The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 23

THE: DAILY TELEGRAPH WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1997 23 An artist of the 20th century Hans Feibusch's work was labelled 'degenerate' by the Nazis. But 60 years on he is still painting, Martin Gayford reports 'VE seen the Feibusch things, bad Indeed born more than to a cultured in Frankfurt. his birth. Rodin, and alive and hard has survived in the first fought. He is ing artist included in Nazi exhibition ate Art'.

He work at his next week his art opens Bristow Row. WC1 13, view by stucated in which once used by is an alert but speaking gantly turned has been living try now for when he was already in his mid-thirties. His departure many was Frankfurt he of a group of progressive Frankfurt tion. In the Hitler remembers. new member dation ber always not producing when Hitler ish artists cians.

painters at a meeting zel. when a music director arouses such warmth that revealed spent just 10 weeks a year in players fling their arms uniform. "'he town. Despite Gideon Toe- round him after concerts. table and he plitz's bold management and With they say, Jewish increased overseas tours.

the "'we wouldn't ride an elevaaudience is shrinking. was in it. you riding whip. and you and Jansons's face. as he dis- sound of the orchestra has home and cusses the crisis in classical become richer.

more old- will You music. contorts with pain. fashioned. is the he demands. zel whiplash, the Previn thing Some of "what shall we do? The big ennui.

There are still jagged would felt it problem is young people edges, but Jansons is fretting he was less they are afraid to try. what he wants. In half many other He is not waiting for son. he could well make ing artists answers. In the interval lob- Pittsburgh the most ear- Britain.

bies of Heinz Hall. he has pricking orchestra in homo- Four years television monitors playing tonous America. paintings was snippets from forthcoming Pittsburgh's gain is Lon- exhibition events. and at each concert don's loss. We will hear Jan- Art, opened he performs a 'mystery sons here again only with visMunich in piece" a neglected work iting orchestras.

He has intended to that he hopes will encourage close British ties and cut his all tendencies listeners to shed their fear: professional teeth on the by Nazi Schubert and Beethoven BBC Welsh. but there is no included overtures. little gems of room for London in his diary. celebrated Debussy and Granados. I "I'm in big trouble because century art.

will play a polka by Shosta- my schedule was made three was divided kovich. they don't think vears ago and now I pay the of artistic he is so serious. price. he sighs. "Also.

if I In common with many come to London to conduct Vilification Heroes of American conductors he has one orchestra, the others are taken to addressing the audi- offended And with my Mockery ence. taking them into his health I must be very care- Womanhood' confidence in charmingly ful." He managed just two Prominently proximate English. getting weeks' holiday this year. an area labelled them on his side. In Havdn's Managements know that of the Jewish Military Symphony he got a he is a push-over, that he was a painting percussion band to march cannot resist a sentimental of vaguely around the stage and down appeal, and the dates are pilthe aisles.

ing up again. Irina watches In spare hours. he rushes over him tenderly but Janabout meeting politicians sons will not let her be his and social lions and visiting dragon. "I must learn to say schools in deprived areas. insists.

"How many of you come to The brush with mortality concerts?" he asks a high- has altered him irrevocably. school band. Why not you go through such an more? Does it cost too episode. between death and much?" He conducts them life. then something through a Bach chorale.

stop- changes. Even though I have ping after one play -through a lot of adrenalin, I also have for historical and technical more depth in my views. my comments. then perceptibly interpretations. changing their tone in a What drives him on, knowsecond rendition.

"From age ingly risking his health, is a two I was every day in the sensation that he has not opera he tells them. reached his peak, that there "My father was conductor. is always more to learn. my mother singer. At six.

1 "This is not modesty but began to study violin." simple truth." says Mariss In hard-bitten PSO musi- Jansons. 'And I cannot cians. earning $68.000 basic imagine my life without for a 20-hour week. he A year after nearly dying on the podium, conductor Mariss Jansons is still a driven man name lit up in fireworks and emblazoned on baseball caps in Pittsburgh, Jansons opened last month with a run of concerts that left players, critics and listeners gasping. 'He works us so hard.

