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Continuing their ground-breaking series Music In Exile, and coinciding with ROM’s presentation of the unprecedented exhibition, Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away., The Royal Conservatory’s Grammy-nominated ARC Ensemble performs the works of two Jewish musicians whose lives remain closely associated with Auschwitz: the brilliant young Czech composer Pavel Haas, who was murdered in the camp in 1944, and the Polish-born Szymon Laks, who conducted the Auschwitz men’s orchestra, survived the war, and returned to Paris, his adoptive home.
Pavel Haas was born in Brno, studied in Leoš Janáček’s school of composition and is noted for his song cycles and string quartets. He was deported to Terezín concentration camp in 1941, and then was moved to Auschwitz in 1944, where he was murdered. His second string quartet “Music from the Monkey Mountains” remains one of his most resonant works.
Szymon Laks was deported to Auschwitz in July 1942, where he was made the head of the orchestra at the concentration camp. He survived Auschwitz, and in 1944 was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, when little more than six months later, it was liberated by the American army. In May 1945 he was returned to Paris, where he became a French citizen.
The evening’s program features Haas’s ebullient string quartet “Music from the Monkey Mountains” and Laks’s Quintet for piano and strings, based on Polish folk songs.
A reception will follow the concert.
