Composers lost their freedom, sometimes their lives, to Nazis
by Lawrence A. Johnson
IF YOU GO: Forbidden Music Festival
THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS: James Conlon will lead students of the Juilliard Arts Program in Viktor Ullman's opera at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Lincoln Theatre, 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. Tickets are $35, $60 and $75. Call the Concert Association of Florida at 877-433-3200.
FORBIDDEN MUSIC: Composers and the Third Reich: Conlon will lead off the New World Symphony's series "Forbidden Music: Composers and the Third Reich," which will present four concerts of composers whose lives and careers were affected by the Third Reich, in addition to panel discussions, films and artwork. All events are at the Lincoln Theatre. Call 305-673-3331 or 800-597-3331.
Concerts: 8 p.m. Jan. 7, 8: James Conlon, conductor; Garrick Ohlsson, pianist. Martinu: Memorial to Lidice; Schulhoff: (Jazz) Suite for Chamber Orchestra; Ullmann: Piano Concerto; Zemlinsky/Conlon, Suite from The Florentine Tragedy. Tickets $29-$69. 8 p.m. Jan. 13: Marc Neikrug, conductor; John Rubinstein, narrator. Neikrug: Through Roses. Tickets $15-$35. 3 p.m. Jan. 16: Chamber concert; violinist Corey Cerovsek and New World members. Ullmann: String Quartet No. 3; Weill Violin Concerto; Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time. Tickets $12.
Historical exhibit: "Banned by the Nazis: Degenerate Music." Jan. 4-16. Free admission.
Film series: Bach in Auschwitz, 8 p.m. Jan. 4. Goethe and Ghetto, 8 p.m. Jan. 5. Free.
Panel discussion: Remembering: an Evening of History and Testimony. 8 p.m. Jan. 6. Moderated by James Conlon, with experts on music and the Holocaust, and personal testimonies by musician survivors. Free (call to reserve tickets).
Viktor Ullmann: Eclectic Czech-Hungarian composer who was detained by the Nazis in 1942 and sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. There he composed songs, sonatas, choral music and his masterpiece, The Emperor of Atlantis. In October 1944, Ullmann was sent to Auschwitz, where he died with his fellow artist prisoners.
Erwin Schulhoff: Czech composer who turned to Marxism in reaction to the rise of Nazism. His experimental, forward-looking music embraced jazz, atonality and microtonality before he turned to a more upbeat proletarian style in his later party-conscious works. Schulhoff fled Prague when the Nazis invaded but was captured, dying of tuberculosis in a Bavarian concentration camp in 1942.
Alexander Zemlinsky: Viennese composer, associate of Gustav Mahler, and teacher of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. For many years, Zemlinsky was better known as a teacher than composer. Among his works are the Lyric Symphony, Three Psalms for chorus and orchestra and the one-act opera The Florentine Case. He fled Vienna in 1939 and lived out his life in obscurity on New York's Upper West Side. His music evolved greatly from a sumptuous Romanticism to a more edgy and angular style.
Olivier Messiaen: French composer whose Roman Catholicism and love of birdsong permeates his deeply spiritual music. While held in a German prisoner of war camp, Messiaen wrote his Quator pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) for the only available instruments: violin, cello, clarinet and broken piano. The composer and his fellow prisoners premiered the work while interned, and the quartet's bleak chill, spare textures and hopeful serenity illuminate one of the signature chamber works of the 20th century.
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