Forbidden Music by the Third Reich [Online]

a concert in celebration of Europe Day

After the horrors of the First World War, most Europeans “swallowed” the feeling of freedom in the wild twenties. While many Europeans were celebrating a new freedom in art, Germany was already getting to fall under the shadow of the fylfot. Hitler’s Third Reich by 1933 differentiated the population on the idea of ​​”racial purity.” In December 1937, an order “on unwanted and dangerous music” was issued by the Music Chamber. The word “degenerate” was commonly used to describe any art or music that was unacceptable to the Third Reich. Only now freedom and opportunity for self-expression are considered to be European values, so performing compositions that were banned by the Third Reich is not just a tribute to composers whose music has been removed from lists that hasn’t been practically performed, it is to show extraordinary, experimental music. After all, when we talk about Erwin Schulhoff, Joseph Koffler and Karl-Amadeus Hartmann the claims about the payment of moral debts are rejected, because it is a holistic, original, modernist music, which is bigger than the composer as such, and which speaks for itself. The line of prohibitions and repressions of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, the symbolism of art’s struggle against the system runs like a red thread through all the compositions of the concert. The music of artists who worked within the framework of totalitarianism and, at the same time, outside all bounds and borders will sound. The history of each composition, as well as the fate of composers, is difficult and was once banned or lost. This music speaks through the sharp rhythm and introduction of jazz idioms in Schulhoff, through the deep drama, intensity of sound, complexity of musical language, the richness of image development in Hartmann and through the avant-garde experiments – a combination of neoclassicism and dodecaphony in Koffler. It will sound in a symbolic place, as if breaking through prohibitions and years. The soloists of the INSO-Lviv orchestra will reveal its сontent for a listener. It will sound to promote human rights, peace, solidarity and equality.

Soloists:

• Eugen Kruk,  violin 
• Valeriy Sokolov, violin
• Olena Kravets, violin
• Kateryna Poteriaeva, violin
• Semenyuk Maksym, viola
• Danyliv Andriy, viola
• Onyshko Iryna, cello
• Alexey Shadrin, cello
• Humenyuk Olena, cello
• Vitaliy Protasov, conductor

Program:

• Joseph Koffler. Ukrainian sketches, op. 27
• Erwin Schulhoff. String Sextet, op. 45
• Erwin Schulhoff. Duo for Violin and Cello
• Karl-Amadeus Hartmann. “Concerto funebre” for violin and chamber orchestra