Songsof Theholocaust

works By James Simon Carlo taube viktor ullmann adolf Strauss Ilse weber Gideon klein norbert Glanzberg SoNgsof I rachel Joselson soprano rene lecuona piano WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM the TROY1627 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. with cello violin 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 hannah holman Scott Conklin TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 HolocausT ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2016 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. The Composers Carlo Taube (1897-1940) was a concert pianist, composer and conductor. He and his family were In 1941, the Nazi military began deporting Jews to the Czech town of Theresienstadt (Terezín), sent to Terezín in 1941. As a prisoner, he gave solo recitals and conducted performances of the which became one of the Jewish ghettos in the system of concentration camps run by the Nazis. An prisoner orchestra. Taube composed a number of original works in Terezín, including a symphony, unusually high number of artists and musicians were deported to Terezín, so that the camp could but the only surviving piece is “Ein Jüdisches Kind” (A Jewish Child), a lullaby for soprano and piano. be a “model” for use in Nazi propaganda to demonstrate how well the Jews were being treated. The The text is written by his wife, Erika Taube. They both died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz in 1944. camp authorities encouraged musical activity, occasionally offering prisoners respite from work for composition and rehearsal. The musicians worked and performed in the shadow of a tyrannical Viktor Ullman (1898-1944) was born in the stronghold town of Teschen, Silesia, within the regime, one that would eventually exterminate most of the inhabitants. Austro–Hungarian Empire and now a part of the Czech Republic. Educated in Vienna, Ullmann The musicians living in Terezín composed hundreds of vocal and instrumental works. Music, made important contributions to both Czech and German cultural life as a composer, conductor, though utilized by the Nazi propaganda machine, was a means of coping with the uncertainty and pianist and music critic. He understood the role of art as central to human spiritual and ethical constant fear that marked life in the camp. In a 1989 interview, Terezín survivor and composer Paul development. He was a gifted composer and studied with Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander Kling remarked, “There was no happiness. It was survival, as you know. Culture is very often a survival Zemlinsky. He was working in Prague in 1939 when Germany invaded, and was sent to Terezín in mechanism for nations, as it is for smaller groups… Because after all, everybody felt that there is 1942. During his two years there, he was directed by the camp authorities to devote his time to perhaps more chance in surviving if you are unified at least in spirit if not in anything else…” 1 musical composition and performance. While in captivity, he composed an opera, several piano The camp’s musicians were put on display during a visit by a delegation from the sonatas, a string quartet, and a collection of songs. He also arranged a number of Hebrew and International Committee of the Red Cross in the summer of 1944. Before the visit, the ghetto Yiddish songs. In 1944, he was murdered in Auschwitz. underwent a “beautification” program, which included the repainting of homes, the planting of new gardens, and the increased deportation of residents to reduce crowding. The delegation spent Ilse Weber (1903-1944) was a Jewish poet and writer of children’s books, and with her husband, eight hours touring Terezín, and was ultimately fooled by the newly renovated camp. The visit was a Willi Weber, settled in Prague, where she wrote for children’s periodicals and became a producer for carefully choreographed performance: the delegation enjoyed a performance by the camp’s orchestra, Czech Radio. Weber wrote German songs and theater pieces for children. Growing up, she learned to walked through the streets lined with fake bakeries and schools, and saw what they perceived as sing and play guitar, lute, mandolin, and balalaika, but never considered a professional musical career. proof of a humane environment. Following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Webers were able to get their oldest son Although it was not one of the notorious “death camps,” over 33,000 people died in Terezín Hanuš safely to Sweden on a “Kindertransport” before they were confined to Prague’s Jewish Ghetto. because of the brutal living conditions. Of the 150,000 Jews who were sent to there during the war, over They arrived at Terezín in 1942. Weber worked as a night nurse in the camp’s children’s infirmary, 84,000 were eventually deported to camps like Auschwitz where they were murdered in the gas