{"id":2687,"date":"2012-09-28T05:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=2687"},"modified":"2012-09-28T06:20:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T12:20:18","slug":"man-with-a-mission-italian-pianist-revives-music-from-concentration-camp-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/man-with-a-mission-italian-pianist-revives-music-from-concentration-camp-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Man with a mission: Italian pianist revives music from concentration camp era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By RUTH ELLEN GRUBER<\/p>\n<p>TRANI, Italy (JTA) &#8212; Francesco Lotoro resurrects the music of the dead.\u00a0Since 1991 the Italian pianist has traveled the globe to seek out and bring to light symphonies, songs, sonatas, operas, lullabies and even jazz riffs that were composed and often performed in Nazi-era concentration camps.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2688\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2688\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2688 lazyload\" title=\"Lotoro\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/225;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2688\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2688\" title=\"Lotoro\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Lotoro-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-2688\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Francesco Lotoro introducing a concert of cabaret music composed in concentration camps, during the Lech Lecha Jewish culture festival in Trani, Italy, September 2012. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThis music is part of the cultural heritage of humanity,\u201d Lotoro, 48, told JTA after a concert in Trani, a port town in southern Italy, that featured surprisingly lively cabaret songs composed in the camps at Westerbork in the Netherlands and Terezin (Theresienstadt) near Prague.<\/p>\n<p>The concert formed part of Lech Lecha, a weeklong Jewish culture festival in early September that took place in Trani and nine other towns in the Apulia region, the heel of Italy\u2019s boot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I started seeking out this music, my interest was based on curiosity, on passion,\u201d said Lotoro, who was the festival\u2019s artistic director. \u201cI felt that someone had to do it &#8212; and that someone was myself. Today it has become a mission.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lotoro has collected original scores, copies and even old recordings of some 4,000 pieces of what he calls \u201cconcentrationary music\u201d &#8212; music written in the concentration camps, death camps, labor camps, POW camps and other internment centers set up between 1933, when Dachau was established, and the end of World War II.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1990s he formed an orchestra to perform the pieces, and in 2001 began recording the compositions. A selection was released earlier this year in a 24-CD boxed set called &#8220;KZ Musik,&#8221; or \u201cThe Encyclopedia of Concentrationary Music.\u201d (KZ is the German abbreviation for concentration camp.)<\/p>\n<p>Some of the pieces have long been known, including music by several prominent composers who were interned in Terezin. The Nazis used Terezin, a ghetto concentration and transit camp, as a propaganda tool, allowing cultural life to develop.<\/p>\n<p>Other musical pieces, however, had been long lost or totally forgotten until Lotoro deciphered, transcribed and arranged them.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2689\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2689\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2689 lazyload\" title=\"dancing\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing-768x1024.jpg 768w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 225px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 225\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2689\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2689 \" title=\"dancing\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dancing-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-2689\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dancers outside the 13th century Scolanova synagogue in Trani, during the Lech Lecha Jewish culture festival, September 2012. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Many compositions had been jotted down in notebooks or scribbled in letters or on scraps of paper. In the Pankrac prison in Prague, the Czech composer Rudolf Karel scrawled music on sheets of toilet paper.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople continued to create despite being in those places,\u201d Lotoro said. \u201cThese composers felt that the camp was probably the last place they would be alive, and so they made a will, a testament.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey had nothing material to leave,\u201d he said, \u201conly their heart, only their mind, only the music. And so they left the music to future generations. It is a great testament of the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jews who were killed in the Shoah wrote most of the music that Lotoro has collected. But his collection also includes pieces by Quakers, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), political prisoners, homosexuals and others held in camps and prisons as far afield as Asia. He also has music written by German officers and troops in POW camps run by Allied powers and even American GIs held captive by the Japanese.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody made music, wrote music,\u201d Lotoro said. \u201cBecause, you know, music is a social phenomenon. You can be a musician as an amateur, because you have a good ear, you can improvise, you can play the harmonica. Of course there are the great composers and musicians. But music is all of this, from amateur to professional.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lotoro, who lives in the town of Barletta, near Trani, and teaches at a music conservatory, believes he is descended from Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity centuries ago. He was drawn to Judaism as a teenager; he and his wife formally converted in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>But Lotoro said this was not the reason he began his search for the lost concentration camp music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course as a Jew, I now feel that this is a mitzvah; it is something I have to do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think that if I had not become Jewish I would anyway have done this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His first foray to seek out music came long before his conversion. It was a 1991 trip to Terezin, where imprisoned composers such as Viktor Ullmann and Gideon Klein &#8212; both killed at Auschwitz &#8212; had written works, such as Ullmann\u2019s opera \u201cThe Emperor of Atlantis,\u201d that already had become part of the international musical repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI started there because I thought it would be easier,\u201d Lotoro recalled. \u201cBut from Terezin I went on to research other former camps in the region, and at the end of three weeks I had to buy another suitcase to bring home all the material I found.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2691\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2691\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2691 lazyload\" title=\"Shabbat\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat-768x1024.jpg 768w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 225px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 225\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2691\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2691\" title=\"Shabbat\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Shabbat-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-2691\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ahead of Shabbat services in the 13th century Scolanova synagogue in Trani, during the Lech Lecha Jewish culture festival, September 2012. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Since then he has scoured antiquarian bookshops, catalogs, archives, libraries, museums, private collections and other holdings in more than a dozen countries for traces of lost music. Along the way he has amassed a trove of 13,000 items: scores, notebooks, papers, diaries, microfilms, photocopies, photographs, recordings and other material that he continues to sift through, catalog and sometimes reconstruct. He hopes to load all the pieces he has found onto a digital database for posterity.<\/p>\n<p>As part of his research, Lotoro has consulted with scholars who specialize in the music of the Holocaust, and also has interviewed some of the few surviving musicians as well as relatives of those who perished. But he has carried out most of the work on his own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is yet another testament to Italian creativity &#8212; the ability to address such global issues from a relatively \u2018remote\u2019 place, and as a single-handed initiative,\u201d Francesco Spagnolo, an Italian musicologist who is the curator at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley, Calif., told JTA.<\/p>\n<p>Much of Lotoro\u2019s work also has been self-financed. Although he has received some grants over the years, he told JTA that he had gone into debt and even taken out a second mortgage on his home to cover costs.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Lotoro said, he must continue.\u00a0\u201cI cannot stop because if I stop, all the research stops automatically,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cAnd how many works are still out there that I haven\u2019t found? How many works am I missing? How many will I be able to save?\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Man%20with%20a%20mission%3A%20Italian%20pianist%20revives%20music%20from%20concentration%20camp%20era\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[756,754,8790,8795,755,757,8788,8829],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2693,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}