law lived. And then my parents, [in 1940]. I got a few casual jobs that I could play. But of course nobody knew me, and, as I told you, my good friend introduced me to one of the sponsors and I antagonized him with a story about musical life and Heifetz. I told you that story. No?

Crawford:What's the story?

Khuner:I was invited to a very rich, rich sponsor in the Peninsula for a nice dinner to introduce me to the rich people there. I was the guest of honor, I was sitting next to the hostess, and they were talking about musical life in San Francisco. Because I had just arrived from New York. She says, "Musical life has been going down because Mr. Heifetz used to give as many sold-out recitals in the opera house as he pleased. And now when he comes every other year, his houses are empty." So I said, "That is very sad for Mr. Heifetz, but I thought we were talking about the musicallife of San Francisco." She said, "Well, is Mr. Heifetz' recital part of the musical life?" I said, "No, because the people who want to go to Mr. Heifetz, they sit there and they sleep through the Brahms and Beethoven sonatas in the hope to hear the Hora Staccato as an encore. That is not what I consider part of the musical life."And then we went on. She says, "Well, why isn't it?" And I say, "Because the people who go to these recitals are totally uneducated musically, and should haveno say in musical life, not even by buying tickets." She said, "Well, how can you get knowledge about it?" So I took the very expensive crystal wine glass and said, "You see, this is a very expensive glass, is it not?" She said, "Yes." I said, "For me it's just as good as a tumbler from Woolworth's. Because I don't know anything about it." You see, that's the illustration. If you don'tknowanything about it, the tumbler from Woolworth's and the very expensive crystal is the same thing. You put water in it.

Crawford:It serves the same purpose.

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:So there you were, iconoclastic at the beginning!

Khuner:Eliminated! Ja. Eliminated from the start.

First Musical Impressions

Crawford:Let's talk for a moment about the cultural differences between the United States and Europe. Your first impressions of the United States when you came, how it affected your performing and your touring.

Khuner:Well, we were told, I don't know by whom, that if you play the United States, the polish of the performance is more important than the musical content. So we used to say, "Let's rehearse for the American sound." That means less scratches, better together, more homogeneity, better in sound, better in intonation. And in Europe, especially in Germany, the liveliness, the musical intensity of the performance, counted for much more than the polish. We would say a German performer can get away with lots of deficiencies in polish, provided he plays musically. We would say in the United States, no, the music doesn't count, only the polished performance.

Crawford:Did you find that to be true?

Khuner:I don't know. I didn't poll the audience.

Crawford:But you must feel something from the audience.

Khuner:I didn'tcare what the audience did! I listened when I played the performance, I listened to it. If I thought something should be improved in any way, we talked about it, and made another rehearsal. Even if you play the same piece the next evening, we would say, "Let's go over it tomorrow afternoon, there were some things that we didn't like." But that the audience liked it or not didn't concern us.

Crawford:But the supposition is that the audiences in Europe would have been better educated.

Khuner:Oh, of course! No comparison. I don't know how it is now, but at that time, especially for string quartets, orchestras probably had to be very good. The New York Philharmonic had to play very well, had to compare with any European orchestra. Boston, probably, too. Boston, Philadelphia and New York. But on the other hand, there were mostly European musicians in them. I think, especially, in Boston. I don't think there was a single American-trained orchestra player in Boston, they were all European.You know, at that time Boston was not unionized. The Boston orchestra was not unionized, they could import European musicians at will, from one day to the other. New York and Philadelphia couldn't, there were certain restrictions. Also, here, when I came here, you had to be a member for six months or longer before you could [join the union].

Crawford:And the unions were very small and very weak here, weren't they?

Khuner:Well, they were strong enough to keep outsiders out.

Crawford:How was touring different in the United States?

Khuner:Less comfortable. There were no airplanes.

Crawford:But you traveled by train in Europe mostly.

Khuner:Ja. Occasionally we would rent a car. The cities were very close to each other, especially in Holland. In Holland we always rented a car because the cities were about half an hour apart. Utrecht, Arnhem, Leiden, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, they are practically within walking distance!So we stayed in one hotel, we stayed in Amsterdam and--as a matter of fact, for a whole month I had a little apartment in Amsterdam. And we rented a car, and said, "We [need] the car tomorrow at four o'clock, we have the concert at six o'clock in Arnhem." The driver was there, drove us there, drove us back. And we had dinner at home.Here, the distances were bigger. But in Germany, also, we would live in Frankfurt, and would play in Wiesbaden, and Mainz, and Mannheim, and sometimes friends would drive us. And we stayed in Hamburg, and friends drove us to Bremen for a concert.

Crawford:Do you have any clear year-by-year listings of concerts that I can put in the history?

Khuner:Jonathan has it. There was a member of the Dutch Schoenberg Quartet and he wanted to have this. Did Jonathan return it?

Eliot:I don't know.

Khuner:Ja, he has it. Except one season is missing.

Crawford:Then I don't really need to go into that with you.

Khuner:I wouldn't know it by heart anyhow.

Crawford:What did you do in your free time, when you were touring Europe?

Khuner:You mean, from day to day?

Crawford:Um hm.

Khuner:Well, whatever there was to be done. If there was nothing to do, if it was raining, I couldn't even take a walk, I would write letters to my parents or read. And if there was nothingto do, I might even have practiced the violin for ten minutes!

Marriage and Family

Eliot:Wasn't it in 1942?

Khuner:1942.

Eliot:Margo was born in '43.

Khuner:That's right.

Crawford:All right. Let's talk about that. About how you met your wife.

Khuner:Oh, I met my wife in New York. Accidentally. The real "Ziss" was in the little rooming house where I had a room. There was a piano teacher, and I met the piano teacher, and he said, "Why don't you come next Sunday. I'll have a little party with friends." So I said, "All right, I'll go [to the party]," and that's where I met my wife.

Crawford:Austrian as well?

Khuner:No, no. She is of Russian Jewish descent. Born in New York.

Crawford:So, she came here to be married?

Khuner:We got married here, yes.

Crawford:And do you remember how you asked her, how you courted her?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:Or when you decided to get married?

Khuner:I make a joke, but that's not true. I said, "All right, how many children are we going to have?" "Oh, about six." But I made it up, that's not true.

Crawford:Is that an Uncle Kisev story?

Khuner:It's not a true story, no.

Crawford:You had four children?

Khuner:We had four, yes.

Crawford:When you married, where were you living?

Khuner:I was living in--ja, I was living in the house where my sister lived, with my parents.

Crawford:All together.

Khuner:It was a fairly big house, it had six rooms. Ja.

Crawford:And then you had your first child--

Khuner:One, two three, four, five, six rooms, yes.

Crawford:And you had your first child a year later?

Khuner:No, but we didn't live there when we got married. After we got married we took a little apartment around the corner.

Crawford:In the same neighborhood?

Khuner:Ja. Practically the same block, if not two blocks away.

[Tape break]

Music in San Francisco

Crawford:So you started working with the San Francisco Symphony. Would you talk about Monteux?

Khuner:About Koussevitzky, I think I told you the story. He asked, "What do the people in New York say about me?" He asked the visitors, you know. They said, "Oh, Mr. Koussevitzky, they say in New York that you are the only honest conductor." He says, "Oh, no, how can they say that, it's not true, no, no, I'm not the only honest conductor. Olga! What's the name of that other honest conductor?" Or, they say after he resigned, they said, "Oh, Mr. Koussevitzky, we are so unhappy that you go because, you know, there is no other conductor who really conducts the classics the way you do." And he says, "Oh, how can you say that, there are many other conductors, there is--there is--there is- -Olga! who is there?"

Crawford:Well, let's talk about honest conductors.

Khuner:Well, Monteux was an honest conductor. Ja.

Crawford:Did he favor the French repertoire?

Khuner:Very much, yes.

Crawford:What was the quality of the orchestra?

Khuner:Poor. Not much better than now. [laughs]

Crawford:You told me that you had no opinion about Maestro Blomstedt, that you had--

Khuner:I don't know anything of him, no.

Crawford:What were your impressions of music in San Francisco?

Khuner:I had no impressions. The way it was, it was. Ja. I'll tell you the other story of Mrs. Hertz--you know, Mr. Alfred Hertz was the conductor here.

Crawford:Lili.

Khuner:Lili Hertz. What, do you know about her?

Crawford:Yes, I know something about her.

Khuner:Well, I met her in Europe. I was in Molveno before the season, before my colleagues had arrived for practicing, and I was all by myself. It was in the early season, there were very few people there. And I was hiking in the surrounding woods and mountains, studying my scores. I was sitting and studying, I don't remember what--and I heard people coming up behind on this trail. So, I couldn't hide. Two ladies came, and greeted me, and found out that we were both Austrians, and that I'm a musician, because I had the score. And she said, "Oh, you are musician?" "Yes." She said, "I'm a musician too, and I live in that hotel; I'm a singer. Can you accompany, can you play the piano?" "Yes, I can." "Why don't you come one afternoon and there will be a little singing." So I went down there, and she started singing the repertoire and I accompanied her. And she said, "Oh, you accompany very well." I said, "Thank you." She said, "You accompany very well, you really follow wonderfully." I said, "Thank you." Then she said, "I make so many compliments for your accompanying; you don't say anything about my singing! Are you just surprised how well I sing?" I said, "How can I be surprised? I had no expectations particularly. The way you sing, you sing." You know? Some things are good, some things are bad, but that's the way it is. I cannot evaluate it in open air, and that's all you ask me. I have no expectation of what San Francisco was. What San Francisco was, it was.

Crawford:Well, you must have missed something from the cultural environment that you came from.

Khuner:No, no, I had no--there were fewer concerts than in New York. But since I didn't go to concerts, that didn't make any impression. It was certainly nicer to hike in Tilden Park than in Central Park in New York.

Crawford:So you liked Tilden Park.

Khuner:I liked Tilden Park better than Central Park in New York. Also the streets in Berkeley were better than Sixth Avenue.

Crawford:Okay. How was the Monteux repertoire?

Khuner:Well, he liked to have the French music, and he hated to have the Russian music. But he had to play the Russian music. Also, he was not permitted to play Saint-Saens. He wanted to perform Saint-Saens symphonies; they said, "No, you have to play Tchaikovsky symphonies."

Crawford:Who said so?

