This season, Boston’s Grammy-nominated, self-conducted chamber orchestra A Far Cry dedicates its series “Chamber Music with the Criers” to exploring “degenerate” music, music that was suppressed, segregated and banned during the Third Reich.
Our upcoming program, “Vanished Quartets,” highlights two incredible and little-known string quartets by Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust. Ullmann’s quartet was actually written in Terezín. The two quartets then “come together” in an octet by Max Bruch, a bright and heroic piece that seeks a larger audience. Although not Jewish, Bruch’s Romantic-Germanic music was heavily suppressed by the Nazis because of the success of his piece “Kol Nidrei.” He was labeled a “possible Jew” and to this day his popularity as an excellent late Romantic composer suffers.
Program:
Pavel Haas
String Quartet No. 3, Op. 15
Viktor Ullmann
String Quartet No. 3, Op. 46
Max Bruch
String Octet in B-Flat Major, Op. posth.