Our friend Scott Wheeler (https://scottwheeler.org/) invited us to the Terezín Music Foundation's 2025 gala concert at Symphony Hall last Sunday, and we were happy to accept. We don’t usually go to concerts, preferring plays, but we wanted to spend time with Scott, and this was an opportunity. For his part, he wanted to hear his friend the pianist Beth Levin play. She had performed his compositions during his career; they had been friends and colleagues since the 1980s.
I didn’t know anything about the organization before I got there. As I began to read the program, I suddenly realized why the name Terezín sounded familiar. It was the name of a WWII-era Nazi concentration camp. An essay by Beth told the horrifying story. The place was in what is now the Czech Republic. The Nazis sent artists, musicians, and writers there, claiming they would “flourish” in this Jewish “retirement settlement.” The foundation is dedicated to championing the creative people who were put to death there and elsewhere.
The afternoon featured works by two Czech composers. One was Hot Sonate Jazz, composed by Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) in 1930, and performed by Philipp Staudlin, an alto saxophonist, and Yoko Hagino, a pianist. A married couple, they perfectly melded the parts of this work, which was lighthearted, sexy, and provocative, but also melancholic and plaintive. It may be one of Schulhoff's most accessible works. He was an avant-gards-ist. In 1919, thirty years before John Cage’s 4’33, Schulhoff composed a silent work of his own, In Futurum, which consists entirely of rests and playful instructions to the “musicians.” Schulhoff was also political: not only a Jew but a communist, he was doubly despised by the Nazis, who barred him from giving concerts in Germany, where he was living. Nor were his works allowed to be publicly performed there by anyone else. His native Prague offered him refuge when the worst of it began, but when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he was in danger again, and in 1941, as he was planning to emigrate to the Soviet Union, which had granted him citizenship, he was arrested and sent to Würzburg prison, where he died.
Beth performed a work by the concert's second featured artist, Gideon Klein, who composed Piano Sonata as a twenty-four-year-old in 1943 while he was in Terezín. Klein (1919-1945) performed, conducted, taught, and composed there until being deported to Auschwitz and then Fürstengrube, a work camp. Before his death, he wrote a letter that reached his sister, Lisa, begging her, “Don’t forget me!” On the screen above Beth was a portrait painting of Klein. It had hung in Lisa's apartment above a piano. She was the only survivor of their family. The piece, we were told, was dedicated to her.
The Klein work was loud and frantic, then soft and light, then loud again and defiantly dissonant. Its urgency struck me. Beth was a vixen performing it, her back hunched over the keyboard, her hands striking the keys from a great height with force, her white hair flying. With the same freedom of movement and expression, she also played Beethoven's 1828 Piano Sonata, No. 22 in A Major. Along with his own compositions, Klein had played Beethoven in Terezín.
When we met Beth in the Green Room afterwards, in contrast to her performing persona she was sweet and grandmotherly. How could such music have been produced by this woman? I asked my startled self. I also asked myself how such music could have been composed by Klein under his dire circumstances.
Pictured below on the right, Klein's painted portrait; on the left, a photograph of Schulhoff. On YouTube I sought out Hot Sonate Jazz and listened to it again with pleasure. You can also find Klein's Piano Sonata. marked "No. 1," sadly, as there was no other. Elsewhere on the internet, you can find descriptions of both men's works that real critics of music (unlike myself) have written., as well as myriad accolades. They will not be forgotten.
I didn’t know anything about the organization before I got there. As I began to read the program, I suddenly realized why the name Terezín sounded familiar. It was the name of a WWII-era Nazi concentration camp. An essay by Beth told the horrifying story. The place was in what is now the Czech Republic. The Nazis sent artists, musicians, and writers there, claiming they would “flourish” in this Jewish “retirement settlement.” The foundation is dedicated to championing the creative people who were put to death there and elsewhere.
The afternoon featured works by two Czech composers. One was Hot Sonate Jazz, composed by Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) in 1930, and performed by Philipp Staudlin, an alto saxophonist, and Yoko Hagino, a pianist. A married couple, they perfectly melded the parts of this work, which was lighthearted, sexy, and provocative, but also melancholic and plaintive. It may be one of Schulhoff's most accessible works. He was an avant-gards-ist. In 1919, thirty years before John Cage’s 4’33, Schulhoff composed a silent work of his own, In Futurum, which consists entirely of rests and playful instructions to the “musicians.” Schulhoff was also political: not only a Jew but a communist, he was doubly despised by the Nazis, who barred him from giving concerts in Germany, where he was living. Nor were his works allowed to be publicly performed there by anyone else. His native Prague offered him refuge when the worst of it began, but when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he was in danger again, and in 1941, as he was planning to emigrate to the Soviet Union, which had granted him citizenship, he was arrested and sent to Würzburg prison, where he died.
Beth performed a work by the concert's second featured artist, Gideon Klein, who composed Piano Sonata as a twenty-four-year-old in 1943 while he was in Terezín. Klein (1919-1945) performed, conducted, taught, and composed there until being deported to Auschwitz and then Fürstengrube, a work camp. Before his death, he wrote a letter that reached his sister, Lisa, begging her, “Don’t forget me!” On the screen above Beth was a portrait painting of Klein. It had hung in Lisa's apartment above a piano. She was the only survivor of their family. The piece, we were told, was dedicated to her.
The Klein work was loud and frantic, then soft and light, then loud again and defiantly dissonant. Its urgency struck me. Beth was a vixen performing it, her back hunched over the keyboard, her hands striking the keys from a great height with force, her white hair flying. With the same freedom of movement and expression, she also played Beethoven's 1828 Piano Sonata, No. 22 in A Major. Along with his own compositions, Klein had played Beethoven in Terezín.
When we met Beth in the Green Room afterwards, in contrast to her performing persona she was sweet and grandmotherly. How could such music have been produced by this woman? I asked my startled self. I also asked myself how such music could have been composed by Klein under his dire circumstances.
Pictured below on the right, Klein's painted portrait; on the left, a photograph of Schulhoff. On YouTube I sought out Hot Sonate Jazz and listened to it again with pleasure. You can also find Klein's Piano Sonata. marked "No. 1," sadly, as there was no other. Elsewhere on the internet, you can find descriptions of both men's works that real critics of music (unlike myself) have written., as well as myriad accolades. They will not be forgotten.
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