Music From Terezin

The Audubon Quartet’s “Music from Terezin” project began in 1992 during a car ride to the Munich airport following the Spring music festival in Niederstotzingen, Germany.  The festival Director, who was driving us to the airport, enthusiastically shared his plans to create an exhibit of so-called “Degenerate” art works (Entartete Kunst).  Entartete Kunst was a term used by Hitler and his Nazi followers as an excuse for the inhumane and murderous treatment of many German and other European Jewish artists and musicians. The Director asked us whether we were interested in participating in the project, but we already had too many commitments to embark on another project.

However, the seed had been planted, and early in 1994 we had the opportunity to acquire music composed during the Degenerate Art period from Mark Ludwig, violist of the Hawthorne Quartet and a member of the Boston Symphony, who was also the Director of the Terezin Music Foundation.  Serendipitously, at about the same time we were approached by Joza Karas after one of our concerts in Hartford.  Karas was a Polish-born author and arranger who was a violinist with the Hartford Symphony and had published a book entitled, “Music in Terezin, 1941-1945”.  He wanted to give us a copy in the hope that our violist Doris Lederer would help connect him with her father, Wolfgang Lederer, who had been a Terezin inmate and an important member of the musical community there.

Doris’s father performed at the first concert given in the Camp, December 6, 1941.  As part of his “work assignment”, young Wolfgang paired with violinist Karel Frohlich to form a recital duo.  Later, Wolfgang (aka Wolfi) played with the Camp’s “Ghetto Swingers”, a jazz ensemble, and Frohlich took over as the concertmaster of the Terezin Camp Orchestra after violinist Egon Ledec was sent to his death at Auschwitz.

As a result of all this, during the 1994-95 concert season the Audubon Quartet created a multi-media performance documenting the story of the Terezin Camp and the musicians who were imprisoned there during the Holocaust.  The 90-minute program consisted of a Power Point presentation with images, artwork, and photographs; a vocal narrative; and a live performance by members of the Quartet that included 7 musical works composed in Terezin.  The first version of this presentation was called, “Songs and Lives: The Art of Spiritual Resistance”.

Following one of our presentations in Indianapolis we were met backstage by Hanus Grosz, who was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to speak to Doris.  It turned out that he wanted to present her with a postcard which showed a reproduction of a painting of her father, Wolfgang Lederer, done by artist Peter Kien in Terezin.  Hanus Grosz (1924-2001) had been one of the fortunate Czech children sent to England on the famous Kindertransport of Jewish refugee children in the 1940s.  After the War, Grosz had become a world- famous collector of Holocaust Art.  Mr. Grosz invited the Quartet to his home for a meal and to view the many works of art in his collection; the picture from the postcard quickly found its way among the images we used for our power Point presentation.

During the narrative portion of the presentation, Doris was appropriately asked to talk about her father, which she did despite never having been comfortable talking about her father’s experiences in the camp.  In 1999, the Quartet gave a Radio performance of “Music From Terezin” at NPR in Studio 4A.  Martin Goldsmith was the host, and during the broadcast he interviewed Doris about her father’s experience in Terezin.

After 2000, the presentation was renamed “In the Shadow of Your Wings”, taken from the final musical work of the program, Uv’tseil Knofecho, composed by Zikmund Schul and arranged for string quartet by David Grunfeld, a tenor (singer) who was also a prisoner in Terezin.  Our final presentation was held at a National Holocaust Conference at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia in 2010.  In attendance were Doris’ mother, Lisa Lederer, and Vivienne Courtney, the daughter of violinist Karel Frohlich, whom we had discovered by chance living in New York.  Vivienne’s father had survived his imprisonment in Terezin and resettled in Paris before immigrating to the United States in 1948.  Wolfgang and his family immigrated to Seattle in 1959.  During their lives, neither musician was aware that the other had survived the War and was living in America.

Martin Goldsmith’s  Interview with AQ violist Doris Lederer

Gideon Klein: Fugue for String Quartet (Jewett, Takayama, Lederer, Shaw)

Zikmund Schul: 2 Chassidic Dances for viola and Cello (Lederer and Shaw)

Wolfgang Lederer (Peter Lederer) performing live concert at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA in 1992, at age 74
Jerome Kern – “All the Things You Are”

Petr Kien (1919-1944) was a Jewish artist and poet imprisoned in the Terezin Concentration Camp. He died in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp at the age of 25.
This Petr Kien drawing of Wolfgang Lederer is part of a collection at the Jewish Museum in Prague.  The facsimile of Kien’s drawing was sent to Doris Lederer for use the Audubon Quartet’s multimedia presentation.