Khuner:The board of directors. They said, we have to have a lot of Russian music, because it's very popular, people want to hear Tchaikovsky symphonies. They don't want to hear Saint-Saens symphonies.

Crawford:But they used to do the Organ Symphony.

Khuner:Well, occasionally, but they had probably four or five Tchaikovsky performances for one Saint-Saens performance. Monteux would have liked it the other way around.

Crawford:So the board of directors actually--

Khuner:Well, I don't know the behind-the-door, but Monteux wasn't free to play what he wanted all the time. He complained. When we played the Tchaikovsky symphony, he made fun of it and said, "We have to play this, but Saint-Saens we can't."

Crawford:How was he as conductor?

Khuner:Very good. One of the best. He really, he really was an expert conductor.

Crawford:And did you know him personally?

Khuner:Very little. As a matter of fact, I met him once, I was introduced to him, very superficially, in Amsterdam. So when I auditioned for him, he remembered. He said, "I know you, I have met you before." He remembered. A marvelous memory. He said, "Yes, we lived in the same hotel in Amsterdam."

Crawford:Who do you remember among the players then?

Khuner:Who I remember?

Crawford:Yes.

Khuner:All of them!

Crawford:Anybody outstanding or any special-- ?

Khuner:Well, somewhat--some players I knew better, and some I knew very superficially, but I knew them all. I remember them.

Crawford:What were the union benefits?

Khuner:Well, you couldn't play professionally without being a member of the union.

Crawford:Yes, I know that, but what were the benefits for the musicians?

Khuner:That they could play a job.

Crawford:Yes. But did you have health insurance, that sort of thing?

Khuner:No, health insurance came later through the orchestra. The union never had health insurance. The union had only a death benefit. Part of your membership fee was put into a life insurance. So I have the union life insurance. I think when I die my family will get--two thousand dollars, I believe.

Crawford:How about the schedules?

Khuner:Schedules? I don't remember. We had only three services a week when I joined. And then two or three years later it was extended to four services, because they started to make the student concerts on Thursday nights. It was always two evening performances and Friday afternoon. And then there was one added on Thursday night. And so we got a little more money.

Crawford:Could you make a living as an orchestra musician?

Khuner:Not at all, no.

Crawford:So what else did you do?

Khuner:Either teaching, or other jobs. The older members got more jobs than the newer members.

Crawford:Solo jobs.

Khuner:No. Playing jobs. Summer jobs, Stern Grove, visiting conductors needing an orchestra, those sorts of things came. But there was of course always a great competition. The personnel manager of the orchestra was, of course, frequently asked to get the orchestra together for those jobs. So out of the hundred members of the symphony, he would get twenty or thirty for the extra jobs. It was difficult to get them.

Crawford:Did you teach?

Khuner:Ja, I got pupils, yes.

Crawford:Did you enjoy teaching?

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:You had once said about Arnold Rosé, that he was not a good teacher.

Khuner:A miserable teacher!

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Because he was just a bad teacher. He had nothing to say to the students. He was a fair musician, he was a fair musician and a fair violinist, and a good quartet player. I think he was a good concertmaster.

Crawford:But couldn't teach.

Khuner:Not in my experience.

Crawford:Was there a teacher that influenced you?

Khuner:There were teachers at that time--probably, I don't know them--who somehow were considered, by rumor, that they could teach. But I never met them. There were no violin teachers. There was a young viola player by name of Moravec, who was supposed to become a good teacher. There was another youngster by name of Feist, who was also a performer at the Schoenberg Society, who also became a good teacher. But they were not good teachers at my time, they were too young at that time.

Crawford:In other words, when you started teaching, you really didn't have a model, somebody that you could [follow]?

Khuner:As a teacher? No. Never. I started teaching here. All the groundwork of knowing about instruments and what to do I learned in the quartet. Don't forget, that was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years later, almost twenty years later. The last formal lessons I had when I was sixteen. When I started teaching here I was thirty-six.

Crawford:And did you teach at the Conservatory?

Khuner:Here? No. No, that's not quite true. I, after the war in 1945, when I came back from the army, that was, of course, a few years later, I was affiliated, connected with the San Francisco Conservatory. And they had some pupils through the GI Bill of Rights. You know what the GI Bill is?

Crawford:I didn't realize that that applied to music.

Khuner:That applied to music too, yes.

Crawford:Any memorable students?

Khuner:I remember them, yes. One of them almost got a job in the Symphony.

Crawford:What happened?

Khuner:Monteux didn't like him; he was not a good sight-reader. He was a good violinist, but he wasn't a good sight-reader.

Serving in the U.S. Army

Crawford:Okay. Let's talk, then, about your years in the army. What was that like?

Khuner:Oh, it was a very unique experience, which was--let's say, I'm glad I was in the army. It was very unpleasant while I was there. But in retrospect it was very interesting.

Crawford:Where did you have your basic training?

Khuner:Basic training in Biloxi, Kiesler Field.

Crawford:Oh, in Mississippi.

Khuner:Mississippi, yes.

Crawford:What was that like?

Khuner:Unpleasant, the climate was miserable.

Crawford:Were you drafted?

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:You were drafted. You did not join up voluntarily.

Khuner:No. I was just a few months too young to be outside of the draft, draftable age.

Crawford:When were you drafted, what month and year?

Khuner:Well, I was--when was I drafted?--Olga!

Eliot:Well, it must have been before August of '42. Or even May of '42.

Khuner:Ja. I was drafted in June '43. Sure. Margo was born in March--

Crawford:So you went to Biloxi--

Khuner:Because forty-seven was the cut-off point, and it was two months before I was forty-seven.

Eliot:Thirty-seven.

Khuner:Thirty-seven, ja. I would have been thirty- seven August eighth, and I was drafted in June.

Crawford:Oh, they were waiting for you!

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:So, did you play in an ensemble, in a band? Did you use your music in the Service?

Khuner:No!

Crawford:What did they do with you?

Khuner:I always told them, I said, "Discharge me and I'll come back as a fiddler with USO." You know, USO was the entertainment group. The civilian entertainment group for soldiers. I said "I'll gladly play for the soldiers, for the USO, voluntarily. But if you draft me, I'm not going to play."

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Because I was a soldier, I was not an entertainer!

Crawford:You didn't want to play in a military group?

Khuner:Well, as a matter of fact, I did for a few weeks. Down when I was in basic training. They had a show every Wednesday night over the radio, where they had a little band. And when it so happened that I was supposed to be at KP next morning, I played in the band and was excused from KP!

Crawford:How long were you in the Service?

Khuner:Olga! Well, I came back in '45, wasn't it? Ja.

Crawford:Did you stay in Mississippi?

Khuner:No, I was sent overseas, to New Guinea.

Crawford: Where were you?

Khuner:In Finschhafen, Lae, Baik, different places.

Crawford:And what was that like? What was your responsibility?

Khuner:My responsibility? Doing nothing. I was sent there, and I came to the office, and they said--well, I was sent there as an entertainer. Special services, it's called. And they said, "What can you do?" And I said, "Well, I can play all the second violin parts of the Beethoven quartets by heart!" "What else can you do, can you play the flute?" I said no. "Piccolo? Oboe? Trumpet?" "No." "Trombone?" "No." "So, what shall we do with you?" I said, "That's not my job!" So they said, "Well you go to the special service officer and talk to him." So then I did all sorts of different things. For instance, I helped putting out the newspaper. Finschhafen. That was a little army newspaper.

Crawford:Finschhafen?

Khuner:Ja, it's a major port, it's on the north coast, and Port Moresby is on the south coast. And I drove the jeep to distribute the newspaper every morning to the different places. I distributed ukeleles and banyos (banjos), and ping pong [tables]. And the army edition of magazines. People came and said, "Can I have Life, can I have the Saturday Evening Post?" They had army editions, you know, without advertising.

Crawford:Were you separated there from the population, I mean, did you live in a military compound?

Khuner:Oh, ja, well, that was a big army base, the air force base, army, everything. Also the Australian, the New Zealand [military]--it was a big base. Oh yes.

Crawford:And you never played the piano for the troops?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:You could have volunteered to do that.

Khuner:I could have, ja. I just said, "I do what you want me to do."

Crawford:Did you have a violin with you?

Khuner:I had a violin with me. It was a violin I bought for a hundred dollars in Salt Lake City. I played a little. I played a little. Once they had a show for the men, and I played a little. I also formed a chess club. I also helped a little quiz show, enlisted men against officers. I volunteered in the mail room around Christmas when a lot of parcels came and they needed a little assistance. Ja. But my real useful job was, that all the men had a little pornographic material that was going from hand to hand and was in very bad shape. So I collected that and made nice prints on the typewriter!

Crawford:I don't suppose you have any of that.

Khuner:No. And that [went] very quickly like hotcakes. Everybody was just waiting to get a copy.

Crawford:Did the army provide any entertainment, any music?

Khuner:Well, no, the USO troops came.

Crawford:The USO shows.

Khuner:Shows, ja. A girl came and played theSymphonie Espagnolequite well on the violin. Not as well as I would have played it, but she played all right.

Crawford:That had to be considered a fairly remote outpost of the military.

Khuner:No, they went through all the South Pacific Theater. Ja? And through Australia and New Guinea, and the other islands. Just like Bob Hope, don't you know? Hope traveled around.

Crawford:Yes, of course. Did Bob Hope come to your post?

Khuner:He probably did, but not when I was there.

Crawford:And you stayed there until you were discharged?

Khuner:Ja, there, in Finschhafen, in Lae, and then later mostly in Biak. Now Biak is not part of New Guinea, it's an island north of New Guinea. And by far not as nice and scenic as New Guinea itself.

Eliot:Tell the story about how you helped someone select records.

Khuner:I lived in a tent with four other fellows. One was a professional thief, and one was an owner of a bordello near St. Louis, and--I don't know what the others were--oh, yes, one was an undertaker who always dreamt he'd get some corpses to embalm. So that was their civilian [life]. And they were hoping to get back to that as soon as possible. But meanwhile the thief was very effectively stealing big steaks from the officers' dining hall, which we broiled at night outside of our tent.

Crawford:So he didn't give up his professional activities while he was in the service?