I have to go and lie down after said principal harpist Gretchen Van Hoesen. "For a man who supposedly has health panted his driver, John. a retired police officer, "'well. I can't keep up with Nobody," says Mariss Jansons, "can tell me how much I can He utters these words sedately, sipping tea in his dressing room after a Sunday -afternoon Mahler Fifth followed by a 'Meet Mariss" lobby reception which must pressed 2,000 eager hands. pea "I feel OK." he assures me.

glancing for endorsement towards his wife. Irina, while sneaking a nibble from a forbidden chocolate cake. He has shed weight and looks deceptively thirtysomething. but Jansons knows exactly how the odds are stacked for him. His mind keeps going back to that fearsome night in Oslo when he found himself locked, unconscious, in -to- hand combat with Death.

"I passed out, and in the dark I was struggling with machine that was crushing chest from both may sides. I was fighting to hold my ribs he recounts. "doing everything to live, to breathe. And then just at the moment when I felt I can't any more. I came round.

woke up. Thank God." For months afterwards he was "terribly cancelling concerts "If you are anxious, you cannot conduct" and seeing any number of specialists. It took diet-and-exercise classes in a Swiss clinic and some invasive technology to restore his security. In Pittsburgh last spring he had a defibrillator fitted inside his chest, a Hayward Gallery Objects of. Desire THE MODERN STILL LIFE 9 October 1997 4 January 1998 Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Mondrian, Klee, Dali, Warhol and Cragg 0171 960 4242 sbc.

a great deal of painter Hans muses. "'good things, a terrible he has. He was years ago, Jewish family On the day of Gauguin, Brahms were still at work. He two world wars, of which he the sole survivwhose work was the infamous of "Degenercontinues to easel every day; an exhibition of at the CollyerGallery, Bedford (until November appointment). his lofty London probably Landseer -he figure, a little deaf.

in precise. eleEnglish. He in this coun64 years, but arrived in 1933 he a mature artist from Gertraumatic. In was a member younger. more artists.

the Artists' Associaearly days of the government. he "We took on a on recommenof the other This new memmade excuses for any work. forbade all Jewsingers. musi- to practise. the newcomer himself.

In Nazi jumped on the pointed at the members with his 'You and you you can just go forget about art. never show any- Feibusch's friends blow over, but optimistic: like German-speakhe ended up in later. one of his included in the of Degenerate by Goebbels in 1937. which was deride artists of disapproved of doctrine this many of the most figures of 20thThe exhibition into categories infamy. such as of German the World War' Madness' and of German displayed in Revelation Racial Soul" by Feibusch religious inspira- Feibusch: at home in Britain Picture: PE WERTH tion''.

showing an angel floating above two figures. It was later. he presumes. destroyed. as was much of his work that had remained in Germany.

To be hung beside such artists as Max Beckmann. Kokoschka and Chagall was. he felt. an honour. It was also deeply ironic.

Feibusch had never been a member of the modernist avant-garde. Very early he had attempted to study at the celebrated Bauhaus in Dessau, where Klee and Kandinsky taught 'Foolishly, I didn't write or anything. I just went there. and found it closed. That was the end of the Bauhaus for me, and today I feel I was jolly lucky, because I don't really like that angular.

severe. inhuman style." Instead, he was influenced by Expressionists and Beckmann. "I painted natural objects. or perhaps fantastic ones, but reduced to simple forms and in bright colours holding a balance between what seemed to me the spiritually significant part and the fussy A painting by him in that style won a State Prize in 1930, shortly before Hitler came to power. But already, before he left Germany, he had become interested in the mural painters of 15th-century Italy.

