Black Oak Ensemble: Silenced Voices

Saturday, May 21, 7:00 pm CST

Nevermore Chamber Music Festival

Black Oak Ensemble made its recording debut with Silenced Voices, an album of intriguing works by six promising, early 20th century Jewish composers originally from Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. One survived World War II as a member of the Dutch resistance, the others perished in concentration camps and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe. Inspired by a musical discovery of Desirée and David in a bookstore in Budapest and guided by Aurélien’s mother, a history teacher of Sephardic Jewish decent Black Oak Ensemble made connections with the families of the survivors and recorded an incredible collection of music.

PROGRAM:

Dick Kattenburg – Trio à cordes
Sándor Kuti – Serenede for String Trio
Gideon Klein – Trio for violin, viola and cello
Geza Frid – Trio à cordes

NOTES:

Silenced Voices includes the world premiere recording of wartime survivor Géza Frid’s early Trio à cordes, Op. 1, an inventive work infused with Hungarian folk music influences. Composer-cellist Paul Hermann’s Strijktrio, a forward-looking, cosmopolitan work from the early 1920s, shares its melodies among all three instruments. Dick Kattenburg’s youthful Trio à cordes was praised in a 1938 concert review for its “remarkable mastery and a very personal style.”