Khuner:Oh, no, he was very good at that, yes. He was very good. Ja. And one day he came and stole a whole bunch of records from the Red Cross tent. Phonograph records. And one Sunday morning they played through to see whether they liked it. So they played those recordings, popular recordings, jazz and so on. And they asked, "Felix, you know about it, is that good?" I said, "That's lousy, miserable." "All right, we'll keep that." Whatever I said was good for nothing, they kept!And then there was a recording, I remember very vividly, it was a Benny Goodman recording. It was very, very interesting, well played, and good arrangements. So I said, "Oh, that's much better, that's very good stuff." They said, "Well, put it over there." Then came a Mozart overture. They said, "That sounds funny, what is that?" I said, "Oh, that's great music, a masterwork." "Throw it in the ashcan!" They said, "If Felix likes it, it's not for us!"

Crawford:You should have said Mozart's lousy.

Khuner:Then they would have kept it.

Crawford:Well, it sounds like you had a good experience in the Service.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:You enjoyed it.

Eliot:Is it true your ulcer went away while you were in the army?

Khuner:I didn't have an ulcer then. Ja! ja! I always had a little peptic ulcer, but not during that army time, because I had nothing to worry about. Nothing to think about.The ulcer was just stress. Stress, circulation. When stress sets in, circulation is inhibited. And if the circulation in this intestinal lining is inhibited, the linings get weak and are easily attacked by gastric juices. This has been found out. I had an ulcer in childhood.

Crawford:They say it's very dangerous [in parts of New Guinea]. You're not supposed to explore, or go to the beaches by yourself or--

Khuner:Well, I wouldn't know that, because we were- -of course, we got in contact with the natives.

Crawford:You did.

Khuner:Ja. Didn't I tell you the story of the natives? You didn't know this? Everybody knows that story! Well, the natives were employed, part of them, by the military. Some natives were always sticking around, I don't know what they did, but they were there. A few, just a few men. So I was up in an old dispensary and practicing the violin, because I couldn't practice in my tent because the fellows were sleeping during the day; they worked at night. Our few tents, they were all working at night, repairing airplanes. So I couldn't practice during the day, it kept them awake.So I went up there near the jungle, as far away as possible, and found an old dispensary and practiced the violin. I had nothing else to do. And it was raining and raining and raining. And suddenly one of the natives came out from the jungle. And he heard me play, and he stopped and looked at me. And I kept playing, playing, playing, playing.And finally I had to stop because I was tired. So, I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I said, "Do you know what this is?--hold the violin." He didn't understand it. And finally he got the idea, and said, "Yeah, guitar." I said, "No, it's not a guitar, it's a violin, violin, practice the violin." I said, "Do I play well? Do you like it? Does it give you enjoyment?" I asked several questions. And finally I said, "Do you think it's good?" And he said, "Yeah, yeah, good, good, fucking good!" Then I knew that he was already in touch with American civilization!

Crawford:Did you have pretty good access to reading materials?

Khuner:I was the librarian.

Crawford:No, no, I don't mean you specifically; did they maintain a good library on the post?

Khuner:An excellent library! The army edition of practically the complete American library. Everything was there.

Crawford:And periodicals?

Khuner:And periodicals, Life, and so, without ads. I was unhappy when I came back and couldn't get those. I had to read through Life with three- fourths was advertising.Well, I read everything that was there. I read Melville and Hawthorne and Thoreau, the whole American literature in army editions. Ja. Very good.

Crawford:Were the books widely read?

Khuner:I don't know. I gave out quite a lot of books, yes.

Crawford:Very interesting. How about American radio?

Khuner:There was no radio as far as I remember. No, we had no radio. But of course there was the army radio. But I don't remember any of it. Those little hand radios were not invented at that time.

Crawford:Portable radios.

Khuner:Those little transistor radios were not invented. I also worked a little for the movies. In the evenings there were movies; I helped a little the movie crew.

Crawford:What did you have? Routine showings of American films?

Khuner:Ja, American.

The Monteux Years

Khuner:Oh, the cross-country, that was 1947, yes.

Crawford:Did you play fifty-six concerts in fifty-six days, fifty-three cities?

Khuner:It was exactly eight weeks, I don't know--it was eight weeks. That is eight times seven, fifty-six days, yes, that's right.

Crawford:That must have been wearing--

Khuner:And we got a thousand dollars for it. At that date, the scale at that time was a hundred twenty five dollars a week, yes.

Crawford:Was it tiring? To travel like that?

Khuner:Why? I traveled by the train, I didn't have to run!

Crawford:I know, but every day, every day, another concert!

Khuner:Well, that was very simple. Every day, take the violin out and play for an hour, two hours, that's not strenuous.

Crawford:And get back on the train.

Khuner:Ja. And the instruments were separate, we didn't have to carry them. There were big boxes. A big box for six violins; we stuffed the violin in. Next day you take it out, play the concert, stuff it back. No. Sometimes the trips were longer, several hours; and sometimes the trips were short. Some I think we did even by bus, if I remember correctly.I generally went to the performance hall rather early--I had nothing else to do, it was very boring--took my violin out and played a little. My colleagues were very angry. They said, "Don't practice, don't practice, don't practice." I said, "Well, I know you never practice; once you have a tenured job you never practice any more, I know that." Once a fiddler has a tenured job, he doesn't practice any more. He gets worse and worse and worse, and by the time he is forty or fifty years, he cannot play any more. But he's tenured.

Crawford:So you're not in favor of tenure.

Khuner:No! No! I mean, financially and socially, yes. A family father should have some kind of job security. But he should work for it, he should not count on it.

Crawford:Even the best musicians don't practice, don't grow?

Khuner:No. Again, there are different things. There are some people who know that they cannot sight-read, and they really practice. And they know that music is so strange to them, generally, that even if they practiced some things a month ago, they have to practice again because they forgot all about it. Even if they play a Beethoven symphony that they've seen many times, they practice it again because they have forgotten. Because they would play completely mechanically, just what the music says. You have to regain the mechanical skill to go from one note to the other, and from one measure to the other, and count the rhythms.

Crawford:But you find that most musicians relax, slack off, if they have security?

Khuner:Except the wind solo players, because you hear them, they play solo. But a string player who plays in the section is completely anonymous, you don't know what he's doing. And Jorda, for instance, knew that, and he wanted to hear the people individually, ja? Like he hears the substitute fourth trombone. He hears them individually. But the people balked, they wouldn't play for him.

Crawford:I wanted to ask you about Monteux's contribution to new music.

Khuner:Well, he was conductor of that ballet, that Diaghilev Ballet [Russes], that played the first performances of Stravinsky. He was interested in contemporary music, yes.

Crawford:And it seems that he encouraged orchestra members here to compose and played some of their works. I'm thinking of [David] Sheinfeld, for instance.

Khuner:Well, Sheinfeld was a special case, because Sheinfeld was a conducting pupil of his. Sheinfeld went to Hancock, to Maine several times, several seasons, to study conducting with him. So Monteux had a little weakness for Sheinfeld. As a matter of fact, Sheinfeld told me that when he wanted to go to Hancock again one summer, Monteux said, "You don't have to, you are a competent conductor." Which he wasn't; Monteux just didn't want to have him any more. He knew it was hopeless, as a conductor.

Crawford:Summers he would take some students?

Khuner:Well, if you see somebody is in the class two or three summers, you know, there's no improvement, the pupil doesn't show any progress, he was not interested. But of course, he wanted to have conducting students who played orchestra instruments, so he had this little orchestra there, for his conducting students. If you have a conducting class, you need an orchestra! Ja? So he would take conducting students even less talented if they played in the orchestra. He wouldn't like a pianist, though, because he has no use for him in the orchestra. That is all--those little things, you know?

Crawford:Did you record quite a bit under Monteux?

Khuner:Not quite a bit, no we didn't record much. No, compared to the eastern orchestras, we did very little. The Philadelphia conductor, Boston, New York symphonies, they made recordings.

Crawford:You remember recording at midnight?

Khuner:Well, we generally recorded in the evening, because there was a chance that there was some noise. I don't know why. We wanted to minimize the street noise coming in to the opera house. But one thing in the recording, I remember--I think I told you that--the first recordings were made on wax disk, not on magnetic tape. And if there was something wrong, if there was a mistake, you couldn't just play those few measures and then fit it in the tape, but we had to play the whole three and a half minutes again. And sometimes it happened that one of the members, especially in a wind player, made a little mistake. So they said, "Can you play it again? All right, play it again! " Someone else made a mistake. "Play it again!" Some other mistake. So I went to one of them, and I said, "Listen, you play so sloppy all the time, in the rehearsal, and in [performance], you never take care of it. You cannot expect to be good when we make the recording. You are not habituated to play well. You are sloppy."

Crawford:Even under Monteux?

Khuner:That was under Monteux, yes.

Crawford:Was Monteux happy with the orchestra?

Khuner:I don't know. He was very gentle, everybody was his friend. Papa Monteux. Everybody loved him.

Crawford:Did you see him socially? Was he with the orchestra members?

Khuner:No. Except after he occasionally--yes, after he left, after he resigned, we gave him a party.

Crawford:And Mrs. Monteux, she was apparently something of a character?

Khuner:She was very much aware that the music is of second importance. The way people look, that the pants are pressed, no bald-headed men permitted, they had to have hair pieces. You have to sit there and show that you are enthusiastic, ja? You have to get up for a bow properly, don't cross your legs when we play, hold the violin like this, don't hold it under your arm, and all that.

Crawford:Was she involved?

Khuner:Well, she had ideas that we shouldn't do or should do. We knew we didn't care what Mrs. Monteux said.

Crawford:Now, the wife of a conductor couldn't do that, today.

Khuner:Well, she didn't do it personally, it was through her husband. And if Monteux didn't want to say it, it was done through the--how do you call that?--the personnel manager. Julius Haug would come and tell us what to do. So Mrs. Monteux devised the criticism and the remedy, and told her husband, and the husband, oh yes--Besides, Mrs. Monteux was good friends with Julius Haug, and especially Julius Haug's wife, they were good friends. So that was the channel of authority. And then Haug said, "You do it, the horse's mouth said you do it."

Crawford:That's interesting. What was your routine like during--

Khuner:Did you read David Schneider's book about the orchestra?

Crawford:No.

Khuner:Well then, I can tell you what he said. I didn't read the book, by the way. Because everything that I remember I don't have to read. Everything I don't remember, I don't care!

Crawford:That's right. Well, I wanted to get it from the horse's mouth.

