Musica Judaica is a twenty CDs containing the music written from 1933 (when camps such as Dachau and Börgermoor were opened) to 1945 in all concentration, internment, extermination and POW camps, both of the Axis’ and Allies’ countries. It is the result of a 10-year, huge historical and musicological work by the Italian pianist and conductor Francesco Lotoro.
Musica Judaica represents a “Musical Dictionary” of concentration camp music during WWII. It contains all the music written in Terezin by Gideon Klein (Piano Sonata, Strings Trio, Czech and Russian Folk Songs, etc.), Viktor Ullmann (5th, 6th, 7th Piano Sonatas, the unknown Don Quixote tanzt Fandango, the opera The Emperor of Atlantis, etc.), Pavel Haas (4 Songs on texts from Chinese Poetry, Studio for Strings Orchestra), Rudolf Karel (Pankràc’s Musicbook, Nonet, the opera The 3 Hairs of the Wise Old man), Ervin Schulhoff (Piano score of 8th Symphony) Hans Kràsa (Rimbaud-Songs, the famous children opera Brundibàr), Karel Berman, Zikmund Schul, Jiri Kummermann, Szymon Laks, Frantisek Domazlicky, Ilse Weber, etc. Musica Judaica contains the Chansons written in the Westerbork and Terezin by Otto Skutecky, Karel Svenk, Martin Roman, Adolf Strauss, etc, more than 200 Songs from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Treblinka (an authentic Mankind heritage) written by Jozef Kropinski and Alexandr Kulisiewicz, music from Puppets’ theatre in Dachau, the precious music scores written in the Star Camp of Bergen-Belsen by Josef Pinkhof (Hebrew religious Songs) and Robert Heilbut, the famous Quatuor pour la fin du temps written by Oliver Messiaen in the POW Camp of Goerlitz and all the music written in many unknown Camps of French, Italy, Lattvia, Lituania, Nederland, Ucraine, URSS, etc., and an anthology of Songs from the Ghettos (Krakow, Kovno, Vilna, Warsaw, Lodz, etc.).
Musica Judaica also contains music written by Berto Boccosi, an Italian officer, in the French Camp of Saida (Algeria), Jewish Songs from the camps of the collaborationist government of Vichy, the beatiful transcriptions for female choir of famous classical pieces (Ravel’s Bolero, 3rd movt from Dvorak’s Symphony From the New World, etc.) by Dutch prisoners in Japanese Camp of Belalau (Sumatra) and performed in the movie Paradise Road (with Glenn Close), the Mass written by Zdenko Karol Rund for the Catholic prisoners in the Camp of Targoviste (Rumania), the Hymn Fest Steht written in Sachsenhausen by Eric Frost and the Songs of Gypsies.
Contact for information about (sales, dossiers about the project, collaborations, etc.) at the following mail info@musicajudaica.it
or visit the website www.musicajudaica.it (the website is in Italian)