The liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz will be commemorated on January 27, 2020. The composer Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) is representative of many musicians and composers, most of them with Jewish roots, who lost their lives in the Nazis’ extermination camps.
To mark this 75th liberation anniversary, the pianist Annika Treutler has devoted her new CD to proscribed music. To musicians and composers like Viktor Ullmann, Bohuslav Martinů, Pavel Haas and many more: none of whom ever had the opportunity to fully develop their creativity because they were barred from pursuing their artistic careers in freedom. “As a result of the Holocaust a whole generation was officially wiped out and a chapter of music history erased. That means that seventy-five years on, not only Ullmann’s music, but the music of a whole generation of composers is utterly unknown,” explains Annika Treutler. Together with Stephan Frucht (conductor and artistic director of the Siemens Arts Program) and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, Annika Treutler takes a completely new approach in telling the story of Viktor Ullmann in musical terms. In this way, she wishes to preserve the memory of the composer: “It is my aim to make sure his music receives the same recognition and is acknowledged in the same way as that of his contemporaries who were not barred and persecuted. It is certainly worthy of it! In his music, Ullmann developed his own special language, his own form of tonality. Although he was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, his music is not atonal; instead he varied the tonality by expanding or reducing intervals. That approach resulted in an enormous build-up of tension which is typical of his style, although the listener nevertheless does not feel abandoned. We frequently think we hear echoes of other composers, and yet Ullmann’s music speaks a very unique, unusual language.
