The Times is writing on May 19, 2024 about the project by the consortium of the Wiener Holocaust Library, the Leo Smit Foundation, Symphonova and Donemus.
How music suppressed by the Nazis is being brought back to life; A unique initiative is using cutting-edge technology to revive the music of composers persecuted during the Holocaust
The venue was a modest library in the headquarters of Britain’s Quaker movement, but the sound sought to rival that of the Royal Albert Hall. This was the premiere of a unique initiative bringing the suppressed music of the Holocaust to life using cutting-edge technology.
At Friends House in London last month the music of composers persecuted by the Nazis was performed by a professional soprano, accompanied by an essentially invisible orchestra.
An audience of invited guests watched the UK-based conductor Shelley Katz direct the soloist and what sounded like a full orchestra. Yet the only performers on stage were Katz and the singer Helen Bailey.
Katz is the technical and artistic director of Symphonova, a company of music professionals who have developed a technology to emulate an authentic orchestral experience by allowing conductors to control the nuances of musical expression over virtual instruments in real time. They do this by using gesture-controlled wearable technology which communicates with the software of digital “instruments” created from a library of sample sounds.
Symphonova, together with the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, the Dutch music publisher Donemus and the Leo Smit Foundation in Amsterdam, is part of a three-year project called Reawakening Suppressed Music dedicated to recording and sharing some of the silenced works by Jewish and other composers who suffered under the Nazis.
Suppressed music is music banned for non-musical reasons, such as the recent Chechen ban on music slower than 80 beats per minute (bpm) and faster than 116bpm in an attempt to stamp out western influence. Under Hitler, the Nazis sought to silence Jewish musicians and composers and all music they regarded as “degenerate”, including jazz.
Among those to be revived by the project is Bob Hanf, the Dutch-born son of German-Jewish immigrants. Before the composer’s murder at Auschwitz in 1944, he wrote string quartets, orchestral works and an opera.
Rosy Wertheim, one of the first Dutch women to complete a professional music and composition education, survived the war in hiding but died of cancer in 1949. She left an oeuvre of about 80 works. Johanna Bordewijk-Roepman was not Jewish but was persecuted for taking a stand against the way her colleagues were persecuted.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention