I recently acquired the '55 Decca Keilberth Gotterdammerung recording
and found the historical background very interesting.

I'm fascinated by Peter Andry's comments (he was president of Decca
for something like 100 years) about how anxious they all were to get
back into the American-occupied areas of Germany to record.  I find
it mind-blowing in 3 ways: 1) that many were impatient with the "slow"
Denazification process of major artists, 2) that Brits wanted *anything*
to do with the Germans, since the latter did some pretty serious bombing
damage to the former, (was anyone vaguely annoyed?) and 3) that the
American Occupation had such viscerally positive and lasting results.

It all had to be a little distasteful, but if Germany hadn't had any
secular shrines such as concert halls and opera houses to rebuild, and
secular gods such as Beethoven to restore, and if the rest of Europe
hadn't quickly championed the salutary aspects of German culture, while
dispensing with the bad, could Europe have moved on?  What if a culture
has no secular icons or gods?  What is there to rebuild so that said
culture has something too good to want to lose again?

John Smyth
Sac, CA

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