Opera unbound

The Israeli conductor Israel Yinon was in Dublin early in September, to rehearse the orchestral programme of Haas, Schulhoff and Dvorak he'll be conducting during the Wexford Festival. Settled with a cup of coffee in front of him, he became sharply focused when he came to talk about exactly how he had come to Sarlatan and its composer Pavel Haas.

"The composer Pavel Haas was Czechborn, from Brno. He studied under Janacek in a master class. I came to him because of his fate, because he was murdered by the Nazis. The first work I heard by him was the Study for string orchestra, which was performed in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. This was the only information which I had at the beginning. Nevertheless, it was interesting, when I conducted this Study in 1992, I thought the piece was very good. "It was performed in the ghetto under Karel Ancerl, a very famous Czech conductor who survived the concentration camp - alone, all his family was gone.

"He never wanted to conduct that piece again. A musicologist, Lubomar Peduzzi, wrote a book about Pavel Haas, and he was pushing his music. So maybe without him we would never have got to the music of Haas. It took 50 years to come back to his music.

"I was really fascinated by the music. But I said to myself, it would be a total mistake to interpret a composer just because he's been in a concentration camp. I mean, it is a nice thing to do, once a year, in some sort of ceremony, but nothing to do professionally. Nevertheless, I asked myself, who is this composer, because his music seems to have some quality.

"Dr Peduzzi took me to the museum of Czech music in Brno, the national museum, the Moravia Museum it's called, and he showed me manuscripts. "I went back to the sources, and I came to this opera. First I recorded an orchestral suite from the opera, six short pieces. Then I went in depth into the opera. It was . . . it is very impressive. Can you imagine, I played a take from the orchestral suite to Michael Haas, the executive producer for Decca, and he listened, he looked at me and he said, `Israel. This is a masterpiece. We must record the opera.' So it was a decision of two minutes to do it, to record the whole opera for Decca."

A chain of enthusiastic response led through John Abulafia (who'll direct the Wexford production) to the festival's artistic director Luigi Ferrari, who then went to hear a Prague concert performance, Sarlatan's first public airing since its 1938 premiere. Ferrari was won over, and decided to bring the work back to the operatic stage after a gap of 60 years.

How, then, would Yinon characterise the music of this little-known composer, whose posthumous fortune has taken such a dramatic upward turn? "You know, the interesting thing is, that when I listen to the music, I can characterise it as Czech. But I am influenced by knowing he was Czech. Of course, there is some lightness in the sound, lightness in the mood, like in Smetana.

"I'm also a very spoiled child nowdays. For me it's not anything modern, just something very easy coming and easy going. For other people it may sound in a way modern. "But it's not modern. It's music from the mid-1930s, nothing too hard for us.

"One can hear influences of Janacek, his teacher, definitely. One can hear that Haas was quite well established . . . maybe he was too young to be established, but he knew what was going on in the musical world surrounding him.

"You can hear that it's music which belongs to the first third of the century, definitely. It's very rhythmical. He used rhythm in a very beautiful way, and he's very folkloristic in this opera, a lot of folklore influence. Maybe people who are used to the Second Viennese School and the sophisticated music from after the war will say this is very primitive. It's not. It's very well done. A small masterpiece."

When I ask whether the piece is light or serious, Yinon gives a delighted laugh. "This is a wonderful question. I'm going to conduct it now for the second time. I've recorded it. I know it by heart. And I cannot answer the question."

He rapidly launches into a detailed discussion of its elements of comedy and tragedy, the connotations of the word "charlatan", the true but not necessarily obvious significance of some of the major characters. But, as he says in the middle of his elaborate speculations, you really would need to know the plot in detail to follow his argument.

The conclusion, however, is clear. "It's not a comedy. It's a big tragedy inside, about the Devil and his power over people."

Israel Yinon conducts John Abulafia's production of Haas's Sarlatan with designs by Fotini Dimou on Friday 16th, Monday 19th, Thursday 22nd, Sunday 25th, Wednesday 28th, and Saturday 31st. His afternoon concert with the National Symphony Orchestra on Sunday 25th includes Pavel Haas's Scherzo triste, Ervin Schulhoff's Suite for chamber orchestra and Dvorak's Symphony No 7.