And at the time of the Degenerate Art exhibition, he embarked on a long career of painting religious murals in churches that forms a unique contribucontemporary art (notable examples are to be found in Chichester cathedral and St Alban the Martyr. Holborn). Much of his recent work has been concerned with the Holocaust touched off by a television documentary which impressed itself SOterribly upon His own upbringing he describes as Christian' and and he belonged to the Church of England for more than 20 vears. returning to Judaism in 1992. Looking back over his long life.

he does not feel that all change has been for the better. "Life as one lives it has become much easier. incomparably easier. But human spirit has taken that opportunity to relax itself more. The increasing speed of life has made people more inhuman.

Culturally. it has come down very much. In my vouth there were great composers and artists. And. especially in the last few vears, the amount of nonsense that is produced in the arts and covered over with glamorous talk is incredible to me.

he carries on. I would like to see what the new millennium brings. I would like to flutter down and see what's going on. Inspiring presence: Mariss Jansons, set to make the Pittsburgh SO the most ear-pricking orchestra in America Picture ROBERT RUSCHAK Back from the dead April before EVEN ducting 25 the he in last end was Oslo minutes of vear, con- on a Mariss Jansons suffered a massive heart attack. "His face went grey and he slid down the side of the reports a -row violinist.

"He was still trying to beat time as he lay on the There were doctors aplenty in the house and the hospital was only moments away, but the heartbeat weakened and he was nearly dead on arrival. In London traffic. Jansons would never have made it. Brought back from the brink and detained under observation, he suffered a second heart attack five weeks later. Musicians the world over uttered prayers and dabbed their eyes, for Jansons is a much- liked maestro and more.

He is possibly the most inspiring conductor alive, one of a mystic few whose mere presence seems to transform the sound that players make. At the time of his collapse, he was overstretched as a guest conductor in Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam and New York, and two London orchestras were slashing other's reputations in an abortive bid for his time. Jansons was already committed to the Oslo Philharmonic. where over 18 vears he has produced a unique timbre, and to musical life in St. Petersburg, where his mother lives.

He had also just signed up with a top American orchestra, in Pittsburgh. Then nemesis struck and he faced a grim prognosis. His arteries, two Harley Street consultants confirmed, were too frail bypass or transplant. Jansons, at 53, was living on borrowed time. With due care and much rest he could live a full span, but Jansons is not a man to conserve energy.

Seeing his Norman Lebrecht on Music procedure not yet fully approved in Europe. For those who don't watch ER. a defibrillator is the paddles that get whipped out to deliver an electric jolt when a patient's heart stops beating. Implanted in his chest wall. Jansons' personal defibrillator is supposed to detect an irregular heartbeat and adjust it with the appropriate voltage.

No one what might happen if it goes off in mid-symphony, but having the gizmo inside him gives Janson the confidence to face life without restraint. ND in Pittsburgh, A there waste. is The no town's time pop- to ulation has halved in 50 years as the steel mills closed and the three rivers lost their importance as a gateway to the West. The baseball and football teams are threatening to leave if they don't get a new stadium, and the new hitech industries are neither big enough to regenerate mass employment nor grand enough to sponsor popular leisure activities. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is supported by the Heinz food-processing family.

but its glory has faded from the awesome eras of Fritz Reiner (1938-48) and William Steinberg (1952-76) to the Eighties, ethos of Lorin Maa- The French have a word for it The French INTERNATIONAL theatre festivals are wonderful, aren't they? Instead of watching rubbish from your own country you can, after the organisers have gone to great expense and effort, watch rubbish from someone else's. These cynical thoughts long, unbearable Misprang to mind during, the chel Vinaver's Overboard, the second offering of the ambitious French Theatre Season. It's one of those occasions that leaves you feeling physically ill with boredom when you're not sweating with acute embarrassment. I've a high regard for the Orange Tree's enterprising director, Sam Walters, but his long-term championship of Vinaver is beyond comprehension. With the help of grants from all over the place he has put together a cast of 20 for this lame-brained three-and-a-half-hour satire on the workings of big business.

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