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Music from the Abyss (March 25)
Music from the Abyss (March 25), © The Ledeč quartet, painted by Felix Bloch (1898 – 1944) in the ghetto Theresienstadt - The image is in public domain
Songs and Chamber music by composers who were imprisoned in the ghetto and concentration camp Theresienstadt
Despite degrading living conditions, despite hunger and pain, despite fear in the face of terror and death, many artists were able to be creative even in the concentration camps. Their art helped them to endure the daily suffering, their music offered hope and consolation to their fellow inmates. In an essay he wrote in Theresienstadt in 1943, composer Viktor Ullmann said: “We did not sit moaning at the Rivers of Babylon and our will to be creative was as strong as our will to live.”
Theresienstadt / Terezin served a dual purpose: It was a ghetto and transit point to the extermination camps in the East, and at the same time was used by the Nazi regime as a propaganda tool to disguise the final solution and the killing of millions of Jews. Many highly decorated war veterans and prominent Jews were brought to Terezin, including numerous artists.
Among the composers deported to Terezin were Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Zigmund Schul, James Simon, and Viktor Ullmann. They continued writing music for the instruments they had managed to bring with them or found in the ghetto which had been a garrison town before being emptied and converted to a camp in November of 1941. Erwin Schulhoff, a radically experimental composer from Prague, was deported to the internment camp Wülzburg in 1941 and died there of tuberculosis in 1942. Haas, Simon, and Ullmann were deported to Auschwitz in October of 1944 and upon arrival killed in the gas chambers. Schul had died in Terezin in 1944, Klein died in 1945 in the concentration camp Fürstengrube. However, many of their works written in the camps were saved.
With:
Gabriel Cassagnes, Piano, Jeannie Im, Soprano, Adam Leites, Oboe, Michael Protacio, Tenor, Tamar Sagiv, Cello, Dan Franklin Smith, Piano
Presented by Elysium – between two continents and the Lahr von Leitis Academy & Archive in cooperation with the Czech Consulate General New York and AJC Westchester / Fairfield.
Date and Time: Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 7:00 pm
Location: Bohemian National Hall, Ball Room, 321 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
More Information: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/music-from-the-abyss-tickets-1248367062489?aff=oddtdtcreator