ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Reviewed by Malcolm Miller
posted 19 March 2006

‘I wandered through Theresienstadt’ was a moving musical commemoration of Holocaust Day 2006. The music and musicians of Terezín were honoured in an eloquent concert presented by Jewish Music Central and the Jewish Music Institute at the Great Portland Street Synagogue, Central London , on 26 January 2006 , the eve of national Holocaust Day. Amongst the highlights were songs and pieces by Terezín composers Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas and James Simon, written in the fortress city where the Nazis imprisoned and tens of thousands of Jews and whence they deported most of them to their deaths. Yet this was a concert of hope, as Geraldine Auerbach, the Director of the Jewish Music Institute, underlined in her introduction. For the memorial prayer, screening of a TV film about two musician survivors meeting after 40 years, and the music, all conveyed the message that ‘we shall survive’. Cantor Stephen Leas echoed this in his swinging rendition of Abraham Ellstein’s ‘Ikh Zing’ at the conclusion: a hit song composed in the 1920s for Molly Picon in the film Mamele, which summed up the spirit of optimism and survival.

An expressive Lament by James Simon, a lesser-known Terezín composer, launched the evening, played with intensity by Israeli cellist Sagi Hartov partnered by the Israeli pianist Marc Verter, Its modal meditative motifs captured the grief and the sorrow of the oppression, aptly characterising the suffering of the ‘inmates’ of Terezín. Paradoxically cultural life in Terezín flourished, and a narrative by a survivor, Zdenke Ehrlich, authoress of the autobiographical My Lucky Star, paid tribute to Alice Sommer, who at 102 is the oldest survivor of Terezín, and was the pianist in the premiere of Krasa’s Brundibar, in which her son Raphael, then six, played a character; he was later to become a leading concert cellist. A story and ballad about Theresienstadt by prolific song-collector Jerry Silverman followed. Silverman related the tale of the Jeitteles dynasty to illustrate the tragic fate of European Jewry. The eighteenth-century Jeitteles had been a scientist who discovered a smallpox vaccine in Prague and who was honoured by the Emperor. His grandson Aloys was a doctor and poet, whose poems were set by Beethoven as the first true song-cycle, An die ferne Geliebte. Finally Berthold Jeitteles, born in 1875, was incarcerated in Terezín in 1939. His amazing survival, following deportation to Auschwitz and return to Terezín, symbolized the harrowing ordeal that awaited even the most illustrious family. Silverman sung his ballad with poignant simplicity, which was followed by Cantor Stephen Leas’s rhapsodic cantorial rendition of the Hebrew memorial prayer, its fervent and inspiring melody reaching a pure-toned falsetto at the intimate, intense climax.

It set the ambience for the screening of the TV film They never touched my bread which followed. The film was made twenty years ago in 1986, when the Jewish Music Festival (which later became the JMI) held an event of reconciliation in Canterbury Cathedral, at which Ronald Senator’s Requiem for Terezín was premiered, with Louis Berkman as the cantor soloist. This work was set alongside performances by the Zemel choir of other Hebrew works, and the occasion afforded an opportunity to invite two survivors of Terezín, the pianist Edith Kraus and the baritone Karel Berman, to meet after forty years. A film was made of their reunion, and concert, and broadcast on Remembrance Day 1986. Berman, principal bass of the Prague National Opera, passed away recently, but the film kept its contemporary topicality. The title is a quote by Edith Kraus who somehow focused on the good things at Terezín: despite the terrible hunger, deprivation and squalor, human respect and dignity was maintained, and it was music above all which kept the spirits high. To the interviewer, Peter Williams, Kraus emphasised that the Nazis never attended the concerts, which were only for the Jewish ‘inmates’. Kraus was always concerned for her husband who was finally deported, and suggested that ‘women were stronger’; somehow they survived, while the men suffered more. Asked if she could ever forgive, Kraus answered: ‘I cannot hate […] but neither can I […] go to Germany ’. The film concluded with Peter Williams’ telling words: ‘while their music survives, they are remembered’. That thought provided a moving link into the second half of the programme which featured much beautiful music.

Sagi Hartov and Marc Verter, both members of the Masada Trio (with violinist Daniel Cohen), performed Piece in a Jewish Style by Yehoyachin Stuchevsky, the cellist-composer who best represents the émigré pioneer generation of Israeli musicians: he was a member of the famous Kolish Quartet who premiered Schoenberg’s works in Vienna in the 1930s, then settled in Palestine, adapting his style to his adopted home. The piece was full of yearning and passion, with echoes of Strauss in the harmony, and its hints of tenderness were well caught. The centrepiece was a group of songs by two Terezín composers, Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas. Klein was a young student when he entered Terezín, and his close contact with Viktor Ullman, Schoenberg’s pupil, as well as other senior composers, had a considerable impact on his music. One can only speculate as to what his achievements might have been had he survived. Even so Klein’s output in Terezín was remarkable, including works for string trio, quartets and songs. His beguiling Wiegenlied was here sung with consummate artistry by Maya Kasir accompanied by Marc Verter, with a Hebrew text. Its ravishing harmony was reminiscent of modern Israeli music. The duo, who are specialists in such repertoire, also gave a superb performance of Four Songs on Folk Tunes, an early work by Pavel Haas, which he then orchestrated in Terezín. The first sing ‘Regen’ is lively and folklike, while ‘In der Niklaskompagnie’ is a ironic march; the third song ‘Sonnenuntergang’ was the most expressive, a calm, eloquent reflection on life, while the final song, ‘Dass der Teufel euch hol’ retrieved the initial humour, yet with powerful harmony and exciting textures and leaps, and a virtuoso piano part. Though they are described as cabaret songs, the Terezín songs by Ilse Weber which ensued, were particularly moving in their performance by Hilda Bronstein, accompanied on the accordion by Sarah Aaronson. Weber perished with her son at Auschwitz , yet her husband, whom she refused to allow to be deported alone (she followed him) survived, as did one son who had already escaped. ‘I wandered through Thereisenstadt’ and ‘Weigala’, both sung in German, were both poignantly atmospheric. Remarkably, Sarah Aaronson, who directs the NW London Orchestra, had participated in the Canterbury concert in 1986 with Edith Kraus and Pavel Berman shown earlier in the film. Hilda Bronstein continued her song selection with ‘Schnirele Perele’, a Yiddish song of hope, and all performers came on stage for the finale, the ‘Terezín March’, a popular song that summed up a spirit of defiance of despair, with a Kurt Weill lilt. One audience member recalled singing it, which underlined all the more how the pages of this chapter of history still lie open, the memories still vivid. The evening helped one to appreciate and imagine some of the unspeakable experiences of those times. At the sixtieth-anniversary Holocaust Day in 2005, Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, emphasised that, 60 years on, it is the responsibility of the current generation to bear the burden of memory of the past as the memories of older generations fade. And this memorial concert evening, which featured so many young musicians, proved that in spite of the destruction from which it was born, the memory of a people and a culture, may act as an inspiration and affirmation of life.

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