THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503140485
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
WHAT THE Red Cross saw on that day in 1944 was this: A Czech town an hour outside of Prague, its streets scrubbed clean, its houses freshly painted, its citizens all Jews.
People worked in the fields. They played soccer. They sat in cafes. They listened to an orchestra in the town square. They danced to the music of the Ghetto Swingers.
What the Red Cross saw on June 22, 1944, was Theresienstadt, a concentration camp disguised for propaganda purposes as a resort. It was a place to confine those Jews too famous to be shipped directly to their deaths. For prominent Czech musicians, writers and actors it was a final place to work, and a way-station before Auschwitz.
In the coming days two chamber music groups will play music by composers lost in the Holocaust; some works were written at Theresienstadt. On Monday, Apollo performs at Old Dominion University with comments by musicologist Susan Eischeid. On March 21, the Audubon Quartet, an ensemble including a child of Theresienstadt survivors, visits the Jewish Community Center of Tidewater. And between these concerts, the Virginia Symphony will play excerpts from a work censored by the Nazis in 1934.
These concerts follow a trend that has gained momentum as the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches. In recent years, studies of the rich artistic legacy of the Holocaust have intensified, with scholars, performers and record companies discovering beauty created despite the most abject conditions.
``I was raised in a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant household. I didn't even know about the Holocaust until I was 15 or 16,'' said Eischeid, a professor at Valdosta State College in Valdosta, Ga., in a telephone interview. ``In a German language class a teacher said, `Go off and do a report on the Warsaw Ghetto.' I was amazed.''
In the mid-'80s, she was seeking a dissertation topic at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and hit upon the idea of Holocaust music. ``I was very surprised. I just kept finding more things and more people. I started performing some of the music and was really struck by the immediacy of the response. I didn't expect it to be so powerful.''
The best-known example of music from the concentration camps is found in ``Playing for Time,'' the memoir of Auschwitz survivor Fania Fenelon, which was made into an award-winning TV movie with Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Alexander. Fenelon, a Parisian cabaret artist, was forced to play in a camp orchestra whose musicians also accompanied the death march to the ovens.
Theresienstadt - or Terezin, its Czech name - was a very different place. Some of the leading Czech musicians performed there. Ironically, some embarked upon full-time composing careers for the first time in their lives, as they were freed from the restrictions of having to make money. Their works were preserved in various hiding places and in some cases have taken years to resurface.
Among the inmates discussed in Joza Karas' book ``Music in Terezin: 1941-1945'' are composers Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullmann. They wrote in forms ranging from piano pieces to choral and orchestral works. Ullmann even reviewed camp concerts and wrote a one-act opera, ``Der Kaiser von Atlantis'' (Emperor of Atlantis), a satire in the manner of ``The Threepenny Opera'' composer Kurt Weill.
Eischeid said that when she first encountered music from the camps, she expected ``at the very least, it's always going to be in a minor key. Or at the most, it's going to be very atonal. On the contrary, it's always full of life.''
Some of the pieces on the Apollo and Audubon programs were written before the composers were captured. The Apollo concert includes the Bartok-like String Quartet No. 1 (1924) of Ervin Schulhoff, who died of tuberculosis at the Wuelzburg camp. The Audubons will play the funny ``Coach, Coachman and the Horse'' from Haas' exceptional Second Quartet (1925).
But many of the works from inside the camp are as optimistic as the ones written before the composers got there.
``Art functions for many things,'' said Audubon first violinist David Ehrlich, by telephone from Blacksburg, where the quartet is in residence at Virginia Tech. ``Sometimes it is an escape, sometimes it is a dream. Sometimes it is to present how you feel. Sometimes it is to uplift your friends.''
Ehrlich said his quartet's involvement with the Holocaust literature began with a German promoter, who was assembling programs of what the Nazis called ``Degenerate Music.'' At about the same time, the quartet was approached by a Blacksburg Jewish organization about playing a concert.
``One of the reasons we feel particularly keen about this is I grew up in Israel, and all the time heard about the Holocaust. It is part of my heritage,'' Erlich said.
But another member of the group has even closer ties.
Violist Doris Lederer knew growing up that her parents had survived the Holocaust, and they had moved to America from Istanbul, where her parents had settled after Auschwitz was liberated. Yet when she questioned them about the experience they would never answer.
``I respected their privacy, not wanting to open up all the wounds,'' Lederer said.
Then the quartet began researching their Jewish music repertoire. When Ehrlich mentioned Lederer's name, a Holocaust expert in Israel said, ``That has to be Wolfgang's daughter.''
Wolfgang Lederer, who is mentioned throughout the book ``Music in Terezin,'' was a leader in the Terezin musical community who played piano and accordion. He also conducted a production of the operetta ``Die Fledermaus'' that was debated for being so jocular - and so German - at such a serious time.
Ullmann, Haas and Krasa were all sent to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944, and executed the following day. Lederer was known to have survived, though his whereabouts have been unknown to researchers for years.
Doris Lederer's father, Peter, is in his 70s and is a pianist in Seattle, where he plays for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. She asked him about Wolfgang Lederer. He admitted he was that man, yet he still refused to discuss the specifics of life at Terezin.
``I'll tell you what's exciting to us,'' Ehrlich said. ``The Pavel Haas String Quartet No. 2, in its original form, included a jazz band. We would love it, of course, if Peter would play with us that piece. That would be an incredibly moving experience.''
The Audubon Quartet is completing negotiations for a concert of Jewish music at the American Museum of the Holocaust in the summer or fall. Yet Lederer and Ehrlich still have mixed feelings about the music they are playing.
``I'm not crazy about doing it, and yet I am,'' Ehrlich said. ``There is some wonderful music written and it needs to be heard.''
Though a German promoter originally suggested this repertoire to Ehrlich, the violinist refuses to play it in Germany. ``I made it a condition to my colleagues,'' Ehrlich said. ``No matter what piles of gold they lower for us, I will not perform this music for the German people. I don't feel these composers would appreciate if we were to go to play for the entertainment of the German people.
``I don't mind playing Beethoven or Mozart in Germany. Maybe there's no logic in this.'' ILLUSTRATION: SAM HUNDLEY/Staff photo illustration.
Color photo
Doris Lederer, right, of the Audubon Quartet discovered a startling
personal connection to the music her group was researching.
Graphic
IN CONCERT
Apollo, a chamber group featuring Virginia Symphony players, will
present ``Silenced Voices: Composers of the Holocaust'' Monday at 8
p.m. at the Fine and Performing Arts Center, Old Dominion
University. Tickets: $10. For more information, call 583-6933.
by CNB