Tel Aviv – The Holocaust, the music of memory echoes in Israel

Amidst the horror of Nazi concentration camps, music continued to be written and played. In fact, may prisoners left behind the scores they wrote during their detention: notes that will be played once again thanks to pianist Francesco Lotoro who has collected over 5,000 scores of concentration camp music since 1989. The composers include Józef Kropiński (who worked in the infirmary at Buchenwald, and wrote almost 400 known pieces) but also some of the great 20th Century musicians like Viktor Ullmann (who wrote three piano sonatas at Theresienstadt and the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, which he completed in only a few days before dying in the gas chamber of Auschwitz). The notes written by these composers will be played again at 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 27 at the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv in a concert by the Israel Chamber Orchestra. The concert will be held in commemoration of the International Holocaust Day and is organised by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv, in conjunction with the Istituto di Letteratura musicale concentrazionaria, the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the Last Musik Onlus association.