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:Anyway. What was your life like during those years? Your routine and so on.

Khuner:Well, I had my schedule, rehearsals at a certain time, concerts at a certain time, meet my carpool at a [certain] time.

Crawford:How many services did you have in the '40s?

Khuner:It was generally four rehearsals and four services--four performances. But there were exceptions. There were some weeks when there was some extra thing. There was not a subscription concert every week.

Crawford:Did you have special friends within the orchestra that you saw other than--

Khuner:Everybodywas my friend!

Crawford:Everybody was your friend.

Khuner:Ja. Of course.

Crawford:Did you read in the pit?

Khuner:Well, the people who have long, long, long rests, which was not the case for me, of course tried to amuse themselves. But in the pit, Mr. Adler didn't like it. There was a flutist, Lloyd Gowan, who played piccolo, and the piccolo was not very busy, so he had a book there. And it was visible from the upper ranks. And he said, "Why? What do the audience care what we do while we have nothing to do?" "No, you can't do that."But there was a curious incident. We played Ariadne auf Naxos by Strauss. There are only six violins. And most of the time only the first stand plays, only solo strings. So the second and third stands have long, long rests. In the main opera there are four scenes where we don't play a single note. So [Zaven] Melikian and I were sitting on the second stand, and in San Diego, at the performance, we were totally invisible from the [audience]. Nobody could see us. We used to play chess, so, I had a little pocket chess set, did I tell you that?We had a little pocket chess and played chess. And my colleague in the back--I don't mention his name--who is a--not even borderline moron, areal moron--very good violinist, ja?--objected to that, and he went to the personnel manager and said, "You cannot play chess in the pit, you can't do that." So we said, "But we have about twenty-five minutes not one note to play." He said, "Well you have to count the measures." He counted the measures! For twenty-five minutes!

Crawford:So, what happened?

Khuner:Well! I couldn't do it. They told me not to. We couldn't play chess any more.

Crawford:Well, anything more about the Monteux era that stands out?

Khuner:Occasionally he made a remark to the effect that he was a better musician than his colleagues. For instance, we played something that was originally commissioned and performed in Boston. And we played it; I was happy to be there when Monteux looked at it and said, "You know what Koussevitzky does?" And he described what Koussevitzky does with this score. And he says, "How can you do that? He obviously has no idea how the piece should go." Now, Koussevitzky was a close friend of his!

Crawford:Was it true?

About Schiamperei

Khuner:Well, I'm sure--I don't know what Koussevitzky did, but I'm sure that Monteux was right, that Koussevitzky didn't know how the piece [should go]. I always have the impression that the conductors don't know how a piece should go. They know it by remembering how it's generally performed. They have heard it in their youth, in their student's time, they go to other concerts, and they continue with that. And then, of course, it comes that it's routine Schlamperei--do you know what Schlamperei is? As Mahler used to say--

Crawford:Sugary, no?

Khuner:No, Schlamperei is slovenliness. Ja. Schlamperei is if you don't care, if youcannot do a good job, it's completelyunprecise, youcould do better, but you are too stupid, too lazy, too indifferent. That's Schlamperei. And the Viennese arefamous for their Schlamperei.

Crawford:It doesn't have to do with romantic sounds?

Khuner:No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Crawford:Just plain slovenly.

Khuner:You don't wash your windows, you don't sweep the floor, you don't wash your dishes, everything is dirty, but you are happy and go on about your life, and everything is wrong, that's Schlamperei.

Crawford:And that's the Viennese?

Khuner:Ja. You know? You are a file clerk, but you can never find the letters because God knows where they are. You are too schlampy to put them at the right place. Schlamperei can occur any time. So, you know what Mahler said? Tradition is Schlamperei. You are just too lazy to look [into it]--And that's how most conductors conduct. It's just schlampy, ja? Now, I have had quite some experiences with young conductors, especially in the Opera, when I finally got so angry and said, "Listen,that's what the composer wants; it's so clear, why don't you do it?" And he says, "I can't afford to, because everybody else does it wrong, so I have to do it too. I'm young, I want to make a career, so I have to play it the way everybody does."That was a very, very interesting thing. A young conductor came, from Los Angeles--a student, associated with [Myung-Whun Chung]. He came, we had the first rehearsal for Madame Butterfly. And I was absolutely amazed that he did what the composer wanted. You know? It was right. And I'll tell you about Puccini in a while. And in the intermission I went to him and said, "Listen, I'm very happy that you do it so well. What is your background, where did you study?" So he says, "I am associated with this conductor in Los Angeles, and I owe him very much," he said. I said, "It's wonderful, you know? I'm very happy about it." Melikian came and said--saw him talking with me--and said, "Oh, don't listen to him, he is always wrong."--about me. Now this was an impudence.

Crawford:No, he was joking!

Khuner:He said he was joking.

Crawford:Because he's a great fan of yours.

Khuner:But you don't do that, when the new conductor is [speaking with] a member of the orchestra players. You don't tell him --

Crawford:I agree, I agree.

Khuner:However, what happened, that our great General Director, Mr. Adler, criticized him, and said, "You cannot do it, you have to do it the wayIdo Butterfly"--wrong! But, you see, that is, of course, just water on my mills. When a young conductorwantsto do a good job, knows the score, and--and the way he rehearsed it showed that he knew it, whatever he said was right on the button. That's the way the piece had to be played. And he couldn't do it. Adler said, "You can't do it." And then, also, in rehearsal, Melikian always says, "Well, that's very difficult for us, we always play it differently." Wrong!Now, La Bohème. Of course I've played it millions of times and I can tell you lots of stories about that. And it's also--what they do to the score shouldn't happen to a dog, you know? Now, there are eleven performances coming up for the Berkeley Opera, and my son conducts. And he does it just right, everything is exactly the composer's [intention], ja? And now, I've found out, it's a great piece! It iswonderfully composed! It is so disgusting how it's always played.

Crawford:How does your son know?

Khuner:Reads the score. He is not indoctrinated, he was not assistant conductor with agreat opera conductor who does everything wrong. He looks at the score, it's right there!

San Francisco Opera Conductors

Khuner:But! We had lots of conductors in the Opera at that time. Monteux was in the Symphony, with very few guest conductors at that time. But there were lots of conductors in the pit for the operas. And I used to say--I remember that--all those gentlemen should stand in line waiting for conducting lessons from Monteux. They didn't know how to conduct.

Crawford:That's interesting. So nobody from the opera stands out, in the early years?

Khuner:Those conductors--Steinberg, Leinsdorf-- there were some Italian conductors.

Crawford:How about Gavazzeni, that was later?

Khuner:Ah, a very good conductor. I told you that, a very good conductor. The Italians generally were good. Cleva was a good conductor.

Crawford:How about Patanè?

Khuner:I didn't like him. No. His conducting was very stiff and so on.

Crawford:How about Ludwig? He did so much for the company.

Khuner:Well--Ludwig was a miserable conductor, but a very good musician! It was so difficult to play with him, because you couldn't understand his beat. And I made the following jokes. We played Pique Dame by Tchaikovsky. And in that hallucination scene, when the hero--do you know the opera?--he's all, all upset. He sits there, sitting on the bunk, with his head hanging down towards the pit. It's quite good, he's completely out of his mind, you know? That is a very good thing. And then I said, "You know why he hangs, why he sits there upside down? He hopes to understand the beat a little better!"

Crawford:But how did it help you that he was a good musician then?

Khuner:Well, you could see that he knew the score, and knew what the composer wanted, and tried to realize what the score tells you. Sometimes the conductor is quite good, but I don't know: is he good because he knows it, and he does it, or because he had a good example? Now, Jorda was a good musician. No doubt about it.Excellent musician.

Crawford:And conductor?

Khuner:Miserable conductor. No beat at all. He didn't know what to do. [But] I could see how he sees the piece, how he sees the music. When he conducted the Prelude of Tristan, it was trying the piece. Ja. You have to see what the conductor sees. The tempi, and the dynamic, and the increasing the intensity--it's all there in the score. But you have to be able to read the score, to understand it.

Crawford:But you also have to be able to tell the orchestra?

Khuner:Well, the orchestra fell apart. Those are the two things, ja? When Menuhin conducted the Mozart symphony, it didn't make any sense, but the orchestra was great.There are two things. Sometimes the acoustical experience is wonderful--with Pavarotti. The musical experience is absent. Ja? Now, for instance, I coach some quartets, amateur quartets. They all play badly, of course, so I cannot give them violin lessons. If they want violin lessons, they have to come individually. But if they are people, four amateurs, some are better, some are worse; they want to play a Beethoven quartet. So, I have to tell them: you see, you have to do itthis way. You have to do, for instance, there are sforzati (sings from Beethoven op. 13, first movement), but you have to see that it's a crescendo from the piano to--So the sforzati are gradually getting louder. It begins piano, and the first sforzato isn't loud, it's a sforzato in piano. I give you just an example. That you have tounderstand, what Beethoven wanted. You cannot routinely play it wrong, because [it was done] somewhere else. And then I say, but it doesn't make any difference to the listener.Or you play the whole violin literature, also chamber music the violin plays--[you] play it so badly. You play the slow movement of the A minor Beethoven Quartet. It's the song of thanks after a sickness. You know it? "Dankgesang eines Genesenes." You know that?Now, there is a chorale (sings)--it's a slow chorale. And between those stanzas of the chorale are little interludes, that are a little contrapuntal. The chorale is very homophonic, and the interludes are a little more--polyphonic. This is dynamic and this is static. The dynamic is the counterpoint and the chorale is static. You have to make a difference. No quartet does it. For them, it's just notes. They play very homogeneous, with sound, and nice vibrato, and all that.

Enrique Jorda and Programming

Khuner:So, let's go back. Jorda was a good musician. I want to stress that, ja. But the orchestra was totally demoralized.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Because he conducted so badly. And I tried. I told you that, too. I tried. I went to the wind players and said, "Please, when he starts doing this,playwith him. Ja? You know it's wrong, but just do it. Then he will wake up and say, what did I do? Hopefully!" And they said, "We cannot do that, because we would never get through it in the rehearsal, and it would ruin the performance. So we have to play, no matter what the conductor does, we play ourself." And it worked quite well, we played without conductor.

Crawford:Yes, but that led to his not being re- engaged.

