Forgotten music from Auschwitz to be premiered in London
Following the critically acclaimed Sky Arts documentary-film The Lost Music of Auschwitz, Constella Music will stage a new production with choreography by the internationally renowned choreographer Claudia Schreier.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has a collection of music manuscripts written, arranged, and performed by the prisoner orchestras. Damaged and incomplete, these manuscripts have long been overlooked. For the past ten years, Dr Leo Geyer (St Catherine's College, 2019) has worked closely with the museum, survivors, and historians to bring this music back to life. This ground-breaking research has garnered international interest, see CNN article, Sky Arts documentary-film and BBC Radio 4 programme.
Now, to commemorate 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz, all of Geyer's musical restorations will come together in a profoundly moving and hugely significant stage production, enabling the public to hear all this music live for the first time. The production will run from 3-7 June at Bloomsbury Theatre and tickets are available from the UCL website.
Featuring singers, dancers, and instrumentalists on stage, the production harnesses the expressive power of song, movement, and music to reveal the truth about the prisoner orchestras of Auschwitz. Rather than follow a traditional narrative arc, the production unfolds through a series of vignettes, each capturing astonishing and deeply emotional moments where music became a source of defiance, solace, or grief. These include marching songs embedded with hidden messages for fellow inmates, a sorrowful piece arranged and performed by the women's orchestra, and a lullaby that clings to the distant memory of home and children.
Stage Design by Finlay Jenner presents sensitive artistic impression in place of re-enactment, empowering audiences to reflect on the greatest tragedy that humanity has unleashed upon itself. Performers include soprano Caroline Kennedy who lost family at Auschwitz, and baritone Ed Ballard who has performed some of this music with Constella at Opera North.
Leo Geyer (composer and music director) says:
80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we offer this work as a new way to commemorate Holocaust. Through this production, we gather in remembrance, and together, we can strive to be better.
Claudia Schreier (choreographer) says:
It is a privilege and solemn responsibility to serve as choreographer of The Lost Music of Auschwitz. Through our interwoven disciplines, this production makes visible the complexities of music as a tool for survival, and it speaks urgently to our need to excavate and honour truth.
