For the first time in eight decades, music once performed by these incarcerated musicians will be heard exactly as it sounded in the camp.
London-based composer and doctoral student Leo Geyer has spent nearly eight years combing through the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum archives to decipher and restore fragments of sheet music left by prisoner orchestras.
Geyer’s ensemble, Constella Music, will perform these rediscovered scores—some so faded they were nearly impossible to read—in a moving tribute marking the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
Music as resistance
Auschwitz housed at least six orchestras, formed by SS order but covertly used by inmates to express defiance. “You suddenly remembered that there is a world that we used to know,” recalls one survivor in the film, describing the emotional impact of hearing the music within the camp. The documentary merges Geyer’s investigative journey with interviews from Holocaust survivors and live performances of the lost compositions.
“After years of research, I’m pleased to share this music to commemorate 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz,” Geyer says, noting the Holocaust must never be forgotten.
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Source: Classic FM, University of Oxford, The Guardian