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Epicurus.com - TerezÃn/Theresienstadt
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List Price: $16.98
Our Price: $14.99
Your Save: $ 1.99 ( 12% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Deutsche Gramophon
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028947765462
Label: Deutsche Gramophon
Manufacturer: Deutsche Gramophon
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Deutsche Gramophon
Release Date: 2008-03-25
Studio: Deutsche Gramophon
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Swedish mezzo-soprano, Anne Sofie von Otter, is known as one of the most versatile stars of her generation. She is always in search of new musical challenges, whether with the songs of Cécile Chaminade or of Benny Andersson. Here, von Otter has chosen a project with a serious and historically significant background. She interprets pieces written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp by a group of Jewish composers who were imprisoned there and yet managed to foster a rich cultural life even under the most extreme conditions. On this album, Anne Sofie von Otter is joined by one of the greatest lieder singers of today, Christian Gerhaher, and their longtime pianists Bengt Forsberg and Gerold Huber, respectively. Together they present songs by Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krása, and so-called cabaret songs. DG's recently signed violinist Daniel Hope contributes the Sonata for Solo Violin by Erwin Schulhoff.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: History makes wistful music tragic
Comment: Out of context, the music on this memorial CD to the composers who were led to death at Terezin, Hitler's showplace among the concentration camps, could seem almost wistful. We get a snapshot of genres as separated as cabaret, simple lullabies, and serious classical lied. One could be walking down the street in Berlin in the Thirties. But we are in Terezin instead, and wistfulness turns to tragedy. The lullabies come from a nurse wo chose to enter the gas chamber with her sick kids, still singing, rather than abandon them. The possibility for heartbreak is endless. The simple fact that almost every composer's dates end in the same year, 1944, triggers the specter of horror.
Von Otter, Gerhaher, and company respect the dead -- as well as the music itself -- by not laying the pathos on thick. Some of these songs are miraculously light-hearted, a call to life in the valley of death. The most substantial composers are Victor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, and Erwin Schulhoff (a Nazi victim even though he died of tuberculosis in the Wulzburg camp and didn't go to Terezin). Their songs, and Schulhoff's solo violin sonata, performed by Daniel Hope (whose mother's family fled to South Africa from Germany in the Nazi era) provide more advanced listening satisfaction.
But I imagine most people will remember, and be haunted by, the simple melodies of the nurse, Ilse Weber, who went to die with the children of Terezin. This whole CD stands on the same emotional ground of devastation and grief. It's hard to come away the same person as before you started listening.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Terezin revisited
Comment: Beautifully sung and played. Reminds one of the Berlin cafe music from the 1920s, which is probably where most of the composers found their niche. Sad to know that these people didn't survive, but their music lives on!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unspeakable Pain and Shame
Comment: Approximately 144,000 Jews, mostly from Germany and Czechoslovakia, were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt for varying terms between 1941 and 1945. Roughly 15,000 of them were children. At least 33,000 died of contagion or starvation. 88,000 were dispatched to Auschwitz or other extermination camps, where they were gassed, usually on the day of arrival. Of the children, no more than 1100 survived. Of the total transient population, there were only 17,247 verified survivors -- 17,247 witnesses to the Holocaust.
Among the Jews at Theresienstadt were some 470 Danish Jews who had not been successfully smuggled away to Sweden. The Danish government to the bold step of demanding that the International Red Cross be allowed to inspect the camp, and on June 23rd, 1944, such an inspection took place. The Germans prepared a mammoth hoax, cleaning, painting, building false fronts for shops, evacuating the sick and scrawny and cutting the population of prisoners to hastening the dispatch of thousands to Auschwitz. Theresienstadt had from the beginning been the "clearing house" for the Jewish intellectual elite, especially of Czechoslovakia. For propaganda purposes, Jews there were permitted certain cultural activities, under censorship. Thus the Red Cross was shown a thriving ghetto in which people conducted art classes, educated children, and performed music of all sorts - cabaret songs, Schubertian Lieder, modernist music not tolerated in Germany, even a children's opera. A film was made, to show the world the humanity of the Third Reich... The makers of the film were immediately sent to be executed. The composers of the music, including the opera, were soon sent to Auschwitz. Three of the composers on this CD - Hans Krasa, Pavel Haas, and Viktor Ullman - were sent to Auschwitz together on October 15th, 1944, and gassed immediately when they arrived.
One inmate of the death-to-come camp at Theresienstadt was a nurse, Ilse Weber, who wrote at least 60 songs which she sang during her night rounds among the sick. The first song on this CD, in the proper German of her murderers, begins like this:
Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt,
das Herz so schwer wie Blei.
Bis jäh mein Weg ein Ende hat,
dort knapp an der Bastei.
I wander through Theresienstadt,
my heart as heavy as lead.
Till suddenly my way ends
right there at the barrier.
When a throng of sick children were shipped from Theresienstadt to the death camp, Ilse Weber voluntarily accompanied them. Eyewitnesses report that in the gas chamber, she sang to the children her own lullaby, Wiegala, included on this CD.
Swedish opera star Anne Sofie von Otter and baritone Christian Gerhaher sing the 25 pieces of music composed by inmates of Theresienstadt with respect and pathos. Von Otter says: "I felt and feel profoundly moved by thoughts of the cruel and terrifying fate of these inncoent prisoners, of all the human beings, young and old, whose existence was obliterated by the Nazis."
This is a CD you need to own. The next time your humanity is insulted by the presence of a Holocaust-denier - there are such execrable creatures here in America - play this CD for him or her. Let's extend that: the next time any preacher of racial or religious hatred, any political scare-monger, any demonizer of immigrants, any ranter against cultural co-existence assaults your decency and intelligence, tell her or him the story of Theresienstadt.
Customer Rating:
Summary: wonderful musical tribute
Comment: Terezi'n/Theresienstadt by Anne Sofie Von Otter, Benct Forsberg, Christian Gerhaher and Daniel Hope is a wonderful musical tribute to the musicians murdered by the Nazis in the "model" concentration camp, Terezi'n. It is lyrical and lovely and worthy of listening to for many hours. I participate in an annual Holocaust Remembrance program, and I am trying to figure out how we can incorporate this CD into the program. I am pleased to have purchased it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: CD of the year
Comment: "CD of the year" is what Jessica Duchen called this stunningly beautiful recording at her blog on Dec. 21, 2007: [...]. She wrote, in full:
"CD of the year: Terezin, recorded by Anne Sofie von Otter with Bengt Forsberg, Daniel Hope and friends. This is one of the most extraordinary discs that's ever come my way, and the most devastating. Ilse Weber, a young nurse, volunteered to go with the sick children of Terezin to death at Auschwitz so that she could take care of them em route; her songs are the heart of this recording. It's said she sang 'Wiegala' with the children in the gas chamber. The CD also features music by Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa and the solo violin sonata by Erwin Schulhoff, plus some amazing, black-humoured cabaret songs."
I will add that some of the songs are about being at Terezin (or leaving it to be murdered at Auschwitz), and some of these are unbearably sad, but others are sprightly. Some of the songs are poems unrelated to the Holocaust that composers set to music while at Terezin. The songs are sung in Czech or German, with the booklet containing translations into English and French as well. Some leave melodies running through your head, while others are more challenging, but all are wonderful. This CD is beautiful beyond words -- at least any words that I can come up with.
If you'd like to learn more about this music and its composers and performances, I recommend Music In Terezin: 1941-1945, by Joza Karas. It is not much as literature, but it contains the facts about the music at this concentration camp.
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