Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited

295 Regent Street London W1B 2JH

Telephone 020-7580 2060 Fax 020-7637 3490 7 June 2004: for immediate release Website www.boosey.com

B&H looks East with Czech acquisition Music publishing interests of Tempo (Prague) acquired by Boosey & Hawkes

Boosey & Hawkes acquires Boosey & Hawkes has acquired the music publishing interests of Tempo (Prague), Czech copyrights from including the copyrights in a range of Czech 20th century music by Hans Krása and Tempo (Prague) Pavel Haas associated with the Terezín ghetto, and a selection of works by Bohuslav Martinuo and Zdenekv Lukás.v The acquired works will now be published by B&H worldwide, the new agreement building upon an earlier close relationship in which B&H represented Tempo works outside the Czech and Slovak Republics. Tempo will continue with its book and magazine publishing, but all its music publishing activities have transferred to Boosey & Hawkes in Berlin.

Brundibár by Hans Krása The most widely performed of the newly acquired works is Hans Krása’s children’s ...children’s and opera , which has enjoyed over 120 stagings during the past decade. Its historic testament... jaunty Czech melodies and rhythms belie the dark circumstances of its creation in the late 1930s as the storm clouds of Nazi persecution spread across Europe. Premiered in secret at an orphanage in Prague, the opera was repeatedly performed at the Terezín camp, where the , children and teachers were housed en route to their doom at Auschwitz. A performance for the visiting committee of the Red Cross was captured on celluloid as part of a Hitler propaganda film, called Theresienstadt – a film about the Jewish settlement area, intended to deflect attention from the Holocaust.

Brundibár Brundibár is both a testament to creativity fighting against terrible adversity, and an new English version by attractive children’s opera in its own right with its tale of youngsters and animals Tony Kushner with designs outwitting an evil organ-grinder. Recent productions have included a new English by Maurice Sendak version by Tony Kushner, staged at the Chicago Opera Theater with designs by Maurice Sendak, in an imaginative double-bill with Martinu’so Comedy on the Bridge, now available to other presenting organisations. Kushner and Sendak have collaborated further on a lavishly illustrated children’s book of Brundibár, to be published in Europe by Walker Books in September. Full information can be found at www.boosey.com/opera.

music by Haas, Martinuo Other significant Tempo works now published by Boosey & Hawkes are Pavel Haas’s and Lukásv joins catalogue opera Charlatan, revived on disc by Decca and successfully staged at the Wexford Festival in 1998. This colourful tale of a medical quack and a fairground troupe was a hit with public and press at its premiere in 1938, but disappeared from the repertoire with the Nazi occupation the following year. Haas’s orchestral works include the Study for Strings premiered at Terezín under Karel Ancerlv and the Symphony completed posthumously by Zdenekv Zouhar. Martinu’so works joining the B&H catalogue include the Czech Rhapsody for baritone, chorus and orchestra, an early Piano Quintet, a selection of cabaret songs, and a cycle for chorus. Works by Zdenekv Lukásv (b.1928) combine Czech folk influences with a modern idiom, and include his Piano Concerto No.3.

Continued... Czech music from The newly acquired works from Tempo (Prague) will join existing Czech repertoire in the Boosey & Hawkes Boosey & Hawkes catalogue including Martinu’so six symphonies and Double Concerto, Weinberger’s Schwanda the Bagpiper, Suk’s The Ripening, and original imprints of music by Dvorák,v Novák and Suk in the Simrock Edition. Boosey & Hawkes also represents the Dilia stage catalogue in the UK, British Commonwealth, Eire and North America including Martinu’so Julietta and a range of by Dvorákv and Smetana.

For further information about the published by Boosey & Hawkes please visit www.boosey.com/composers or contact: David Allenby (Head of Publicity) tel: +44 (0)20 7291 7210, email: [email protected] Jo Dawson (Publicity Assistant) tel: +44 (0)20 7291 7226, email: [email protected]