{"id":15063,"date":"2013-10-04T07:17:19","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T12:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=15063"},"modified":"2013-10-04T07:17:19","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T12:17:19","slug":"music-can-be-escape-as-well-as-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/10\/04\/music-can-be-escape-as-well-as-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Music can be escape as well as resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alice<\/a>
Alice Herz-Sommer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joyce DiDonato and Gidon Kremer believe artists should stand up to homophobic laws and punishments in Russia. Others believe music should stay away from politics. It’s not a new debate. But why can’t music be both?<\/p>\n

I can’t think of a more incisive example than the role of music in Nazi Germany, where it was used for good as well as evil political purposes, and where a desperate search for relief from terror masqueraded as escapism.<\/p>\n

Filmmaker Malcolm Clarke has managed to incorporate all of these issues along with a sheer love of life itself in The Lady in Number 6<\/em>. Ostensibly, this is a documentary about Czech pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, who gave more than 100 recitals as a prisoner at the Terezin death camp from 1943 to the end of World War II. With any luck, she will turn 110 next month.<\/p>\n

It casts those who dismiss music as escapism in a whole new light when someone like a fellow Holocaust survivor extolls the value of listening to the music stored in memory: “You can go into another world, one that is much nicer than the one we’re actually living in.”<\/p>\n

In other words, just the act of learning, making and listening to music — any music — might have value that we cannot estimate or predict.<\/p>\n

Herz-Sommer’s story is at once heartbeaking and heart-warming. Aside from the overly schlocky background music, Clarke’s documentary is a beautiful effort (you can rent the film online here<\/a>). There is another nice, earlier documentary about Herz-Sommer made by Christopher Nupen, entitled Everything is a Present<\/em>, available on DVD (details here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Here is an extended trailer for Clarke’s film:<\/p>\n