SEARCHING FOR LOST MUSIC
Composers imprisoned in Nazi camps and their music, archived and recorded in the CD encyclopedia KZ MUSIK by the pianist and conductor Francesco Lotoro.
Introduction
KZ MUSIK is the most up-to-date and complete CD encyclopedia of musical works composed by musicians imprisoned in the Nazi camps between 1933 and 1945.
The composers were imprisoned, deported, murdered – some even survived – but all were of different national, social and religious backgrounds.
These multifaceted works range from operas and symphonies to chamber, instrumental and piano music, from Lieder, choral pieces and cabaret songs to jazz, religious and folk music as well as fragments and pieces reconstructed after the end of World War II.
KZ Musik is the result of the extensive musicological research carried out by Italian pianist and conductor Francesco Lotoro, who has recorded the researched works in Foggia (Italy) with high-ranking musicians and singers.
On 9 May 2008 – 63 years after the German capitulation and, as such, the end of World War II – the first six CDs of the 24-part series are to be released by the Hamburg music production company Membran International. CDs 7-24 are to be released gradually over a period of three years.
Each KZ Musik CD booklet contains information about the different camps the recorded works were written in, short biographies about the composers and informative comments on their works as well as brief remarks and original language lyrics in the case of choral and vocal works.
In addition, the booklets contain photos of the artists and camps as well as a drawing by the Czech painter Helga Weissová-Hosková. CD 1 also contains a comprehensive introductory booklet with background information about Lotoro’s long-term research work.
Booklet languages are Italian, English, German, French and Hebrew.
KZ Musik is a unique document about the artistic activities of musicians and composers imprisoned during the Third Reich worldwide; an equally moving and oppressive piece of music history against oblivion!
Francesco Lotoro was born in Barletta in 1964. He studied piano with Kornel Zempleni at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest and also studied under Viktor Merzhanov, Tamas Vasary and Aldo Ciccolini. A virtuoso pianist, Lotoro has transcribed J.S. Bach’s A Musical Offering, Brandenburg Concertos, German Mass and 14 Canons BWV 1087 for two pianos. His reconstruction of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Weihnachtsoratorium is considered a classic of contemporary musical philology. He founded the Orchestra Musica Judaica in 1995 and conducted Hans Krása’s children’s opera Brundibár with this ensemble on numerous occasions. Thirty years after the occupation of Czechoslovakia (1968-1998), he recorded all of the works dealing with the ‘Prague Spring’. Lotoro also composed Misha e i Lupi (Misha and the Wolves), a two-act opera inspired by the life of the Belgian writer Misha De Fonseca.
FRANCESCO LOTORO
ORGANIST
PIANIST
CONDUCTOR
