Concentration Camp Inmates’ Music & Songs Ring Out at MOR’s Free Public Concert

SEATTLE, WA—November 18, 2009—In the next event of its Sparks of Glory outreach series, Music of Remembrance (MOR) presents a 90-minute chamber music concert – Unconquered! – at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 5, 2009. The performance will take place at the Good Shepherd Center in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.

 

Two of the program’s three works recall the singularly improbable creative life at the Terezín concentration camp, just north of Prague. The Nazi propaganda machine sought to portray Terezín as a model ghetto that would demonstrate their humane treatment of the Jews. In reality, the fate of nearly all of Terezín’s prisoners was transport to Auschwitz or other death camps. Remarkably, though, Terezín gave life to a vibrant artistic culture. The musicians and composers imprisoned there never ceased creating.

 

The promising pianist and composer Gideon Klein, only 23 when he was sent to Terezín, organized concerts there and delivered talks on music. On this program, MOR will perform Klein’s vibrant, melodic Trio, composed just nine days before his transport to Auschwitz in October 1944.
 

The wit and satire of Terezín’s Czech and German cabaret songs by Karel Svenk and others, sung by Jenny Knapp and Erich Parce, represent a unique expression of spiritual resistance.  A well-known actor, Svenk dared to write new morale-boosting lyrics for popular songs of the time, mocking camp authorities and the absurdities of camp life. 

 

The program also includes the second string quartet of the audaciously original Erwin Schulhoff. Schulhoff – whose music the Nazis banned as “degenerate” – was sent not to Terezín but to a camp in Bavaria, where he perished in 1942. He combined dance, jazz, and folk song melodies in compositions that are only now gaining the recognition they merit.   

 

At this concert-with-commentary, MOR artistic director Mina Miller will provide perceptive insights on the music’s unique context and profound significance. MOR’s education and outreach series, created to bring chamber music to a spectrum of Seattle communities, is supported this season, in part, by a grant from Chamber Music America.

Unconquered! December 5, 2009 2:00 p.m. (GSC)

Gideon Klein
Trio

Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola; Mara Finkelstein, cello                         

Erwin Schulhoff
String Quartet No. 2

Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Leonid Keylin, violin; Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola; Mara Finkelstein, cello  

Jenny Knapp, mezzo soprano; Erich Parce, baritone
Mina Miller, piano

 

*This series is made possible, in part, by funding from Chamber Music America. Music of Remembrance is the recipient of a Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Program Grant with funding provided by the CMA Residency Endowment Fund.