December 7, 2006 Maestro’s mission is to restore banned
composers’ music He learned that the piece was "Die Seejungfrau"
("The Mermaid"), and that the Austrian-Jewish composer,
Alexander von Zemlinsky, had been a major figure in pre-World
War II Europe. But then the Nazis banned his music, and
Zemlinsky was forced to flee to the United States, where he fell
into obscurity, suffered a series of strokes and ceased
composing. The story proved ear-opening for Conlon, the new
music director of Los Angeles Opera. "I became passionate about
this subject [of composers persecuted by Hitler]," he says in an
interview in his second-floor office at the Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion. "In the course of learning and studying about
Zemlinsky, I became familiar with other names ... and realized
that there is a whole era of music about which we know very
little." Conlon became a maestro with a mission: to help revive
the music of composers banned (and often murdered) by the Nazis.
His crusade will continue with a new production of