TEREZIN MUSIC FOUNDATION
  • Welcome
    • Our Mission & Work
    • Who We Are >
      • Founder/Director >
        • Senate Honors for Mark Ludwig
      • Board
      • Artists
      • TMF Educator Anna Ornstein
      • TMF Staff
  • Concerts & Tours
    • Concert Films
    • A TMF Prague Spring Festival Concert
    • Tours
  • Commissions
    • Complete list of commissions
    • Commission Programs
    • Commissions Advisory Council
    • Sponsor a TMF Commission
  • Education
    • Education >
      • Lectures
      • Curriculum Guide
      • Master classes
      • TMF educator Simon Gronowski
      • TMF Educator Anna Ornstein
      • Anna Ornstein: "Could It Happen Here?"
      • TMF Educator Edgar Krasa, in memoriam
  • Listen
    • Listen >
      • TMF Music on CD >
        • "Previn Plays Previn" CD
        • Viktor Kalabis CD
    • Tracks of the Month, 2016-22
    • A TMF Prague Spring Festival Concert
    • Our Will to Live: Music Tracks
  • Connect
    • Join our mailing list
    • Press
    • Donate
    • TMF Staff
    • Volunteer
  • Donate
    • Donate
    • Sponsor a TMF Commission
    • Raise funds
    • Volunteer
  • Event Signup Confirmation
Picture
Pavel Haas with his wife and daughter before the War.

track of the month: august

You're listening to the Hawthorne String Quartet performance (recorded on a Decca Entartete Musik CD) of "The Moon and I," the third movement, Largo e Misterioso, of the String Quartet No. 2, "From the Monkey Mountains," ​by Terezín composer

Pavel Haas

Pavel Haas, born in 1899 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, was the prize pupil of Leos Janacek and is known primarily for his song cycles and string quartets. He was deported to Terezín in 1941, and he officially divorced his wife so that she and their child would not suffer a similar fate. With Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krasa, and others, Haas became a major figure in the camp's cultural life. He was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1944.

Gramophone writes:
"Decca's Entartete Musik series could well be one of the most valuable and important ongoing projects that the record industry has on offer at the moment. . . . Excellent performances by the Hawthorne Quartet.

Haas's Second String Quartet "From the Monkey Mountains" Op. 7 is a delightful discovery.  . . . The slow movement (''The Moon and I'') forms a passionately lyrical song of great intensity. The final movement is full of wild abandonment and jazz influences—the booklet-notes rightly point out the presence of the rhythm of the rumba, but this is very much a Czech rumba!"
(Listen to the fourth movement
here.)


More music in our Track of the Month series is here.
TEREZÍN MUSIC FOUNDATION  Executive Director Mark Ludwig
TMF is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring the artist of Terezin with concerts, commissions, and programs in Holocaust education in Europe and the U.S.