As a tribute to Holocaust Memorial Day, the first part of the concert was dedicated to two composers who were victims of the Holocaust. Helena Buckmayer, whose hard work in devising and bringing the concert to fruition, seemed delighted to have at last reached the piano stool to play us Gideon Klein’s Piano Sonata. Immediately we could tell that we were listening to particularly cultivated music written in awful circumstances in 1943.
Just as Gideon Klein had started to study piano and composition at university in Czechoslovakia his country was invaded by the Nazis and universities were closed down. He was offered a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London but he was not permitted to take it up. Late in 1941 he and a number of young musicians were deported to the Terezin concentration camp - which the Nazis proclaimed for its rich cultural life.
Gideon Klein died in a concentration camp close to Auschwitz early in 1945 but fortunately, along with the Piano Sonata, two other pieces survived. Hector Scott, Fiona Murdoch and Tim Paxton played the String Trio, whilst Peter Furniss on the clarinet accompanied by Helen Buckmayer played the short but enchanting Lullaby.
Erwin Schulhoff was in his late forties and already a highly respected pianist and composer when he was deported to a concentration camp. He died in 1942. An enthusiastic Andrew Somerville delighted us with Schulhoff’s Hot Sonata for Alto Saxophone, accompanied by the piano.
After the first interval the main work of the evening was the Piano Quintet in D by Zdenek Fibich. This was when Andy Saunders on the French horn joined Hector Scott, Peter Furniss, Tim Paxton and Helena Buckmayer for the four movements of engagingly romantic chamber music written in 1893.
After a second interval piano, violin, viola, cello, clarinet and horn played a happy arrangement by Peter Furniss of Janácek’s On the Overgrown Path - Our Evening, Words Fail, Good Night, Reminiscences and In Tears.
The Gideon Klein Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Prague and founded by Eliška Kleinová, Gideon Klein’s sister, in 1994 will be well pleased to have given their support to such a successful evening of Czech music. Well done Helena Buckmayer and colleagues!
Event: Saturday 28 January 2012 at 7pm