The Second in Citymusicʼs Series of Three Chamber Music Concerts Leading up to Our May Production of Brundibar, the Anti-Nazi Childrenʼs Opera

The Composers of Theresienstadt, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, April 11, 2012

Welcome to the second in CityMusicʼs series of three chamber music concerts leading up to our May production of Brundibar, the anti-Nazi childrenʼs opera. Our Persistence of Creativity series seeks to contextualize the opera by presenting the music of composers impacted by oppression, war and genocide, and by telling their stories. I would like to remind you of the two remaining Persistence of Creativity events: this Saturday at 2 PM, our ﬁnal chamber music concert, The Persecuted, presenting music relating to wars and genocide around the world, will be performed downtown at the Cleveland Public Library; and next Tuesday, April 17, from 4-7:30, Facing History and Ourselves will present a workshop titled Teaching the Holocaust Through Literature at John Carroll University. Both events are free.

The second of our three chamber music concerts, which you will hear tonight, focuses on the extraordinary musical culture of Theresienstadt, one of the Nazi concentration camps. Although the story is tragic, the courage and humanity of these musicians is inspiring. Those who experience the worst often see most deeply, and the music you will hear tonight is a gift, their lasting legacy. As in all of the concerts in this series, we are performing movements rather than complete works so that you may hear a greater number of composers.

Theresienstadt, also known as Terezin, was a Czech garrison town that the Nazis used as a military base when they occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia in 1939, violating the terms of the disastrous Munich Agreement of 1938. The ﬁrst concentration camp, Dachau, was established near Munich in 1933. By the time the SS converted Terezin into a transport center where Czech Jews could be gathered on their way to labor camps and killing centers farther east, they had ﬁne-tuned their planning and manipulation of the camps. With baldly cynical, cold calculation, the Nazi leadership determined that Terezin would be a propaganda tool. It would be known as a retirement settlement for the elderly - in fact, a “spa town.” It would hold certain categories of Jews - those whose fate might be particularly questioned by the rest of the world - and thereby anticipate and neutralize protests on their behalf.1

In 2012, we of course know all too well what the concentration camps were. In 1941, however, the Third Reich was still rather successfully telling its own citizens, and the rest of the world, that the Jews were merely being gathered in labor camps. The elderly could not plausibly be put to labor, nor could disabled WW I veterans, so they were sent instead to Terezin, where they could “safely retire.” Soon another category was added to this list. Prominent Jews, particularly those with cultural, artistic and intellectual backgrounds, those whose disappearance could attract national or even international

1 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Theresienstadt: Establishment.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10007506. Accessed on 2/25/2012.

Rebecca S. Mayhew. Copyright 2012 CityMusic Cleveland. The Composers of Theresienstadt, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, April 11, 2012 attention, were also sent to the “spa town” of Terezin.2 Of the 140,000 prisoners who were sent to Terezin, only 10% survived.3

Terezinʼs cultural life, particularly its music, was extraordinary. Terezin was not entirely unique; almost all the concentration camps had ofﬁcial orchestras and other musical groups. Even death camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka had orchestras where the musiciansʼ job was often, chillingly, to play as the other prisoners marched to the gas chambers. But Terezin was special in its large mass of very accomplished artists and intellectuals. Lectures, plays, art, literature, poetry, concerts, schools, a large library, a cabaret and a jazz club were all part of daily life in Terezin, and all were of incredible quality.

The highly sophisticated Kabarett culture of Berlin and Prague came to Terezin in the Karussell Kabaret led by Kurt Gerron, who in 1930 had starred opposite Marlene Deitrich in The Blue Angel. One Terezin survivor hired by scholars to decipher the veiled references, double meanings and insider jokes embedded in the songs had to stop working because she was laughing so hard that tears ran down her face.4 In the forbidden schools of Terezin, teenagers were taught science by some of the most prominent physicists and chemists of the day. Children received art instruction from well-known painters and illustrators. Hundreds of lectures were delivered on every subject imaginable - more than one per day for the life of the camp.5

And the music! Art music had been a dominant force in European cultural life for centuries, and it remained so in Terezin. At ﬁrst there were just a few musicians practicing in secret, as it was forbidden for Jews to own anything of value. When their activities were discovered by the SS, the Head of the Council of Jewish Elders was able to rescue them from punishment. He suggested that the Nazis should instead use music in Terezin as a way to show the world how well they were treating the Jews. The camp Commander, seeing a chance to earn recognition from his superiors, agreed, and this was how music came to be part of Terezinʼs propaganda.6 Soon there were orchestras, choruses, chamber groups and composers, and they persisted in performing and writing music. Some music was made openly, some underground, but it was constant.

