For the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, the Bourgie Hall presented, in collaboration with the Montreal Holocaust Museum, a recital of melodies Music in Theresienstadt, by the Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair and the pianist Olivier Godin, an original and diverse program which notably revealed a little-known section of bittersweet entertainment music.
In the D Mag of November 20, we told the story of Theresienstadt, which, more than a “camp”, was above all a ghetto, the small town, requisitioned by the central power of Berlin then emptied of its inhabitants, serving as a lure of a city of refuge to attract German Jews of a certain age (in particular those decorated with the Croix de Guerre 1914-1918) by stripping them of their property.
In practice Theresienstadt was a key link in the Jewish genocide of World War II. In a village designed for 5,000 inhabitants, the Jews, mainly in transit to the death camps, were sometimes confined in numbers of up to 58,000, deprived of care and, largely, of food.
Czech Jews, including many artists, were also found in Teresienstadt (a town on Czech territory). This is how, in particular, this image of a “model camp” with strong artistic activity was born. After ensuring artistic animation of the ghetto, the artists were sent to their death in October 1944 and early 1945.
Maintain the illusion
We were quite surprised to hear Mr. Daniel Amar, director of the Holocaust Museum, speak to us, in the preamble, about “appreciating Jewish heritage” in relation to the concert. Isn’t an artist part of a universal heritage and of Humanity with a capital H? Fortunately, Philip Glass is not a “Jewish composer” and Anton Bruckner a “Catholic composer”. Thus, Pavel Haas, Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, and Hans Krasa to name the most famous composers from Theresienstadt are part of the History of music, with a capital H too. We have already invented enough compartmentalization as it is, with women conductors, composers, African-American composers and indigenous-inspired music, which then inspire quotas, so as not to add more on these highly dangerous and divisive slopes.
Fortunately, Holzmair and Godin, a singer who has not lost his vocal aura supported by attentive, discreet and flexible pianistic accompaniment, articulated their musical and commemorative evening with great class.
It was a concert-reading, a little too “reading-concert” at the beginning, which really took off when the course broke away from the usual well-known names and showed the more “light music” or “cabaret” side of Theresienstadt with Karel Švenk, Adolf Strauss, or Felix Porges, on texts which sought to maintain the illusion between hope and fatalism.
Indeed, in addition to the music that accompanied them, these moving texts demanded to be reread; the dream of a country in Taube and Strauss, but also the fact of grafting local lyrics onto known melodies, including a powerful cri du coeur on the last part of Dichterliebe of Schumann: “And outside, in front of the church, there, voiceless and in distress, tortured and anguished, the Jews seek their God. »
Hearing the music of Emmerich Kálmán dressed up with other lyrics, we thought of the fact that Hitler, a fan of his music, wanted to make this Hungarian Jew, whose music he adored, an “honorary Aryan” what Kálmán obviously refused.
It was with great tact that Holzmair ended his journey very symbolically with a tender and sad Viennese melody by Otto Skutecky.