Stefan Frenkel

Stefan Frenkel, born in Warsaw on November 21, 1902, established himself as a prominent violinist in 1920s Germany before the Nazi regime forced him into exile. As concertmaster of the Dresden Philharmonic from 1924 to 1927, he championed contemporary music, giving premieres of works by Josef Suk, Paul Hindemith, and Kurt Weill's Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra. After 1933, when Jewish musicians were systematically expelled from German musical life, Frenkel could perform only at events organized by the Jüdische Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Association). He left Germany in 1935 for Switzerland, then moved to the United States in 1936, where he became the first concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Early Career and the Dresden Years

Frenkel received his first violin lessons from his uncle Moritz Frenkel in Warsaw and made his debut there at age sixteen, performing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. From 1919 to 1921, he studied violin with Adolf Busch and Carl Flesch at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, also taking composition lessons from Friedrich Ernst Koch. At twenty-two, he was appointed concertmaster of the Dresden Philharmonic, a position he held almost simultaneously with Szymon Goldberg.

During his time in Dresden, Frenkel became deeply involved in the performance of new music. He joined the International Society for New Music and participated in its festivals. He collaborated extensively with Dresden pianist and organizer Paul Aron, appearing in the concert series "Neue Musik Paul Aron." Through these concerts, he performed works by Karol Rathaus, Paul Amadeus Pisk, Béla Bartók, Philipp Jarnach, Hermann Reutter, and Maurice Ravel. In Dresden, he gave the first performance of Josef Suk's "Phantasie" for violin and orchestra and participated in performances of works by Paul Hindemith.

Frenkel developed a particularly close relationship with Kurt Weill. He gave the German premiere of Weill's Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra in Dessau on October 29, 1925, under conductor Franz von Hoesslin, and performed the work about a dozen times between 1925 and 1933. In 1929, he arranged seven songs from Die Dreigroschenoper as virtuoso showpieces for violin and piano. He also gave the world premiere of his own Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra in Dresden in 1929.

After leaving his Dresden position in 1926, Frenkel continued to appear as a soloist throughout Germany. In 1928, he gave premieres of works by Russian composers Alexandr Krejn, Mikhail Gnesin, and Grigorij Krejn. In 1931, he performed Jerzy Fitelberg's Violin Concerto No. 1 at the Pyrmont Festival. In 1932, he played Karol Rathaus's Suite for Violin and Orchestra as soloist in Nuremberg and Oldenburg. From 1929, he served as concertmaster of the Königsberg Radio Orchestra and made regular radio appearances. He also taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory starting in 1927.

The Rise of Nazism and Its Impact

Dresden's thriving musical scene in the 1920s and early 1930s had attracted internationally respected musicians, many of them Jewish. The city welcomed figures such as Leo Blech, Carl Flesch, Hans Gál, Berthold Goldschmidt, Jascha Heifetz, Bronisław Huberman, Paul Kletzki, Darius Milhaud, Gregor Piatigorsky, Karol Rathaus, Artur Schnabel, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexandre Tansman, and Kurt Weill. The "Neue Musik Paul Aron" concert cycle between 1920 and 1931 featured performances of composers from the Second Viennese School and the Groupe des Six.

However, antisemitic sentiment had begun to surface even before Hitler came to power. In 1930, the Nazi party newspaper "Der Freiheitskampf" criticized a concert organized by a women's association for choosing the Jewish-owned Alsberg department store as a venue. The same paper attacked Paul Aron openly as a "Jewish concert entrepreneur." In 1932, when Carl Flesch appointed Frenkel, described as a Polish Jew, to cover his violin class at the Berlin academy during his touring absences, the appointment caused an uproar from nationalist colleagues. Their machinations, filled with antisemitic innuendo, ultimately forced Franz Schreker's resignation as the school's director in June 1932.

When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Jewish musicians were immediately targeted. On the evening of March 1933, SA troops occupied Dresden's opera house and theatre. Shortly thereafter, conductor Fritz Busch and theatre general manager Alfred Reuter were removed from their positions. On April 7, 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service with its Aryan Paragraph mandated that all functionaries of non-Aryan descent—defined as anyone with Jewish parents or grandparents—had to retire. Professional requirements shifted overnight from skill to ancestry. Almost all employed Jewish musicians, music educators, and music journalists became unemployed.

Among those who left Dresden were Paul Aron, who was no longer allowed to teach at the Orchesterschule der Sächsischen Staatskapelle, singers Margit Bokor, Maria Elsner, and Peter Pieroti, repetitors Josef Golstein and Robert Kinsky, and orchestra musicians Mischa Rakier and Salomon Engelsman.

The Kulturbund Years

After the Nazi takeover, Frenkel's only performance opportunities came through the Jüdische Kulturbund, an organization established to provide cultural activities for the Jewish community after Jews were excluded from mainstream German cultural life. In 1934, he performed at Kulturbund events at the Beethoven Hall in Berlin, as well as in Frankfurt am Main, Karlsruhe, and Würzburg. In 1935, he played in Cologne.

The Kulturbund faced increasing restrictions. Initially, concerts featured works by mainstream German composers, but after the Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935, Jewish musicians were no longer permitted to perform music by German composers. Programs had to be restructured to focus on works by Jewish composers, even if those composers held German nationality. Dresden audiences heard music by Hugo Leichentritt, Arno Nadel, Karl Meth, Herbert Fromm, Max Kowalski, Julius Weinberg, Walter Leigh, Salomone Rossi, Gustav Mahler, Ernst Toch, and Issay Dobrowen.

An announced concert by Frenkel in Dresden in 1935 never took place. The community of available musicians in Dresden had been severely depleted by emigration, forcing the Kulturbund to adapt constantly to sudden departures and an ever-shrinking pool of performers.

Exile and New Beginnings

Frenkel left Germany in 1935 and emigrated to Switzerland, where he became concertmaster of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva. In 1936, he moved to the United States and was appointed first concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, a position he held until 1940. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944.

In America, Frenkel became particularly known for his violin arrangement of "Mack the Knife" and other music from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. He worked as concertmaster at the Santa Fe and Rio de Janeiro Operas during off-seasons and taught violin at Princeton University from 1964 to 1968. He continued to perform as a soloist and chamber musician throughout his American career.

Stefan Frenkel died on March 1, 1979, at his home in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, apparently of a heart attack. He was survived by his wife Lotte, his children Sonja and Thomas, his brother Severin, and a granddaughter. His papers, now archived, contain published and unpublished scores of his compositions and arrangements, music by other composers with his performance notes, scrapbooks of programs and clippings, photographs, and audio recordings that document a career spanning several continents and one of the twentieth century's most turbulent periods.

Sources

Agata Schindler: Stefan Frenkel, in: Lexicon of persecuted musicians of the Nazi era, Claudia Maurer Zenck, Peter Petersen (eds.), Hamburg: University of Hamburg, 2006 ( https://www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmperson_00001195 )

"Stefan Frenkel, at 73; Ex-Met Concertmaster." The New York Times, March 5, 1979, B11.

Stefan Frenkel papers ca. 1860s [bulk 1914-1970], Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts