Terezín remembered and music by Simon Laks revived

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(June 2010)

June brings two concert series exploring music by composers incarcerated in Theresienstadt (Terezín) and other concentration camps between 1941 and 1945, with a Nash Ensemble weekend at the Wigmore Hall in London (19/20 June), and the Terezín Festival of Forbidden Music in the Czech Republic (20-27 June).

The Nash Ensemble weekend includes a song recital with baritone Wolfgang Holzmair; chamber concerts; films; talks; and an exhibition of drawings by children who were in the camp. Composers featured include Pavel Haas, Viktor Ullmann [Schott], Gideon Klein, and Hans Krása whose opera Brundibár was performed at the camp. All were interred in the camp and perished in the Holocaust.

The name Theresienstadt - or Terezín to give its Czech name - has become synonymous with the greatest propaganda lie in the Nazi's reign of terror. Virtually the whole of the Jewish cultural elite was forced to live in the concentration camp located 60km from Prague.

The Nazis used the camp as a showcase, allowing inmates to stage a whole range of entertainments, including plays, concerts, operas, cabaret and cafe concerts, for the entertainment of visitors who even included the International Red Cross. In reality the prisoners were being starved, which combined with hard labour meant a daily struggle for survival. There could be no greater contrast between this and the extraordinary varied an creative work produced by the camp inmates.

The Nash Ensemble weekend seeks to offer a reminder of these struggles through the presentation of films and talks (which include conversations with camp survivors), a childrens art exhibition, and the performance of works by composers whose exceptional talent was so cruelly cut short. Ultimately the Nash Ensemble celebrates the triumph of the human spirit over adversity and intolerance.

> Nash Ensemble Theresienstadt weekend

The Terezín Festival is a partner of the International Festival of Forbidden Music which since 2004 has campaigned for the revival and rehabilitation of important works and artists that were forbidden by the Third Reich. Two concerts at Terezín include the Czech premieres of Suite Polonaise and Poème for violin and orchestra by Simon Laks (20 June) and a chamber concert by the Schulhoff Quartet (27 June). A colloquium is presented at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague (23 June).

The music of Simon Laks has been revived in recent years, including his comic one-act opera L’Hirondelle inattendue (The Unexpected Swallow) which has been performed in concert in Marseille and Warsaw. Four chamber works by Laks are included in this year’s Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

Simon Laks (1901-83) was one of the rising stars in a group of elite Polish musicians active in Paris in the 1930s. He was interned under the Vichy government in 1941 and ultimately deported to Auschwitz, where he worked as a musician, arranger, and finally conductor of the orchestra of the men’s section of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp.

Thankfully he survived the war and returned to Paris after the liberation, while maintaining contacts with Polish musical life. He worked post-war as a composer, in the film industry, and in later years as a writer and translator. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes in Berlin, and an edition of his songs is in preparation.

> Terezín Festival of Forbidden Music
> Laks at Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival

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