Late conductor's music now heard
Source: Agencies |
February 13, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
PAUL Kletzki lost his inspiration to compose music after his sister and parents died in the Holocaust.
The native of Lodz, Poland, who wrote and conducted in Berlin before leaving Germany in the 1930s, went on to achieve international acclaim as a conductor but his own musical compositions faded into obscurity.
Now, one of his pieces from the early 1930s, a piano concerto, has been revived by a project at the University of North Texas, and a performance of the work will be in the running for a Grammy award today.
"It's very emotionally charged. It's significant music," said University of North Texas piano professor Joseph Banowetz, who performed the piece with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. He said the piece is demanding for both the pianist and the orchestra.
The piece, "Piano Concerto in D Minor, Op. 22," from 1930, was revived by the Lost Composers and Theorists Project, which showcases music from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that was suppressed by the Nazis or otherwise lost. Nazi policies banned the work of Jewish musicians.
"I wanted to give a voice to the composers who were silenced by the Third Reich," said music theory professor Timothy Jackson, who founded the project in the late 1990s.
So far, the project has brought attention to the work of 10 composers and music theorists.
Jackson learned about Kletzki's compositions from a friend working at a Zurich library, which had received the works from Kletzki's wife. Jackson knew Kletzki, who died in 1973, as a famous conductor but didn't know he had been a composer.
The native of Lodz, Poland, who wrote and conducted in Berlin before leaving Germany in the 1930s, went on to achieve international acclaim as a conductor but his own musical compositions faded into obscurity.
Now, one of his pieces from the early 1930s, a piano concerto, has been revived by a project at the University of North Texas, and a performance of the work will be in the running for a Grammy award today.
"It's very emotionally charged. It's significant music," said University of North Texas piano professor Joseph Banowetz, who performed the piece with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. He said the piece is demanding for both the pianist and the orchestra.
The piece, "Piano Concerto in D Minor, Op. 22," from 1930, was revived by the Lost Composers and Theorists Project, which showcases music from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that was suppressed by the Nazis or otherwise lost. Nazi policies banned the work of Jewish musicians.
"I wanted to give a voice to the composers who were silenced by the Third Reich," said music theory professor Timothy Jackson, who founded the project in the late 1990s.
So far, the project has brought attention to the work of 10 composers and music theorists.
Jackson learned about Kletzki's compositions from a friend working at a Zurich library, which had received the works from Kletzki's wife. Jackson knew Kletzki, who died in 1973, as a famous conductor but didn't know he had been a composer.
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