The ARC Ensemble, the GRAMMY-nominated ensemble made up of instructors at the Royal Conservatory of Music, will perform at the Royal Ontario Museum on May 27 as part of their ongoing series titled Music in Exile.
The concert coincides with the ROM’s current exhibit, titled Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.
When the Nazi regime gained power, and its troops spread across Europe, many Jewish and other composers and artists fled their homes, and those who could not paid a heavy price. Music in Exile was launched in 2006, and involves researching, performing, and recording the music of composers whose careers were altered, and sometimes came to an end, by the flight from Europe.
The ROM concert features the music of Pavel Haas, and Szymon Laks, two Jewish musicians whose artistic lives collided with the times they lived in. Both ended up in the concentration camp known as Auschwitz.
Pavel Haas
The program includes Haas’s string quartet titled Music from the Monkey Mountains.
Pavel Haas was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and he became a student of Leoš Janáček’s school of composition. He wrote more than 50 works during his lifetime, but the self-critical artist only assigned opus numbers to 18. He is known largely for his song cycles and string quartets, and he often used elements of folk music and jazz in his music.
When he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezín) in 1941, he found himself in the company of several other Moravian-Jewish composers there, including Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein and Hans Krása. Haas would compose another eight pieces while he was there, although only three survive.
In 1944, just before a visit from the Red Cross, the Nazis remodelled Theresienstadt, and Haas can actually be seen in a propaganda film that was made at the time. Shortly thereafter, Haas was among the 18,000 or so prisoners who were transferred to Auschwitz to be murdered in the gas chambers. He died there at the age of 45 in October 1944.
Szymon Laks
The other half of the program features Laks’s Quintet for piano and strings, based on Polish folk songs.
Szymon Laks was born in Warsaw on November 1, 1901 as a Russian citizen. After starting his studies in mathematics, he switched to music, and entered the Conservatoire of Warsaw in 1921. Poland was newly an independent country, and Laks became a Polish citizen.
His orchestral debut came in 1924, when the Warsaw Philharmonic performed one of his works, a symphonic poem titled Farys. That work has been lost to time.
Laks got work in Vienna playing the piano for silent films, but left for Paris not long after. There, he studied violin and composition at the Conservatoire National until 1929. His style was neo-classical and Neo-baroque, and Lake wrote many works during the 1930s, including many for the singer Tola Korian.
After the Nazi takeover of Paris, Laks was arrested in 1941, and taken to the camp at Pithiviers. He was subsequently deported to Auschwitz in 1942. There, however, his musical abilities were recognized, and he became the head of the orchestra at the concentration camp for two years before being transferred to Kaufering 11, a sub camp of Dachau. In 1945, the guards marched the prisoners out of the camp, but they fled soon after, aware that the Allies were close by.
Laks found his way back to Paris, and continued to compose for many years. He died in that city at the age of 82.
At the ROM: Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.
Those who fail to learn from history… are already repeating it, headlines would suggest. That’s what makes initiatives like the Royal Ontario Museum’s current major exhibit Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. all the more important.
The exhibition looks at not only the history, but the legacy of Auschwitz, which has emerged as the most significant Holocaust site. More than 1 million Jews, along with tens of thousands of Polish and Romani people, and Soviet prisoners of war, were detained and systematically murdered in an industrial-style manner.
Since the war ended, it has become, more than just a physical location, but a symbol of the ultimate evil of hatred, and the atrocities that result when governments not only sanction violence, but perpetrate it.
The Concert
The concert takes place at the Currelly Gallery on Level 1 of the Museum. A reception, including access to the exhibition will follow the concert.
- Find more details and tickets [HERE].
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