Adolf Hitler’s Greatest Hits

“HITLER’S greatest hits.”

So begins the Times. And there is the old pop picker Adolf Hitler himself stood among a record collection.

This is no flight of fancy. The Times is not walking down memory lane wondering what Hitler would be listening to if he were around today – lots of Erasure, Phil Collins (post Genesis) and Inspector Cyril “Blakey” Blake singing the theme song from On The Buses.

This is the real deal. Former Soviet intelligence officer Lew Besymenski is dead. But he has left behind the records he found in Hitler’s Chancellery in Berlin in May 1945.

Now Zat’s Vot I Call Musik 1945 features such boot stomping tunes as Mozart Piano Sonata No 8 in A minor with Arthur Schnable. That’s at No.5.

In at 4 is Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, soloist Bronislaw Huberman.

Shock indeed, pop pickers. Schnable was a Jew. Not ‘arf. Huberman was also a Jew. The temptation is to think of Hitler pointing to flaws in the playing and finding reason to ensure such musical imprecision never occurs again by killing Huberman, Schable and all of their families.

“You see,” says Hitler. “They kill the music, the Jews. And if you don’t have music what is there but nothing? Nothing!”

But there is reason to believe Hitler’s music was not based on racial lines. In at Number 3 is Russian arias, including the death of Boris Godunov, by Mussorgsky, sung by the Russian bass Fyodor Shalyapin.

Those Russian Untermenschen may have irregular shaped heads but, boy, could they ever right a show tune.

Of course, there is music and there is the right music and while the Jew and the Russian toil the German wins.

“There was never a Jewish art,” says Hitler in Mein Kampf, “and there is none today.” “Critic. Schmitic,” says Schnable.

So what it Hitler’s top tune. It’s not trad jazz, that theme tune of lost causes.

At No. 2 is Wagner’s overture to The Flying Dutchman by the Bayreuth Orchestra, conducted by Heinz Tietjen.

And at No. 1 it’s Piano sonatas, Opus 78 and 90, by Beethoven.

But why say in words what we can be aid so much better in music?

Take it away, Mein Fuhrer: “Come on, come on, let’s stick together
You know we made a vow not to leave one another never…”

Anorak

Posted: 7th, August 2007 | In: Broadsheets Comments (12) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink