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'Tradition der Natürlichkeit. Zu Biographie, Lyrikvertonung und Kammermusik des spätromantischen Klassizisten Robert Kahn' by Steffen Fahl
Studio, Sinzig, 1998
Reviewed by William Melton
posted 13 Nov 2005

Robert Kahn (1865–1951) enjoyed a rich musical life that began in a Mannheim family deeply involved with the arts (his younger brother, Otto, later a successful banker in New York , would also be a long-time board member of the Metropolitan Opera). Robert and Otto’s father was Bernhard Kahn, a banker, member of the Stadtrat for three decades, and philanthropist – among other projects, he created the forerunner of the city’s municipal library. Robert Kahn’s thorough musical training included study with quite a few of the best pedagogues that Wilhelmine Germany had to offer: Emil Paur, Vincenz Lachner, Friedrich Kiel, Woldemar Bargiel (Clara Schumann’s half-brother), Joseph Joachim and Joseph Rheinberger.

February 1886 was a turning point, as it brought Johannes Brahms to Mannheim for a performance of his Fourth Symphony. At a reception after the concert Kahn made the acquaintance of the great composer, ensuring a memorable impression by spilling champagne over Brahms’ Frack shirt. It is perhaps a small testament to Brahms’ humanity that Kahn was invited to Vienna , where he let an apartment from March through July of 1887, socialising with Brahms and also benefiting from informal instruction along the way.

Kahn’s career was a fine one (his chamber music and Lieder were especially prized), and inspired biographies from contemporary writers Ernst Radecke and Max Chop. Kahn taught at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik beginning in 1894, was awarded the professor title in 1903 (colleagues then included Joachim, Bruch, and Humperdinck), was made a member of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1916, and named Senator in that organisation the following year. His pupils included Günther Raphael, Hans Joachim Moser and Ferdinand Leitner. Kahn retired in 1931, but the National Socialists’ ascendance by the bludgeoning of all opposition meant Kahn’s forced resignation from the Academy in 1934. In December 1938, after a last meeting with his former pupil and friend Wilhelm Kempff at the Savoy in Berlin, the 73-year-old Kahn and his wife Katharina left Germany to settle in England (at Biddenden, in Kent), embittered about being forced to leave their musical culture behind. He wrote Gerhard Hauptmann, ‘Mit welcher Gefühlen wir unsere schönes Heim verlassen, – davon schweige ich; ‘es muss sein’ wie’s in letzten Beethoven Quartett heisst’ (‘ As for our feelings as we leave our beautiful home – I will say nothing; ‘ it must be’ , as it tells us in Beethoven’ s last quartet’ ).

Steffen Fahl’s life and works of Kahn, originally offered as his dissertation at the Freie Universität in Berlin , benefits from recent research and provides a full catalogue of works. The book’s strongest suit is decidedly its ‘works’ aspect: Fahl’s painstaking discussion of Kahn’s Lieder and chamber music occupies over two-thirds of the volume, and offers a whopping 224 musical incipits and facsimiles, as well as seven songs appended in their entirety. Those looking for a full record of an eventful life may be disappointed in the relatively brief treatment (42 pages) illustrated with just eight small photographic prints. And while the important German source material is well employed, Kahn’s still-productive last years of English exile do not profit from a comparable use of English sources. As this period included the composition of most of Kahn’s Tagebuch in Tönen, a mammoth cycle of close to 1,200 piano works, the three pages allotted the thirteen years make for an unsatisfying, hurried conclusion. Nonetheless, Steffen Fahl deserves credit for documenting a rich and largely ignored body of chamber music. Until the composer’s life itself is as thoroughly documented, readers interested in more detail would do well to look up Kahn’s ‘Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms’ (Vossische Zeitung No. 125, 7 May 1933; many reprints), an essay both entertaining – Bruckner and Wolf make cameo appearances – and informative.

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