Music drama revives life of composer Gideon Klein
The Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre will be hosting a performance by Dr David Fligg’s work, Gideon Klein: Portrait of a Composer, which recreates the Jewish composer’s life and music during the Holocaust on Wednesday 26 January at 8.15 pm.
Gideon Klein was one of the most remarkable young musicians of his generation and he continued to compose and perform even after he was rounded up by the Nazis. Only death at Auschwitz silenced his voice. But now it is heard again in a music drama being performed around the world at venues that include St Paul’s Concert Hall, as part of the 2022 Holocaust Memorial Day events at the University of Huddersfield.
For tickets, please head to https://holocaustlearning.org.uk/
Gideon Klein: Portrait of a Composer charts a young man’s determination to make music under the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and includes performances of compositions by Klein alongside dramatisations of his life, based on material that includes eyewitness testimony and documentary evidence.
It was created by the musicologist Dr David Fligg, who has written and lectured extensively on Gideon Klein and co-directed a highly successful centenary festival in the Czech Republic dedicated to the music and memory of a man from a Jewish family who was born in Moravia in 1919 and who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1945.
“For some years, I was interested in the whole idea of music in the Holocaust and how Jewish musicians continued to compose and perform,” said Dr Fligg.
“I realised that although some of the music of Gideon Klein was being performed, pretty much all of his musical activities in Prague before he was transported to Theresienstadt concentration camp and his eventual death in Auschwitz had hardly been researched at all.”
A performance of Portrait of a Composer
When Dr Fligg visited the archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague he encountered a stack of documentary evidence that miraculously survived the war. He set to work and 10 years later the results include a full-length biography, the Gido’s Coming Home! festival that took place in the Czech Republic, and the Portrait of a Composer performance that now comes to Huddersfield, in a dramatisation by playwright Brian Daniels for a reduced number of actors, after being seen in countries that include the USA and Germany. It features a string quartet and three actors who recreate Gideon Klein’s life and music,
Gideon Klein continued to be highly active in Prague in the early years of the German occupation, but then was transported to Theresienstadt – known as Terezin in Czech. This was a holding camp for Jews who would later be moved on to the death camps and could be used by the Nazis to dupe agencies such as the Red Cross, masking the reality of the Holocaust.
While in Theresienstadt, Klein continued to compose and perform, driven by his determination to remain a professional composer and pianist, said Dr Fligg.
The Portrait of a Composer performance includes Gideon Klein’s trio for violin, viola and cello. “It is a great piece, one of the 20th century’s most exquisite pieces of chamber music,” said Dr Fligg.
It was also the last piece that Klein composed in Theresienstadt before he was transported to Auschwitz.