(21 January 2016) The horror of the Nazi concentration camps couldn’t kill creativity, and with it the musical notes that were written and performed there. Many prisoners bequeathed their songs written during detention. These notes today come back to life thanks to pianist Francesco Lotoro, who since 1989 has been collecting more than 5,000 pieces of music composed in concentration camps: compositions by the undistinguished Polish Józef Kropinski (infirmary officer in Buchenwald, who wrote about 400 works during his night shifts) and others by some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century – as Viktor Ullmann (who in Theresienstadt wrote three sonatas for piano and the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, completed a few days before his death in the gas chambers in Auschwitz). Their work, their final testament, will take the stage on January 27 at 8.30pm at the Israeli Conservatory of Tel Aviv in a special concert by the Israel Chamber Orchestra. The event is a collaborative effort of the Italian Embassy in Israel and the Italian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv with Lotoro’s Istituto di Letteratura musicale concentrazionaria, the Israeli Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the Last Musik Onlus association. (Sip)