Khuner:Well, that happened when Szell came. Now, Szell was a good conductor. Szell knew right away when he conducted that the orchestra was not ready to play with his beat. Because we hadn't done it for months! So he said, what kind of an orchestra is this? And then he came to a rehearsal, and was standing in the back. And he saw what was happening. And then he told the critics. "The orchestra goes to pot."When Szell rehearsed and performed for two concerts, after the first concert he noticed that the orchestra doesn't respond to a conductor. Because we were not used to do that. Ja? He came to a major orchestra with professionals--"How come I cannot give them instructions how to play with the beat?" So, obviously, somebody told him we are not used to do that with Mr. Jorda. So he came to a rehearsal and he saw that when Jorda was doingthis, then the orchestra played differently, weren't quite well together. Then he said, "That is not a conductor for a major orchestra. That's a shame."Now, I had a friend, a friend of mine who was quite friendly with Mrs. Jorda. How that was, I don't know. An elderly gentleman. Somehow he met Mrs. Jorda, and he talked about music. And I asked him, my friend, to tell Mrs. Jorda to tell her husband to take conducting lessons. Because there are conductors that really could conduct. And now, Mr. Jorda has disappeared, I don't know what he does. We met him somewhere in Belgium, I believe, when we were on a tour. Ja. Where did we meet him? We met him in England, in London. When we made the European tour, ja. No, I think it was in Belgium, ja. All right.

Crawford:Alfred Frankenstein was involved in that, the whole problem with Szell?

Khuner:Well, Alfred Frankenstein liked Jorda very much. Rightly so, for his musicianship. And if you like a certain aspect of a performer, you overlook the weaknesses. And vice versa. If you have it in for a performance, you hear only the bad things and forget about the good. Ja? And there were certainly some good things in the performance of Jorda. Not because of him, in spite of him. And sometimes--for instance, when we did some French things, he did wonderful.

Crawford:Was the programming better under him than Monteux?

Khuner:It was somewhat different, ja. But the programming is something that I don't want to discuss at all, because it doesn't make any sense. Ja? It doesn't make any sense to discuss a program. You hear one program--you would have to say, how does it fit in the course of a century? Not even in the course of a season. Because you havestacks of music that you can perform.

Crawford:Well, they do the same things so much.

Khuner:Repeat performances?

Crawford:Yes.

Khuner:I don't remember that.

Crawford:I mean, the same works, the same Brahms, the same Beethoven.

Khuner:Thereare only a few pieces. Well, there are more, but for the box office you have to play what we call the "war horses." Of course there is nothing wrong in the war horses, because there are lots of young people who have never heard the Fifth Beethoven Symphony. Why shouldn't the people have a chance to hear the Fifth Beethoven Symphony in a live performance? But you cannot do that, because you have only twelve subscription series and you cannot take the time for the Fifth. Now, especially, everybody hears [these] on the tape, on the radio. I mean, it's an impossible situation, the programming. It's an absolutely impossible situation. It's not like a museum, you can have a big hall, and hang all the pictures, and anybody can come and look at them whenever he wants to see. But not everybody can hear what he wants to hear.

Crawford:But there are always new works.

Khuner:Well, there should be, of course there should be new works. But if you have avant garde new works, nobody comes to the concerts, nobody buys tickets. It's an impossible situation! I cannot discuss it, it's an impossible situation.

Crawford:[Don't] the people come to hear Berg, and--?

Khuner:No, they don't. Well, maybe a little more, ja. But still not. Music performance for enjoying the literature cannot be done unless you have three concerts a day. Ja? If you have an arrangement that in the afternoon you hear all the music composed now, not once, but ten times in the season; if you have fifty-two afternoon performances--I mean more, every day!--three hundred sixty five!--then you can play really all the music composed now. In the morning, you have the concerts where you play all the beloved pops music. Fine. And in the evening, you play all the classical music, the whole literature. Then it's like a museum where anybody at any time comes and can hear it. You can see, you can hear, the Eroica every two weeks.Just like you take the cassette out of your library and play it. If you feel like the Eroica, go, you take, and then play it. So you should have the opportunity to hear it live. But not once in five years. But you cannot program the Eroica more than once in five years.

Crawford:Well, are you saying that not one conductor was better than another in terms of programming?

Khuner:Well, certain conductors have idiosyncracies. Monteux loved to conduct French music, that's what he was steeped in when he was a student. And he also knew the composers, Ravel, and Roussel, and Debussy, and Franck. He knew those French composers, ja? Krips never heard, or rather, heard very little French music when he was a student. So when he conducted once La Mer by Debussy, he says, "Well, that's not my kind of music." And since he was a very stupid fellow, too, although he tried very hard to learn new scores. Contemporary scores, he learned quite well, very assiduously he learned. But French music he didn't care for.

Josef Krips

Crawford:What would you say of his term in San Francisco?

Khuner:Well, he followed Jorda, and Jorda's rehearsing technique was to give lectures on the piece. He would go and say, "Well, in the second measure, the second horn has to be a little louder. Ja? Now, three measures later I want to hear the bassoon with a sforzato on the second beat. Now count from there, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven--eleven measures later, the celli," losing people. "Now, two measures later--"--by that time, nobody knew what he was talking about. You know? Ja? And then, after he had given a long lecture, he said, "Now this measure we want to play. Nobody had any, the least inkling what measure he was talking about. Ja? He would talk and talk and talk.I made an experiment once. I came to the rehearsal at ten o'clock and wanted to see how much I had to play the first hour. So I was sitting there waiting. Mr. Jorda was telling things about it. Then he said, "Let's play." So everybody started playing, but I had to arrange my chair a little. By the time my chair was in a good position, he had stopped. Then there was a little lecture. Sit there waiting. Now, let's play a little. Again, I had to arrange my shoulder pad. Ja? Then I had to get ready. I didn't play a single note for the whole first hour. Because as soon as I was ready to play, he had stopped.So, when Krips came, it was the opposite. Play and play and play and play and play. Occasionally a little remark. "It doesn't sound good enough, it's not quite together. Play." With Krips, it was the following story. He said, "Now we have to do a little studying. Ahhhh -- Letter B, right at the beginning, I want this and this." So we started. And we played to the end of the movement, without stopping. Ja? That was his rehearsing, just play through, play through, play through. The musicians were very happy; we didn't have to listen to the lectures, we could sit there and play. Everybody likes to play, why not?

Crawford:Was he a good conductor?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:But a good musician?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:Neither!

Khuner:We were all perplexed. How did that man get the position he was in?

Crawford:During his time there was a mandatory retirement age of sixty-five.

Khuner:Sixty-five was, ja.

Crawford:And were you in favor of that?

Khuner:There are two sides. Once you played in an orchestra and you were competent, you were an asset to the orchestra. Even after the age of sixty-five. Lots of people are not an asset to the orchestra at the age of twenty-five. So it's very arbitrary. There was a music lover, Dr. Eloesser, who was quite well known, an amateur, and had some kind of influence with some people. He wrote a letter that was posted in the musicians' room; he says, as a medical doctor, "I can assert that nobody is useful and competent enough, and has the capability of concentration, of alertness, after the age of sixty- five." Well, as a medical doctor, you know, in his experience, a patient that was sixty-five generally was over the hill.He, in his observation, he found out that the people, the particular people that he played with, in chamber music and so on, were not as alert and concentrated after the age of sixty-five. But it varies. I certainly, when I played in the orchestra, operas that I didn't like, with an incompetent conductor, I wasn't very concentrated at the age of forty!

Crawford:Well, you see? Age is irrelevant!

Khuner:It's very irrelevant! If I have to play Meistersinger with a competent conductor, I'm more alert than anybody in the orchestra! You know? Because they are all bored and hate Wagner.

Crawford:And you love Wagner.

Khuner:Ja.

The Musicians Union

Crawford:Also, there was a strike in '66.

Khuner:Ja. Well, that was, ja, I don't quite know what it was. Our negotiating committee found that the association was not cooperative, and we had some minor things. Of course, it was money, the weekly base pay, and the chairs had to be better, and the lighting wasn't good, and the intermissions should be longer. And the procedure of hiring new members, and how the seating should go--there were all sorts of things.

Crawford:Were you sympathetic?

Khuner:I am interested in music, but I was interested in feeding my family. So I said, that's all justified. Of course, we want to earn a little more money, we want to have another five minutes of intermissions, all right, we want to have comfortable chairs, ja?

Crawford:You felt the demands were justified?

Khuner:Well, the demands were not so outrageous. I cannot really remember any, and I don't remember whether I voted for the strike or not. Maybe I abstained, I don't remember. But once the strike was going and we had picketed the opera house, I went there and picketed too. Ja.

Crawford:And supported it.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Were you on the negotiating committee?

Khuner:No, I had never an official capacity in the orchestra.

Crawford:Do you remember the strike at the opera when it was opening night and the contract had not been signed?

Khuner:The contract wasn't signed, and there were lots of meetings, and I wanted to go camping in Washington, I believe--no, in Oregon, in the mountains--and I had my car loaded with all my camping gear on top and went through San Francisco to the coast--I wanted to camp on the coast in Mendocino, you know, all those campgrounds in Northern California--and next to me, suddenly, there was a colleague in the orchestra. He says, "Are you coming to the meeting?" I said, "No, I'm going camping." He said, "Well, we have a very important meeting"--that was just when we stopped at Franklin Street--"You have to be there." I said, "Well, you can do without me, ja? Whatever the orchestra says, I accept."So, we went camping, and we were on Crater Lake in Oregon. We camped outside, not in a tent. And it started to rain at two o'clock in the morning. And we were about to gradually go back home. So, I said, "Let's load the car and head back south." So we drove about one or two hours south of Crater Lake, turned on the radio, and the radio said--ja, the first rehearsal was about to come, the next day or the day afterwards--and the radio said that the orchestra was on strike and the season will not begin. And I said, "Oh, let's go back north camping!" So my wife said, "Well, that's the radio's thing, we'd better go home, because there will be a rehearsal tomorrow or the day after tomorrow." And sure enough, there was!

Crawford:So, you felt the union supported the musicians well.

