Michael Haas
Independent Producer
Michael Haas (born in 1954) has more than 20 years experience as an executive and recording producer for both Universal Music Group’s Decca/London and the Sony Classical labels. He was producer for Sir Georg Solti for over 10 years, and won several Grammies before leaving for Sony to work with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1994 he was Sony’s vice president of A&R in New York.
Between the two labels, he has produced prize-winning recordings with almost all the major classical artists of the day. These include such important figures as Christoph von Dohnanyi, Bernard Haitink, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly, Mstislav Rostropovich, Hans Werner Henze, Valery Gergiev, and Sir Simon Rattle. Instrumentalists include Radu Lupu, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alicia de Larrocha, Andras Schiff, Lynn Harrell, Pinchas Zukerman, Maxim Vengerov, and Alfred Brendel. He has also worked with most major singers of the last two decades: Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Cecilia Bartoli, Joan Sutherland, Renée Fleming, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Hildegard Behrens, Monserat Caballé, Mirella Freni, Christa Ludwig, Lucia Popp, Jessye Norman, Matthias Goerne, Sumi Jo, Bryn Terfel, Ian Bostridge, Barbara Bonney, Samuel Ramey, Angela Gheorghiu, and Roberto Alagna.
His most regarded work has been in the rediscovery of music lost during the Nazi years in Europe. The recording series Entartete Musik is seen as a groundbreaking recovery of works thought lost, forgotten, or destroyed. These include recordings of works composed in concentration camps as well as works by former major composers, such as Berthold Goldschmidt, who once banned, never regained their earlier prominence. The series won major awards and created an opportunity for launching such artists as Ute Lemper, Matthias Goerne, and Jane Eaglen.
Other recent projects have been the rediscovery of 19th Century Spanish Grand Opera with recordings of works by Thomas Breton and Isaac Albéniz with Plácido Domingo. Breton’s La Dolores won the Grammy Latino in September 2000, and Albeniz’s Merlin won the same award in 2001.
Now independent, Mr. Haas spends his time developing his own recordings and projects in addition to lectures, writing, festivals, and conferences. These have included his work with the Forum for Suppressed Music and the Jewish Music Institute. With the FSM, he initiated and chaired a two-day conference on the Composition Class of Franz Schreker at London University, SOAS. He has also been music director of the “Musica Prohibita” festival of “Entartete Musik” in Barcelona. He has been invited to speak at numerous events, and universities such as Columbia University’s Jewish Theological Institute; Hamburg University, (Musik Hochschule) where he has held seminars; University of Virginia; and the Lincoln Centre Festival. In 1997 and 1998, he was consultant to The Milken Family Foundation’s recording series, The Jewish Experience in American Music.
He was awarded the 2002 JMI (Jewish Music Institute) David Uri Fellowship in recognition of his work and research in music banned by the Third Reich. In addition, he has recently been appointed music curator of the Jewish Museum of Vienna and signed a deal to act as consultant for the Dutch broadcaster, VARA in their series of Matinee Concerts in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw for the 2003/04season.
