An accepted axiom for all critics of the arts is that distaste for an artist's morals, personality or politics should not affect objective evaluation of his work. Wagner and Lully, for example, were both monsters, but that is not allowed to colour our judgement of their music. Similarly, one needs to bend over backwards not to be unfair to that rabid Nazi and anti-semite Max von Schillings, an extremely influential figure in Germany in the early part of this century as a conductor, General Music Director in Stuttgart and Intendant of the Berlin Staatsoper, who died only a few months after the Nazis had appointed him director of the Berlin Stadtische Oper.
His assured handling of the large orchestra employed in all three works here is evidence of a thorough professionalism; if there should be a certain flavour of Wagnerism, that is understandable enough, since he had begun his career as chorusmaster at Bayreuth. In 1900 Schillings composed incidental music to the Oresteia of Aeschylus as well as the present overture to Sophocles's Oedipus tyrannus: in keeping with its subject, it begins portentously, but to convey the chorus's words (quoted on the score) that human happiness is no more than illusion followed by disillusion needed more distinguished basic material than this. The sturdily sonorous ''Harvest festival'' from Moloch (an unsuccessful work of 1906) is something of a curiosity since, although the scene of the opera is ancient Carthage, it has the agreeable character of a vigorous Landler. The main work on the disc, however, is the 1910 Violin Concerto. The ripely romantic second movement is engaging, and the finale is rhythmically vivacious and brilliant, but the work as a whole—a vehicle for the utmost violinistic virtuosity—is bogged down by a first movement that is not only far too long but too consistently angrily declamatory and overheated, moderated only by a Korngold-like lyrical second subject. Erno Rozsa, barely 20 years old when he made this recording, is clearly a very considerable talent whose future will be watched with interest. He is supported by an extremely able orchestra: in the Oedipus overture (the only score to which I had access) Alfred Walter's care over phrasing and dynamics calls for much praise. The recording is first-rate.'