Khuner:Well, when I was given the life membership-- everybody gets it after a certain amount of years, like thirty years. If you are thirty years a member you get the life membership. That means your union dues are reduced. Instead of--I don't know--a hundred-twenty dollars a year, I pay only forty-three dollars a year. So I wrote the union a letter and said thanks to the union, I could bring up my family. Without the union it would be very difficult. Look at the musicians in Paris and so on, they are miserable, in a miserable situation.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Because they don't have a strong union. But the union is very harmful for music. The union is very good for popular music, for entertainment music, for playing in the coffee houses and all that.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Because the musicians can make a living. And musically it'sunimportant.

Crawford:Oh,unimportant, yes. It doesn't affect the music.

Khuner:It doesn't affect the music. As I said, tenure is very desirable, but it's not good for the quality of an orchestra.

Crawford:When did you get tenure? When did the orchestra get tenure?

Khuner:I really don't know. That was also a contract dispute, about tenure. About auditioning, hiring, tenure, that is all now specified in the contract. When I got the first contract, it was two pages. It just said, "You get one hundred twenty dollars"--or, at that time, it was sixty dollars--"a week, so and so many rehearsals, and attend all the rehearsals; wear the clothing that's specified, and do what the conductor tells you." That was all the contract.

Crawford:Not many benefits in those days!

Khuner:No. There was a little extra thing, that the rehearsal will be two and a half or three hours, and anything above two and a half hours concert will be overtime at pro rata, so a little regulation. Now a contract is sixty pages long.

Crawford:But you had to fight for adequate time off, as I remember.

Khuner:Well, there were always those little things. It didn't make much difference. For instance, the conductor has to stop the rehearsal on the minute. I said, I don't care. If the first part of the rehearsal goes overtime, then the second part is shorter, right?

Seji Ozawa

Crawford:Okay. So, anything more about Krips?

Khuner:I was on very friendly terms with Mr. Krips. He always came to me and asked me whether I liked the performance, and I was always very friendly and said--Krachmalnick and Melikian were there; they said, "very fine!"--"You liked it?" and I said, "Very good." I didn't like it all, but I am not going to discuss it with him, ja? Only once I irked him; he came and said, "You know what I did last summer? I conducted in Salzburg, I conducted in K"ln, I conducted here, I conducted there." So I said, "Maestro, you conduct too much!" He looked at me. I said, "Take care of your health, don't conduct so much!" Ja. But other things. For instance, we had auditions, first, preliminary auditions for just the audition committee; and then for the finals, Krips came. So Krips came and said, "How many are in the finals?" So I said, "There are only two." And he said, "Are they good?" And I said, "You are going to hear them." "No, no, are they good, should we engage them?" I said, "Maestro, you have your say, listen to them!" I wouldn't commit myself. "Is he a good man?" I said, "I don't know."

Crawford:Was it Krips who didn't approve of women in orchestras?

Khuner:In Vienna there were no women. Karajan wanted to have a woman in, and he couldn't do it, ja.

Crawford:Well, so, then Ozawa followed. And, you told me before, you said he didn't hear much but he conducted it very well.

Khuner:I felt that he didn't know quality in music. My simile was: "We want to climb Mount Everest"; and he says, "Well, let's go to Tamalpais, they're about the same."

Crawford:Was he a very flamboyant conductor?

Khuner:Ja, he looked very--he had this good choreography, ja. It's just like Bernstein.

Crawford:Yes. How important is that?

Khuner:For the audience? Oh, they have to have something to see! They don't hear anything, they might as well see something! No, he had a good beat. The very first performance that he gave here was the second symphony of Brahms, and it was very well conducted. A little unorthodox, but thoroughly clear, he was very clean. Instead of a downbeat like that, he would give a downbeat like this, the stick behind ear, then go down. I remember I came home after the first rehearsal and demonstrated to my children, they were very young, and they loved my imitation of [Ozawa], because I was good!

Crawford:Now, he liked Berlioz, he did quite a bit of Berlioz with the San Francisco Symphony.

Khuner:Well, that's okay.

Crawford:Maybe that was his particular interest?

Khuner:No, he liked showy pieces. That's what he was criticized [for]. He liked showy, orchestra virtuoso pieces, The Pines of Rome, and Symphonie Fantastique, and all those things that show the orchestra to the best. Subtlety wasn't, that was not--

Crawford:But he was a good conductor?

Khuner:His beat was very good, and a fabulous memory. That is a great advantage, if the conductor really knows the score inside out and remembers what everyone in the orchestra does; it's a great advantage. Otherwise we have the feeling the conductor conducts for himself, he really doesn't know the score, he doesn't know the orchestra, he just goes through the motions. And sometimes [if] he does what he has heard before, and it's quite acceptable, then he's a conductor.

Crawford:What was Ozawa's rapport like with the musicians?

Khuner:Very friendly, he was very deferential. He never talked to me without bowing. A Japanese custom. If you talk to an elder person, you have to bow.

Crawford:Did he consult with you?

Khuner:There was only one thing, when we played Verklaerte Nacht by Schoenberg, and there were some disputes about notes, and about dynamics, and so on; there are some mistakes in the score. So I told Ozawa that. So one of the members said, "Well, it says in the score, why do we have to play it [like that]? So Ozawa said, "He told me to!" and pointed to me. That was very funny.I told you those little anecdotes; when Ozawa came, he was asked--before he got the contract--the newspapers, Mr. whoever-it-was, said that he might go to New York and not come to here, and we want him, but he might go to New York, and finally we are happy he does not go to New York, he comes to San Francisco. So he was asked, "Why did you choose San Francisco in preference to New York?" So he says, "New York? They didn't offer me a contract." You know? He was very honest about it. That was just rumors. "I chose San Francisco because it was the only contract."

Crawford:But then he took Boston. In 1972.

Khuner:Ja, then he got the Boston job, ja.

Crawford:Is that good for a conductor to be traveling [between posts]?

Khuner:But nowadays it doesn't make any difference, because the so-called permanent conductors are not permanent.

Crawford:Would you rather have a conductor here, in the house?

Khuner:I don't care, as long as the conductor is good, whether he conducts sixteen or twelve, or four--I don't care. You get used to a certain beat, certain idiosyncracies in conducting, certain idiosyncracies in the music, looking at the music. But that shouldn't be. The conductor is supposed to be competent and believable--the credibility--and have the skill, and knows how to rehearse and behave properly--that's all we want. Ja?The only thing is that in the old times the conductor was really the master of who plays, because he was hiring and firing. Like with Toscanini. And for that matter, you had to play well for a conductor, because he could fire you. Now, since a conductor cannot fire you, it doesn't make any difference whether he's the permanent conductor who can fire you or a guest conductor who cannot fire you.Noconductor can fire you!

Crawford:You mean to say that if he tried to fire a player and they had arbitration, the player would win?

Khuner:Ja, the player would win. It's such a cumbersome process. To prove that a player is incompetent is practically impossible.

Crawford:But it happened with Elayne Jones.

Khuner:No, no, she wasn't fired, she didn't get tenure. For tenure, the orchestra members are asked. After you have your two probationary years, there must be a consensus of people who have some kind of knowledge. And with Elayne Jones, the question is that people complained that her tympanies were not in tune.

Crawford:Was it true?

Khuner:No, the people have no sense of pitch. Everybody criticizes everybody else.

Crawford:That's what Adler said. All the players would criticize, but if ever it was you against a player, then the players would say, "I didn't say that!"

Khuner:Ja, well--I always say, if you would take the personnel list and give it to every member, and say, make a sign to every name that you think we'd be better off without him, then you would collect them and you wouldn't findanybody without a sign! That means somebody always wants to get rid of you!

Crawford:Well,that's not very good!

Khuner:No, but that's a fact of life!

Crawford:Well, wasn't there a feeling of camaraderie in the ensemble?

Khuner:Well, when the chips were down and Elayne Jones was supposed to become tenured, there were sufficient people who said no, she shouldn't get it.

Crawford:So they actually polled the Symphony.

Khuner:I don't know how it was done. I guess only the people who are closely connected with tympani; that means her colleagues in the percussion department or the people who played in her neighborhood, you know, near where the tympanies were. I wasn't asked about Elayne Jones, but why I wasn't asked, I don't know.

Crawford:Did you tour quite a bit with Ozawa to Europe and then to Japan?

Touring and Recording with the Orchestra

Khuner:Only to Europe. No, Japan I went with Krips. That was, I think, in '63. The European tour was in '73. That was the first European tour with the Symphony orchestra.

Crawford:And how was the Symphony received?

Khuner:Panned most of the time.

Crawford:Panned?

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:For what?

Khuner:Bad orchestra. There were all sorts of reasons. The sound wasn't good, etc.

Crawford:It wouldn't be considered good by European standards?

Khuner:Listen, I don't know. That's one thing that doesn't concern me at all. Look, as far as I'm concerned, who cares?

Crawford:How were the touring conditions?

Khuner:Well, I was very unhappy to see Paris and London again, it was such a dirty, disreputable--London was awful, of course, after the war. Since I used to live in London, for two years, I loved the city--I knew Paris very well; it was changed. Vienna was horrible! Berlin was horrible!

Crawford:What had happened to Vienna?

Khuner:Oh! Unfortunately it was a very bad climate, it was very hot. Dirty, unpleasant--but I always hated Vienna. The only thing that was surprising, I strolled around with some of my friends, through the inner city, you know, those old baroque palaces. And they said, "Oh, isn't that beautiful! Sch"nbrunn, isn't that gorgeous!" And I looked, and said, "It is!" I was never aware of it! It was somehow quite interesting to go through. I wanted to visit my old high school, it was torn down, a new high school. Because my high school was an old Esterhazy palace.

Crawford:Oh! But no longer there.

Khuner:It was torn down, and a new building.

Crawford:Had you been back?

Khuner:No, I hadn't been back. First time after 1938.

Crawford:So, thirty years, forty years--

Khuner:Thirty-eight to '73. That is how much? Thirty-six years.

Crawford:You recorded quite a bit [with the Symphony] at the Flint Center. Why did they choose that hall for recording?

Khuner:Recording where?

Crawford:Flint Center.

Khuner:I don't remember that. I remember recording with Ozawa at Stanford. We recorded those horrible pieces with that rock harmonica player. That's what I held most against Jorda, that he did that. We had no business recording those rock things. I think those are the only recordings that still sell!

Crawford:Are there any recordings that you liked particularly?

Khuner:I don't know them, I never listened to them!

