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November 20, 2009
Music of the Holocaust
KZ Musik series will eventually include 24 CDs.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
According to Italian pianist and conductor Francesco Lotoro, almost 4,000 works of music were written amid the horror of the Holocaust. He has undertaken not only the enormous and laudable task of researching the music – opera, chamber, instrumental, piano, choral, cabaret, jazz, religious and folk – written by composers imprisoned in the Nazi camps between 1933 and 1945, but also recording it. Ultimately, 24 CDs will be produced. To date, 12 have been released.
In his introductory notes, which accompany the first CD of the KZ Musik series, Lotoro credits survivor Aleksander Kulisiewicz, who died in 1982, with the series’ existence. After the war, Kulisiewicz, a musician and singer, “devoted himself to collecting music and lyrics written by deportees in German camps, with a view to publishing an anthology; unfortunately, the book has never been published.” The KZ Musik encyclopedia is an attempt to be the most up-to-date and complete collection of such music and, therefore, includes compositions ranging from the ethereal to the functional.
“The music written in the camps ranges from excellent [and] good, down to quite good and mediocre, but all of it should be performed, listened to and cherished,” writes Lotoro. Also in his introduction, Lotoro gives a brief history of some of the composers, including those who were murdered in Auschwitz on Oct. 17, 1944: “... on the same day, Pavel Haas, Viktor Ullmann (both historic vanguards of the Hába and Schoenberg schools), Bernard Kaff, Hans Krása, Viktor Kohn, Egon Ledec, Rafael Schaechter, James Simon and Carl Sigmund Taube ... all died in the Auschwitz gas chambers.”
Some of the other composers included in the series are Karel Berman (1919-1995), Jozef Kropinski (1913-1970), Charles Abeles (1903-1987), Ludmila Peskarova (1890-1987), Eva Lippold (1909-1994), Gideon Klein (1919-1945), Zikmund Schul (1916-1944), Franz Eugen Klein (1912-1944), Peter Gellhorn (1912-2004), Marius Flothuis (1914-2001) and Berto Boccosi (1910-1985).
Whether or not readers have heard any of these names before, the KZ Musik series is compelling and moving. To imagine the conditions under which these compositions were written, or at least started, is almost too much to digest, let alone comprehend. There are many stories of resilience in the face of tragedy and persecution, and the creation of this music, as cliché as it sounds, is another testament to the incredible durability of the human spirit. That among such destruction and such suffering, songs could be written is not for believing, yet there are not just a few, there are thousands, and the KZ series, as extensive as it is, is not nearly exhaustive. Yet the fact that there are people actively searching for and reclaiming this history is in itself a cause for hope that creativity and beauty can endure even the greatest of evils.
Each KZ Musik CD booklet contains information about the composers and the camps in which the recorded works were written, as well as some other interesting content. The material is presented in five languages – Italian, English, German, French and Hebrew – although Lotoro’s introduction is only in English and Italian. In the English version, there are several typos, but they don’t detract from the value of the set, which, of course, comes from its music. Translations of the songs, however, would have added greatly to listeners’ understanding of the works.
On the KZ Musik website (kz-musik.de/Intro_E.html), there are very short audio samples, two per CD, of the first six CDs of the collection, as well as a listing of all the music that will comprise the 24-CD set.
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