2 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Theresienstadt: Establishment.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10007506. Accessed on 2/25/2012.

3 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Theresienstadt.” http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ article.php?ModuleId=10005424. Accessed on 2/21/2012.

4 Lisa Peschel. “Translating Laughter: A Cabaret from the Terezín Ghetto.” April 6, 2011. HowlRound Blog. www.howlround.com, Accessed on 3/1/2012.

5 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Theresienstadt: Cultural Life.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10007461. Accessed on 2/28/2012.

6 Edgar Krasa, Theresienstadt survivor. Interviews and correspondence, Rebecca Mayhew, 2012

The childrenʼs opera Brundibar was publicly performed fifty-five times; new casts had to be trained repeatedly as the child performers were transported to Auschwitz. The heroic conductor Rafael Schachter, one of the pioneers of Terezinʼs musical life, began by secretly teaching The Bartered Bride to a chorus of prisoners; it was performed thirty-five times. Soon he moved on to The Kiss, then to The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro. In his most important and defiant work in Terezin, Schachter taught chorus after chorus the Verdi Requiem, as chorus after chorus was gutted by deportations.7 But Schachter was not the only one organizing rehearsals and performances. Operas, oratorios, recitals and chamber music concerts could be found everywhere. The Nazis didnʼt originally mean for culture to thrive at Terezin, but thrive it did, and Nazi officials alternately tried to suppress it or exploit it, depending on their current needs and mood.

Terezinʼs success as a Nazi propaganda tool was sadly proven in June of 1944 when the Red Cross visited and gave the camp an innocuously good report. Terezin had a population of about 8,000 before the war, but held as many as 55,000 prisoners at once while it was a concentration camp. Overcrowding led to disease, infestation, deplorably unsanitary conditions, and starvation. The Nazis prepared the camp for the Red Cross visit with a beautiﬁcation program that included painting, planting of gardens and ﬂowers, and the construction of a fake main street, complete with shops, bakeries, and even a bank. Overcrowding was eased by transporting over 7,500 prisoners to Auschwitz.8

A new community hall was used for cultural programs, including a performance of Brundibar that was presented to the two Red Cross delegates and a number of important SS officials. Rafael Schachter was also ordered to lead his chorus in a final performance of the Verdi Requiem, famously telling his singers, “We sing what we can not say” - meaning that they would be delivering the message of final judgment - Dies Irae - to the Nazis directly. It was the highest point of his musical life in Terezin, and the chance he had been waiting for. We can only imagine the emotional impact of the performance.9

After the Red Cross visit was over, the Nazis made further use of their investment in Terezin by producing a propaganda ﬁlm, forcing the prisoners to work as writers, actors, set designers, editors and composers. Kurt Gerron was persuaded to serve as director. Commonly known by the title, “The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a Town,” the ﬁlm shows prisoners enjoying gardening, chess games, concerts and all manner of outdoor recreation in the sunny, beautiful Czech countryside. It was never shown publicly, and only parts of it survived the war. Ironically, it was a time of relative peace and security in Terezin. The transports that had been a constant source of terrible anxiety ceased, and

7 Edgar Krasa, Theresienstadt survivor. Interviews and correspondence, Rebecca Mayhew, 2012

8 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Theresienstadt: Red Cross Visit.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10007463. Accessed on 3/8/2012.

9 Edgar Krasa, Theresienstadt survivor. Interviews and correspondence, Rebecca Mayhew, 2012

Rebecca S. Mayhew. Copyright 2012 CityMusic Cleveland. The Composers of Theresienstadt, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, April 11, 2012 everyone had a little more food and some clothes. By the time the filming ended, even the prisoners suspected that the end of the war was near. They watched squadrons of allied bombers fly overhead, and cheered the appearance of these “silver birds.” As soon as filming was complete, however, the transports began again in earnest, and soon the SS had deported 19,000 prisoners. Most of the filmʼs cast - including the four composers whose work you will hear tonight, the children of Brundibar, and Rafael Schachter and his final chorus - were sent to Auschwitz and death.