Crawford:You didn't care about them. Well, let's talk about the halls [here]. The opera house--the War Memorial--and the Davies.KhunerI never played in Davies, so I don't know. That was after my time. I played some casual jobs in Davies. You know that I don't care about sound and acoustics doesn't mean anything, because the acoustics are different in any part of any place where you play!

Crawford:Oh, I know, but the environment in the War Memorial House is so nice, you know? For me it's a much better place to hear music.

Khuner:Well, I was never in the audience--I mean, only once. I don't know the audience. Ja? Backstage at the opera house I like better because Davies is always much too comfortable. The Davies Hall--when I go backstage in a theater I want it to look like an old theater in Napoli!

Remembering Gaetano Merola and Kurt Herbert Adler

Crawford:Well, that's a good place to break and talk about the Opera. You had played under Merola and--

Khuner:Well, the Opera was part of the yearly activity. And then it turned out--the plan was, the Opera play longer and the Symphony start earlier, so they had to have two different orchestras.

Crawford:Yes, and you chose the Opera.

Khuner:Yes, I chose the Opera, because--was I already retired from the Symphony? No, I wasn't. I really don't know. I think I was retired from the Symphony already, I only played the Opera. Do you know the year when the split occurred? I did not play the Symphony after '73. When was the split?

Crawford:It was later than that, because we didn't have the new facility. But Adler formed that new orchestra for the 1980-81 season.

Khuner:Ja, but I don't remember whether I voluntarily [quit]--no, I didn't. No, it was after I was retired from the Symphony, I continued playing at the Opera.I remember there were some people who left the Symphony voluntarily for the Opera because they got a better situation. For instance, the second player in the Symphony became first player in the Opera. Then some people were urged to leave the Symphony. And I remember there were those three reasons: and some people just wanted to work less.

Crawford:Is that why you retired from the Symphony?

Khuner:Ihad to retire because there was compulsory retirement. I was supposed to retire in '71. I was sixty-five years old in '71. I got my notification, and my handshake, "Goodbye, we were happy to have you!" And a lady from Boston was hired in audition to take my place in the Symphony. And the conductor in Boston, whoever it was at the time, wouldn't release her, said she still had a year in the contract. They didn't let her break the contract. So she wrote a letter to the symphony at the last moment: "I'm sorry, although I am accepted in the San Francisco Symphony, I cannot play it because I cannot leave Boston." So they came to me and said, "Can you play another season?" I said, "Why not?!" So I played another season when I was past sixty-five, to the age sixty-six. Then, in sixty-six, there were vacancies, temporary vacancies, sicknesses; one violinist's wife was dying of cancer and he wanted to take a leave of absence. So I substituted. And then came the European tour, and I played second piano in the Fourth Ives Symphony. So they needed somebody who could play this one piece, second piano, just a few notes to play. So I played this season too. So I played two seasons after my legal retirement. But I did not quit the Symphony for the Opera, because I was out of the Symphony already.

Crawford:Was that a good orchestra that Mr. Adler assembled? I know he had auditions all over the country.

Khuner:Ja, there were auditions, yes, that's right. And the orchestra was assembled, and then we had some preliminary rehearsals, for two weeks, I believe, to get the orchestra [better]; it didn't doanygood.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Because a player is just as good as he is-- [pause, doorbell rings]

Khuner:--if you have a pair of oboe players, first oboe, second oboe, they cooperate and play together; so you get a new fellow, play half an hour with him, you know him, you don't need particular rehearsals. For a string section it doesn't make any difference. So we went through these preliminary rehearsals with rather incompetent conductors--Mr. Bradshaw, Mr. Agler, Mr. Waters, Mr. Behr. Complete waste of time, waste of money, didn't do any good.

Crawford:But it was a good orchestra?

Khuner:It was just as good as it was, ja. Not a bad orchestra.

Crawford:Let's go back a little bit. You played under Merola, of course, worked under Merola.

Khuner:Yes, not much, because just the first few years when I played the Opera.

Crawford:Mr. Adler said that he never did certain Puccini works, because Merola could do them perfectly. And he said Bohème was one.

Khuner:I don't think [so]. Now, Merola was again not a very good conductor. His beat--he got lost, and there were certain things that he just couldn't do. I remember once we had a rehearsal of the Rigoletto, and he came afterwards and asked me, "How was the rehearsal?" And there were two things: Leonard Warren had a little run-in with the conductor. He wanted to have a different tempo, and then Leonard Warren says, "Well,I'm singinghere, my tempo goes;" and the conductor says, "ButI'm conductinghere, my tempo goes." So Merola asked me whether that was true; it was reported. I said, "That's exactly what happened." He said, "Well, we are not to engage Mr. Warren any more." And he never sang here again. And he was a top baritone [in those days.]
But the conductor had a tempo set, and he expected the singers to take the tempo. And Warren suddenly took a totally different tempo, and the conductor [didn't expect it]. That was Rigoletto. And then also, in that aria, you know, that's so difficult with the cello solo, they were not together. So Merola asked me, "Is it true that"--that was after a performance--"that it fell apart?" I said, "Yes, Mr. Warren took so many liberties you couldn't play with him." So Merola said, "Yes, that's why I am never going to conduct Rigoletto.

Crawford:Never going to conduct Rigoletto?

Khuner:Just Rigoletto, because he couldn't handle the difficulty, the rubato of the singers with the cello.

Crawford:What did he conduct specially well?

Khuner:I don't remember. He conducted Butterfly. I remember Butterfly was good. Otherwise I don't remember much. He was a very good musician. I remember--I was much impressed--also a performance in Stern Grove. We played the chorus, the procession to the church in Lohengrin, second act. And that was a very good performance of it. It's a very unassuming piece, it's just a march. But what he did out of that little piece with the singers was very good.

Crawford:What about Adler as a conductor?

Khuner:Well, Adler was a miserable conductor, he had no beat at all. However, he had a very good, exact concept how he wanted the music to go. I didn't say that he wasright, but he knew how it should go, and he conveyed it, for my understanding, very well. But conventionally, his beat was impossible.

Crawford:How did he show you?

Khuner:Well, he did what is important in conducting. The loop before the beat, the loop between the beats--and his conducting had only loops, and no beats. But the loops indicate what he wants.Thisis not conducting, you might as well play with a metronome, you don't know when the next beat comes. You know the next beat only when you see the loop.Now the beat is here. And so on. Now, Adler conducted without beats, it was only loops. But Iknewthat he wanted thebeat, now--nowcomes the beat. And his loop was not very--how shall I say--anatomically sound, it was very clumsy, the whole arm from the shoulder. But I knew what he wanted! But if you are a conventional musician, if you want to see the beat really clear, then he had no beat. Now, Leinsdorf has the same thing. He has no beat, he conducts like that--no conducting!

Crawford:Was Adler difficult to work with?

Khuner:Well, I remember once he conducted Traviata, and it was really bad conducting, and Zaven Melikian was sitting next to me and he said, "It's amazing how good music he makes out of this shitty opera!"

Crawford:He didn't like the opera!

Khuner:Traviata, it's a very unpleasant opera.

Crawford:But you don't like Verdi much, anyway.

Khuner:Much overrated. Puccini was a much better composer than Verdi.

Thoughts about Opera

Crawford:Talk about the composers a little bit.

Khuner:Well, Puccini had already studied Wagner and Brahms, you know? He knew how to handle motives and how to handle the orchestra, and how to develop themes, which Verdi couldn't do. Verdi is such a shallow, unsophisticated kind of music!

Crawford:Even the later ones?

Khuner:Also. They are very, very overrated.

Khuner:One of my colleagues criticized me for saying that [Verdi's] music is worthless. I should understand how much better, how much more developed Verdi is, compared to Bellini or Donizetti. Maybe, maybe. But Donizetti is unassuming; the comedies of Donizetti are delightful. Don Pasquale I like, it's also--very little music, that much music. [gesturing] Puccini was a good composer. As I told you, my experience with La Bohème was really a revelation. If it's done right, you see the musician's mind. But Puccini was a great master. Not only does he have the mind of a composer, the skill of a composer, the intention of composing music, and success in composing music; he also has what is for me necessary in a piece of music: it really hits the nail on the head for the situation on the stage. It is just right. He is very interesting.

Crawford:It's theatrical?

Khuner:Well, it is that--as theater music it is grand. If it were only theater music, it would again be valueless, but he is also a good composer.

Crawford:What did Verdi do? What was Verdi doing in all those lines?

Khuner:To tell you the truth, I don't know! No, Verdi is also--he had the gist, the general emotion of the thing. Radames coming out and singing "Celeste Aida", I don't--

Crawford:Well, take a piece like Trovatore, which is a strong drama--

Khuner:Trovatore has some very popular tunes that are very catchy. The story of Trovatore is so involved, and so--but there are those moods, the jealousy of Count Luna, and the desperation of the mother in the last act, and so--these are all emotionally very [strong]. But Puccini is so much more sophisticated, so in detail, every little thing counts.

Crawford:How about Wagner? I know Wagner is a favorite.

Khuner:Well, Wagner is of course a different case. He is not only a musician, he is a--first of all the Wagner text, the German, is a very important part of German literature. That is just so. There are some lines that are absolutely masterful. And then the other, the manifold aspects, for instance, Die Meistersinger is totally different than Tristan, and Tristan is totally different from Walk re, again totally different than Parsifal. The multi-faceted aspect of the music. And then the music itself. Why the people are so taken by the Ring of the Nibelung I don't know. I don't know. The drama is more or less--as a drama, it's not very interesting. As a commentary on the human existence it's fabulous.

Crawford:Let's talk about some of the new pieces that were done while you were there. For instance, Blood Moon was something that I heard.

Khuner:I don't remember that. I didn't think it was so outrageous, it was very mediocre. Ja. People said it was a waste of money to do that. But then we played Troilus and Cressida by Walton. But to tell you the truth, when I play in an orchestra, I try to do a professional job and not to think too much about it. Walton was--it was difficult, it had a very difficult first violin part, and I remember I had to practice that a little. And then I didn't play too well.

Crawford:This is the Troilus and Cressida.

Khuner:Troilus and Cressida, ja. There was very little new music. Later we played Lear.

Crawford:You had The Angle of Repose, that was the Imbrie piece.