chambers. doing everything she could for the young patients without the aid of medicine, which was forbidden to Jewish prisoners. When her husband was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944, Ilse volunteered to James Simon (1880-1944) was a pianist, composer, and musicologist born in Berlin into a wealthy join him with their son Tommy in order to keep her family together. She and her son were immediately Jewish family. He was sent to Terezín in April 1944, where he involved himself in the active musical sent to the gas chamber. Willi survived them by 30 years. Weber’s Theresienstadt poetry was collected culture of the camp, giving recitals and lectures. His time in Terezín was brief; he was sent to in the book “Inside These Walls, Sorrow Lives” (1991). Hanuš survived the Holocaust and participated Auschwitz and died in the gas chambers later that same year. in a cultural program commemorating his mother’s work in Berlin as recently as 2008. Gideon Klein (1919-1945) was a virtuosic pianist and composer whose career as a performer was Glanzberg went on to compose music in memory of those who perished in the death camps, cut short when Jews were forbidden public performances. He was deported to Terezín in 1941, where concentration camps, and ghettos. In 1933, there were 131,800 Jews documented to be living in he gave solo recitals featuring works by Mozart, Bach, Brahms, and Schoenberg. His compositions “Germany proper” and 43,000 in Austria. These Jewish citizens were completely immersed in the included chamber works for strings, solo piano, a song cycle for piano and alto, and many others. culture and language, and so it naturally follows that the texts are in German. “Sh’chav Beni” was composed by Shalom Charitonov, as a nigun (Jewish religious tune) for Yom His Holocaust Lieder, composed in 1983, were inspired by a collection of poems written by Kippur. During the pogroms of 1929 in Palestine, Emmanuel Harussi wrote new Hebrew lyrics. The death camp prisoners, both Jews and German resistant fighters, and compiled into a collection, "Der song appeared in several books, but Klein’s version differs from these as well as from Israeli oral Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland," by German journalist, Lea Rosh. The song cycle was premiered traditions. Klein was deported to Auschwitz and then to Fürstengrube in 1944. He died from unknown in Israel in 1994 by Israeli contralto Mira Zakai, who recorded them two years later with pianist, causes during the liquidation of the Fürstengrube camp in January 1945. Menachem Wiesenberg. Glanzberg’s songs evoke the late-Romantic style of the lieder of Schumann and Brahms, featuring strophic texts set to simple, bittersweet melodies. Adolf Strauss (1902-1944) was a pianist, conductor, and as a musician, active in Most (Brux), Czechoslovakia and Leipzig, Germany. Prior to World War II, he lived in Czechoslovakia and became an active musician at Terezín, where he composed several cabaret-like vocal pieces. Even in the grim circumstances of internment, composers like Strauss turned to light, even satirical music to provide relief from the heaviness of daily existence. In the fall of 1944, Strauss was transported to Auschwitz, where he perished that same year. Norbert Glanzberg (1910-2001) was not a victim of Terezín or Auschwitz. He was born in Austria- Hungary. In 1911, his family emigrated from Austria-Hungary to Würzburg, where he received his The Poets first harmonica at the age of three. He entered the Conservatory of Wurzburg and in 1929, was Werner Bergengruen (1892-1964) was born in Riga, which then belonged to the Russian Empire engaged as conductor in Aachen. After Hitler's rise to power, Glanzberg was unable to find work in Governorate of Livonia. In Munich, he served as a lieutenant during World War I. He married Germany and fled to Paris. Hired by the Universum Film AG as a composer in 1930, he wrote his Charlotte Hensel, a descendant of Fanny Mendelssohn. He became a full-time writer and his first film score for Billy Wilder, and the second for Max Ophüls. In 1933, Joseph Goebbels referred earlier works were about metaphysical and religious topics. The Nazis' rise to power led him to to Glanzberg as a degenerate Jewish artist and forced him into exile in Paris. In 1940, he was write more political works. A political conservative, his religion and the fact that his wife was of able to escape German arrest by fleeing to the unoccupied zone of the French Riviera, where he partly Jewish heritage caused his estrangement from the Nazis. In 1937 he was expelled from the composed hit songs for Yves Montand and spent several years on tour accompanying Édith Piaf, who Reichsschrifttumskammer for being unfit to contribute to German culture. After World War II, he lived sometimes used her popularity with the Nazis to help those in difficulty.

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