Hans Krasa (1899-1944): Passacaglia and Fugue (1944)

By the beginning of the war, Hans Krasa had already received international attention as both a composer and conductor. A student of Zemlinskyʼs, influenced by Mahler and Schoenberg, and fascinated by the French group of composers known as Les Six, Krasa had an individual and compelling compositional voice. His first symphony and first opera were performed throughout Europe and in the US, conducted by luminaries such as Serge Koussevitsky and George Szell. He was a fine conductor himself, and although he was offered conducting posts in Berlin, Paris and Chicago, he could not bring himself to leave Prague. Krasaʼs family - his father was a Czech lawyer and his mother a German Jew - was well off, and Krasa was part of a circle of intellectuals and artists who were particularly at home playing chess and discussing literary and artistic matters in Prague.10

Despite his many important compositions, Krasa is still most well-known for Brundibar, the childrenʼs opera. It was written in 1938, and rehearsals were underway at a Prague orphanage when Krasa was arrested and transported to Terezin. Soon after, the children from the orphanage and their conductor followed. The conductorʼs name? Rafael Schachter. Rehearsals resumed at Terezin, and the opera, which had an overtly anti-Nazi story but was in Czech and therefore not immediately well-understood by the SS, was performed, as I mentioned, ﬁfty-ﬁve times.

Krasa continued to compose in Terezin. It is not known how many pieces he wrote, but only 4 survive. The String Trio you are about to hear was written in 1944, and, like Gideon Kleinʼs Trio, was originally a quartet; one of the violinists was deported, and both pieces had to be reworked.11 It was completed shortly before Krasa was transported to Auschwitz. When he arrived there, the SS determined he was too weak to work, and a possible threat to order; he was gassed within two days of arrival.12

10 Thomas D. Svatos. “Hans Krasa.” http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/hans_krasa/

11 Ela Weissberger, Theresienstadt survivor. Interview, Eugenia Strauss. January 2012.

12 Thomas D. Svatos. “Hans Krasa.” http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/hans_krasa/

Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944): String Quartet No. 3 (1944)

By the time Viktor Ullmann arrived at Terezin in September of 1942, the campʼs musical culture was so well-established that Ullmannʼs officially assigned work duty was to organize musical activity in the camp. He was suited to the task, being a well-known and acclaimed composer, conductor, pianist and music critic. Baptized a Catholic, the son of a Jewish father who had converted to Catholicism to assist his rise through the ranks of the German military, Ullmann studied composition with Schoenberg in Vienna. He was later strongly influenced by Berg, and by the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who was a prominent intellectual figure of the time. Steinerʼs philosophy, which he called Anthroposophy, strives to synthesize the sometimes oppositional disciplines of science, art and religion through the investigation of innate human wisdom.13 Ullmann was so deeply drawn to it that, for couple of years, he stopped composing to run an Anthroposophic bookstore. He soon started writing again, and was prolific, composing at least seventy-eight works in his short lifetime.14

Ullmann tried desperately to emigrate, writing to friends and colleagues all over the world. All efforts failed, however, and in 1939 he and his wife Annie Winternitz eventually made the incredibly difﬁcult decision to put two of their three children on a kindertransport to England. Their marriage dissolved, and Ullmann and his new wife were deported to Terezin in 1942.15

In Terezin, Ullmann was the “top of everyone; he was the critic, the advisor, and everyone looked up to him.”16 Twenty-six rather opinionated concert reviews survive, and Ullmann delivered a number of lectures on both music and Anthroposophy. He ran several ensembles, including one dedicated to new music and another, the Collegium Musicum, to old. He wrote numerous essays. He also composed twenty-three works, including the string quartet you will soon hear. Especially notable was his opera, The Kaiser of Atlantis, which was rehearsed and ready to perform but cancelled at the last minute, either by the Council of Jewish Elders or by the SS itself, because of the obvious parallel between the operaʼs despotic Kaiser character and Hitler.17

In his famous essay, “Goethe and Ghetto” (1944), Ullmann wrote: “It must be emphasized that Theresienstadt has served to enhance, not to impede, my musical activities, that by no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon, and that our endeavor with respect to Arts was commensurate with our will to live.”

13 http://www.waldorfanswers.org/Anthroposophy.htm

14 Gwyneth Bravo. “Viktor Ullmann.” http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/viktor_ullmann

15 Ibid.

16 Edgar Krasa, Theresienstadt survivor. Interviews and correspondence, Rebecca Mayhew, 2012

17 David Bloch. “Viktor Ullmann.” http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/theresienstadt/ullmann-victor/

Ullmann was transported on October 16, 1944 to Auschwitz, where he died in the gas chambers.

Pavel Haas (1899-1944): Woodwind Quintet (1929)

Primarily because of his 3 wonderful string quartets, Pavel Haas has come to be considered one of the most important 20th century Czech composers. In fact, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society will soon present a concert by the acclaimed Pavel Haas Quartet, which chose its name in recognition of Haasʼs contribution to Czech music, rather than the tragic circumstances of his death. Partly because his string music is so well-known, we have decided to instead program his Woodwind Quintet, which is equally marvelous.

