If I could go back to any time and place in recent musical history, I would choose the Berlin of 1928 or 1929. I'm reading Peter Heyworth's biography of Otto Klemperer, which has a mind-bending footnote describing the programming of the 1929 Berlin Festival. Toscanini conducts six productions with his La Scala company. Richard Strauss conducts six of his own operas. Furtwängler conducts Tristan and Figaro, Leo Blech the Ring and Busoni’s Dr. Faust, George Szell Andrea Chenier, Erich Kleiber La Clemendza di Tito and Don Pasquale. Otto Klemperer, at the Kroll Opera, presents Hindemith's Neues vom Tage, Don Giovanni, the legendary Ewald Dülberg production of The Flying Dutchman, three Ernst Krenek one-acters, and a Stravinsky concert with the composer at the piano. The Diaghilev ballet presents other Stravinsky scores. Bruno Walter conducts Das Lied von der Erde. Then I could go off to Baden-Baden for the premiere of Brecht and Hindemith's Baden-Baden Learning Play about Acquiescence, in which a clown is dismembered limb by limb. At about that time, I'd begin to worry whether the "return" function on my time machine was in perfect working order.
