A Holocaust education Week featured event, presented by Istituto Italiano, in collaboration with : Foundation ILCM (Institute of Concentrationary Music Literature), 918 Bathurst, and I Concerti – Classical Music Artist management, INTERGEA

Francesco Lotoro, an Italian composer, pianist and music teacher, will perform a concert in Toronto presented by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in collaboration with Foundation ILCM (Institute of Concentrationary Music Literature), 918 Bathurst, and iConcerti – Classical Music Artist management.

Amidst the horrors of the concentration camps, musicians kept playing and secretly composing in the hope that their music would some day be played again in a spirit that celebrated life and the defiant survival of people.

The monumental repertoire of music written in concentration camps would mostly have been lost had it not been for the work of Francesco Lotoro, who managed to recover thousands of musical testimonies, scouring archives and camp barracks, interviewing musicians interned in lagers and anybody who might have been involved in their diaries, who kept scores that miraculously survived or was simply a witness of events that involved them.

The compositions selected for this concert will be performed by Francesco Lotoro, piano, Cantor Charles Osborne, Igor Gefter, cello, Mark Skazinetsky, violin.

Free entrance.

CONCERT PROGRAM

Karel Berman (1919 – 1995)

Terezín Suite (for piano)

Józef Kropiński (1913 – 1970)

Złota jesień (for baritone & piano)

Prózno! (for baritone & piano)

Klavierstück (for piano)

Pieśń bez słów (for violin & piano)

Dlaczego? (for violin & piano)

Emile Goué (1904 – 1946)

Deux Impromptus (for piano)

Duet (for violin & cello)

Rudolf Karel (1880 – 1945)

Pankrác Valzer Op. 42c (for piano)

Berthold Hummel (1925 – 2002)

Abendlied (for baritone & piano)

William Hilsley [Hildesheimer] (1911 – 2003)

In Old Seville [from 6 Songs] (for baritone & piano)

Zygfryd Maciej Stryjecki (1918 – 1998)

Wino (for piano)

Sándor Kuti (1908 – 1945)

Sonata (for violin)

David Grünfeld & Zikmund Schul

Uv’tzeil Knofecho [arranged by Zikmund Schul, reworked by Francesco Lotoro] (for baritone & piano)

Arturo Coppola (1913 – 1998)

Elegia [In memory of Vincenzo Romeo] (for cello & piano)

Anonymous Musician from Märzbachtal

Zi is mein herz (for male voice)