Pavel Haas was born into a wealthy and prominent family in Brno, and after service in WW I, began to seriously study composition. He was soon part of Janacekʼs master class, and Janacekʼs inﬂuence is very strong in Haasʼs music. Haasʼs brother Hugo was an important ﬁgure in Czech cinema, and became a successful actor in the US after the war. Partly because of this connection, Pavel Haas wrote quite a bit of music for the theatre and cinema. Some of his most important works, most notably his Suite for Oboe, his string quartets and his opera The Charlatan, followed, and Haas was by this time a mature composer with his own voice. After the Nazi occupation, Haas divorced his wife (a non-Jew) in order to protect her and their daughter from harm, but his new status as a single man made it more likely that he would be deported. Indeed he was, arriving in Terezin in 1941.18

Initially ill, depressed and withdrawn, Haas was goaded into composing again by the relentless Gideon Klein, who reportedly put blank sheets of paper in front of him and repeatedly encouraged him to work. His most famous Terezin composition was the Study for Strings that was ﬁlmed for the Nazi propaganda movie (Karl Ancerl conducting). You can see a clip of it on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museumʼs website. The piece is great, the musicians perform beautifully, and at the end, Haas can be seen stifﬂy bowing.19 But perhaps his best piece, also composed in Terezin, is the cycle Four Songs on Chinese Poetry. It was performed in Terezin in June of 1944.20

The Woodwind Quintet you are about to hear shows Haas a composer of great gifts. You will hear theatrical elements, as well as Moravian folksongs. Janacekʼs inﬂuence is clear in the music as well as in the wonderful orchestration for this notoriously difﬁcult- to-write-for ensemble.

Haas was on the same October 16 transport that took the other composers to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, he was immediately gassed.

18 Michael Beckerman. “Pavel Haas.” http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/pavel_haas/

19 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ﬁ.php?ModuleId=10007463&MediaId=234

20 Michael Beckerman. “Pavel Haas.” http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/pavel_haas/

Gideon Klein (1919-1945): Trio for Strings (1944)

Twenty years younger than the other composers you have heard tonight, Gideon Klein brought a dynamic energy to Terezinʼs musical life. His formal training was constrained by the political situation, and ended when the Nazis closed the Czech Universities in 1939, so in many ways he was self-taught. His prodigious musical gifts were evident early, and his sister recalls him reading scores of Bach and Mozart in bed as if they were novels. Although he never had the opportunity to study with either, Janacek and Schoenberg were strong inﬂuences.21

In Terezin, the charismatic Klein was everywhere: assisting Rafael Schachter and other conductors, including Karel Ancerl; performing countless solo and chamber concerts (he was a wonderful pianist and cellist); teaching the campʼs orphans; and composing.22 You will remember that he prodded Pavel Haas into productivity. He painstakingly reconstructed a battered, smuggled piano. He also began conduct near the end of his time at Terezin, and Ancerl later said Klein would certainly have been among the best conductors of his generation, had he survived.23 Others have compared him to Leonard Bernstein, noting Kleinʼs similar combination of charisma, energy and compositional skill.

Affectionately called “a second Mozart” by the other composers in Terezin,24 Gideon Klein composed several choral works, a piano sonata and a string quartet while in the camp, as well as the Trio you are about to hear. He was sent to Auschwitz nine days after completing it, and then on to a labor camp where he perished in circumstances unknown.

21 David Bloch, “Gideon Klein.” http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/theresienstadt/klein-gideon/ Accessed 3/14/2012.

22 Michael Beckerman, “Gideon Klein.” http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/gideon_klein/ Accessed 3/14/2012.

23 David Bloch, “Gideon Klein.” http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/theresienstadt/klein-gideon/ Accessed 3/14/2012.

24 Edgar Krasa, Theresienstadt survivor. Interviews and correspondence, Rebecca Mayhew, 2012

Paul Cox (1969-): Just.Are.Same. (Oboe and String Quartet, electronic track)

Because we wanted to emphasize the point that genocide is a worldwide problem that has persisted throughout history, neither unique to Nazi Germany nor just a problem of the past, each of our three concerts features this 2010 piece by Cleveland composer Paul Cox. Inspired by the brave cellist who donned concert attire and performed every day in the central square of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, Cox wrote a piece that touches on the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides, as well as the Holocaust. He combines Balophon music with fragments of Albinoni to accompany an electronic track of spoken text drawn from victim testimony, news broadcasts and war crimes trials. Rather than memorializing, and thereby beginning to forget, these genocides, Just.Are.Same. seeks, in the spirit of Elie Wiesel, to keep the memories fresh and even raw. The title comes from a Rwandan survivor who questions why genocide keeps occurring despite our best efforts to prevent it. She concludes with her own solution: parents must teach their children that all people are created the same, “just are same.”