Khuner:Ja. I was not very much impressed with that either, although Imbrie is a good friend of mine. I don't know. Now, more interesting is The Rake's Progress. It is like everything by Stravinsky, very, very interesting, and I cannot get warm to it. The interesting experiment, to use music of old times and translate it to--but that's not what Stravinsky does. He takes old music and distorts it, and then it becomes Stravinsky. Now, in the last concert of my son's orchestra we played two pieces, Petrouchka by Stravinsky and a cello concerto by Prokofiev. Now the cello concerto by Prokofiev is very well composed, and an ugly piece, I really didn't like it. And Petrouchka is not composed at all, it's gibberish, but I love it!

An Opera Production

Khuner:Oh, there are some striking things, oh, yes, there are quite a number of them. First of all, some of the Ponnelle productions are just absolutely striking. He was not too faithful to the music, but he was never against it like some people are. He was respectful to the music, I would say. Not slavishly, but respectful. But he added considerable to it.

Crawford:Did you like his Mozart, his Marriage of Figaro?

Khuner:The movie, you mean?

Crawford:Oh, that's right, it was a movie, it wasn't here.

Khuner:No, no. No, that I think was completely off the mark. I didn't hear the complete thing. But it was--I think it was offensive, I didn't like it, it was against Mozart. There were other things I didn't like. Otello I didn't like. Turandot was nondescript, but Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana, Cosi fan tutte, Cenerentola--

Crawford:Yes, that was a delightful one. Idomeneo, do you remember that?

Khuner:That I didn't--I don't know it well enough. I can only evaluate something that I have very clear ideas about myself. Otherwise I don't know.

Crawford:Now, Adler was very proud of that 1970 Tristan, when he got Windgassen to sing.

Khuner:Ja. I remember that, ja. Well, Windgassen was an old gentleman, and that was a really routine job. He sang everything that was in the score and it didn't make much difference.

Crawford:How about Jon Vickers?

Khuner:Vickers was very good in Walk re, that was the only thing he sang [in the Ring]. He didn't sing anything else but Walk re.

Crawford:Would Vickers be that musical counterpart to Pavarotti?

Khuner:Oh, he's much more intelligent.

Crawford:Well, that's what I'm saying.

Khuner:Ja, well sure, he's more intelligent, ja. He has certain mannerisms that are not always pretty. Every singer has a certain mannerism. He sang much too much falsetto in the Walk re, but nobody's perfect!

Crawford:What about the [McEwen] Ring? Did those impress you?

Khuner:Well, very objectionable.

Crawford:Objectionable?

Khuner:Oh, ja! The one with the two towers at the end of the stage? I mean, you go, you see Rheingold, and the water, whatever it is, with the two towers that are always there? You don't remember that. There were two very elaborate buildings on both sides of the stage, that--

Crawford:Yes, this was staged by Lehnhoff.

Khuner:Lehnhoff, ja, that's right. That's the son-in- law of Boehm, isn't it? Ja. So I said, if he can do that to the stage, then we can play a Sousa march before and at the end of every act! Why not!

Crawford:They go too far now--

Khuner:That has nothing to do with it. But if people like a Sousa march, we'll play one. Or a prelude by Gershwin.

Crawford:Yes, I agree. How about Boehm, speaking of Boehm?

Khuner:Well, he was only here for Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Crawford:Yes.

Khuner:Well, it's remarkable. After we rehearsed it with him and performed it several times, I knew exactly what he was doing. Then I heard the recording, and the recording is like a carbon copy of our performances. And it's very remarkable: the conductor is so strong in his concept of a piece that no matter under what circumstances, and where and when it is, it's always the same piece. Ja.

Crawford:Was he very authoritarian? I heard he was.

Khuner:Oh, ja! Ja, he is. If somebody smiled, he said, "Well, what's so funny about it, why do you smile?"

Crawford:Was he unkind to the musicians?

Khuner:Well, he was not kind. He was not insulting, but he wanted to have discipline.

Crawford:And it went well?

Khuner:He was not a German, he was an Austrian. That was remarkable. He behaved like a German. You know, there was a German conductor by the name of Rosenstock. And we used to say that he combined the precision and discipline of an Austrian with the easy-going loveable manner of a Prussian! His conducting is--we knew that he has a very small beat, but he did everything that was necessary. He was immobile. Occasionally--he would sit there and conduct, but then he'd suddenly do this, now everybody- -that's loud. Now do this--and collapse again. That worked very well. No, he was a good craftsman in conducting.

Crawford:[Remember] Calvin Simmons?

Khuner:Well, Calvin Simmons was a very promising conductor. He was one of the few conductors where you really felt that he had the concept in his mind, and it went into his arm for conducting. The interval--it's called the "inner beat"-- that he feels the beat, he lives the beat, it is set. There are conductors who seem to conduct, and you say, well, he doesn't even count in his mind. He doesn't know what his arm is doing. Now, again, Adler knew exactly what the arm was going to do, And I understood it because he conducted the loops and not the beats.

Crawford:But it was okay.

Khuner:For me it was, ja, I had no complaints about Adler. And I told him so; I said, "I always know what you're doing."

Crawford:Yes. James Levine. Remember him?

Khuner:Excellent performance! One performance, Tosca. Very impressive!

Crawford:Even very young.

Khuner:He was young at that time, ja. Levine was very impressive. But of course I only [know] it from the one performance. Not only he liked the opera; he said, "I love opera, I always live this opera, opera is my atmosphere, where I want [to be]"--and it was a very good performance. It was the last performance where Dorothy Kirsten sang. That was her farewell performance of Tosca. That was remarkable.

Crawford:She was a great artist, wasn't she.

Khuner:She was very intelligent, yes. Above the intelligence of singers generally. She was not a professional singer, she was a businesswoman before she became a singer.

Crawford:Who are the singers who have this intelligence, this great intelligence?

Khuner:Well, there were some, some--[Jan] Peerce had it. Peerce was a real musician. He was a good violinist. Before he became a singer. He played a little in the orchestra. He said, "I would like to play a little--give me your seat"--and he played a little. He was a good violinist. And--oh, there were others. For instance, Paolo Montarsolo. This Italian. And--Capecchi?

Crawford:Oh, Capecchi, Renato Capecchi. Still singing at the Met!

Khuner:Ja. Well there are--I would have to go through the list; I can find out--lots of singers are intelligent.

Crawford:Elisabeth S"derstrom I thought was very good--

Khuner:Who?

Crawford:S"derstrom.

Khuner:Supposed to be, but I couldn't tell.

Crawford:Leonie Rysenek. Viennese.

Khuner:No Viennese is intelligent! [laughs]

Crawford:Now, you had the pit enlarged in 1976. Did it make a big difference?

Khuner:Well, we had more room for the enlarged orchestra, sure.

Crawford:But for the string players it was especially important?

Khuner:Well, that doesn't make any difference. As long as I have room to bow. As long as I can adjust my seat so I can see the conductor. If I cannot bow because a fellow sits here, and if I want to go a little to the left or the right to see the conductor and I cannot do it, it's uncomfortable. Sometimes it's only a little, a couple of inches this way or that way; it always can be arranged.

Crawford:But you also had a much-enlarged string section then?

Khuner:If you need a bigger orchestra, you need more room for it, ja.

Crawford:Yes. But I mean, doesn't it make a difference in Wagner? In Strauss?

Khuner:It would be good, desirable, to have a bigger string section. But what happened? So they add another stand of first violins, two players who cannot play anyhow. So what difference does it make? They just warm their seats and sit there, ja.

Crawford:So it didn't bother you before?

Khuner:Well, I cannot tell. If I would be so fussy about the sound, I would have to sit in the audience and say, now I hear fourteen players, and now I hear sixteen players. They don't hear it the difference. They added probably eight or ten players in the string section.

Crawford:Is that all?

Khuner:One stand in each section, ja. Two first, two second, two violas, maybe one cello.

Crawford:So that wasn't any big matter.

Khuner:No, maybe [to] some people who really are listening to the sound all the time--I don't listen to the sound. You know what I always say? It's very nice to have good weather and a good pavement for your vacation trip. You want to make a trip to the Rockies, see all those beautiful lakes, and the woods and the things. And come back and say, "Well, the weather was marvelous, wonderful! And the roads were exquisite! Much improvement! The Rockies I didn't see." Ja? But I like good roads, under any circumstances, and if I have a good road when I make a vacation trip, it makes it more pleasant. I don't have to have broken axles all the time because there are nothing but chuck- holes in the road, I can go on. And if the weather is good, I see the mountains, it's not foggy and rainy.

Crawford:That's what it represents to you.

Khuner:Ja. But that is not why I go. Because people don't care what they hear as long as the weather is good. They love the good weather because they sit on their couch and see the sun shine. The weather is good!

Crawford:Yes. I get the [simile].

Khuner:Those are the similes I always use.So, a good conductor is present to have a good performance. Now, other singers, intelligent--I don't know. Good performance, good productions--There was a gorgeous production of The Merry Widow. What for? Did you see that? Mr. Mansouri?

Crawford:Yes, Mr. Bonynge? Wasn't that for Mr. Bonynge?

Khuner:Ja, ja, but the production was Mr. Mansouri, when he took the Toronto production here. Ja?

Crawford:It's just one way more not to see the Rockies, isn't it.

Khuner:Ja. Ja.

Crawford:You left the opera in 1983. That was after Mr. Adler already left?

Khuner:I played several seasons under McEwen. I think I played--of that complete Ring, which was given--Rheingold and Walk re in the fall, and Siegfried and G"tterdammerung in the spring. And that spring I didn't play any more. But what year it was, I don't know. [1983] I played all the summer seasons except that first one that I didn't play was the season when they had Siegfried and G"tterdammerung. You know, that was supposed to be the complete Ring in that year. With Edo deWaart conducting. Rheingold and Walk re was in the regular fall season, which I practiced a little while; and then I was fired, and--

Crawford:You weren't fired, were you?

Khuner:I was fired.

Crawford:You told me they urged you to resign.

Khuner:Well, they urged me so intensively, and it was so important that I resign so--

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:I don't know. I said, "Why do you want me to resign?" I never got an explanation.

Crawford:Was it the management?

Khuner:I don't know! It was McEwen, I guess.

Crawford:Well, how was Edo deWaart as an opera conductor?

Khuner:He was very good. Ja. He did all the right things, you know. Although people complained it was too tame, it was too uninspired, it was not fiery enough, it wasn't dramatic enough. All not true.

Crawford:The critics.

Khuner:Ja.

Music Criticism