Martín Llade has repeatedly shown his love for Vienna and his devotion to high culture, especially to classical music. His name is inseparably linked to the broadcasts of the New Year’s Concert from the Austrian capital. With a notable sense of irony, he has incisively contributed to a better and deeper understanding of cultural tradition, stripping away the mythical halo that so often surrounds and masks it, so that we may contemplate the world of spiritual creation in all its complexity. His irony does not deprive him of a sense of gravity. The Last Concert in Vienna (2025) is, without a doubt, undeniable proof of this.
Llade returns to the Viennese stage that he loves so much, but it is certainly more dramatic on this occasion than he has accustomed us to. His novel can be understood as a descent into the dark valley of totalitarian nightmares, a valley whose map stretches from the rise of Nazism to the eve of its collapse. Here Vienna again becomes, as it did in his previous novel, The Razumovski Mystery, a kind of quintessence of European culture at a moment absolutely crucial for the world. But Beethoven’s detective adventures are now far behind us. The tone of this new work is very different, and the political fervor surrounding the Congress of Vienna must yield to the dark clouds that preceded the Second World War. Moving masterfully between historical reality and narrative fiction, Llade enters the mind of Clemens Krauss (general director of the Vienna State Opera and formerly of the Berlin State Opera, well connected with the Nazi authorities) using an informal interrogation, a dangerous dialectical game, to which he is subjected by the Captain Erich Krenn (a fictional character) and the historical director. The trigger for all this is the unexpected discovery by the authorities of a list of names, with clearly identifiable enemies of the State, among whom the famous musician is included.
It is no small matter the importance of the arts, and especially music, for understanding the history of Nazism. Reading the sociologist Wolf Lepenies, specifically his classic work The Seduction of Culture in German History, shows us how the beautiful tree of civilization can have roots that are dark, very dark. Indeed we can speak of seduction, for the performative aestheticism characteristic of Nazism captivated and enthralled bright minds both outside and inside Germany. Llade’s novel is full of concern for the historical drama that has left an indelible scar on the German and European soul. The seduction of music, as a demon-like force, was addressed by Thomas Mann in his famous Doctor Faustus, but the question of opportunism, of the artist’s moral ambivalence, was a much more developed issue in Klaus Mann’s Mephisto. Llade connects with this preoccupation through a beautiful, cultured, restrained narrative, and offers us something that surpasses elegant prose evoking polkas and waltzes, for he also knows how to present a plausible portrait of the human condition wrapped in the haunting echo of a requiem. His work is a powerful wake-up call, an exhortation to serious and unflinching reflection on the limits of humanity’s greatness and the wide shadows that lie behind it.
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Author: Martín Llade. Title: The Last Concert in Vienna. Publisher: Ediciones B. Availability: Todostuslibros.