Don't Forget about Me

The Short Life of Gideon Klein, Composer and Pianist
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-907689-22-5
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, 322 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 789 g

A most gifted musician of his generation, this book traces Gideon Klein's short life through his music, his diaries and documents as well as the reminiscences of his friends and family.

Don't Forget about Me' chronicles the extraordinary and moving story about the young Czech pianist and composer Gideon Klein. Standing on the threshold of what was to be an auspicious career, Klein's musical activities in Prague were ruptured, as he, his family and friends were deported, interned in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) prison camp and ghetto. There his life took an even more unexpected turn, as he galvanised prisoners into an astonishing array of musical activities, and he composed his finest and most compelling music.
Until recently, Klein's music has largely been performed within the context of Holocaust memorialisation. But events commemorating the Klein centenary in 2019 offered audiences and musicians the opportunity to re-assess and reposition Klein's place in the history of twentieth-century music and European modernism. David Fligg's monograph on Klein, the first in a quarter of a century, continues this process.

Drawing on hitherto unpublished archival sources, interviews with Holocaust survivors who were imprisoned with him, many rare photographs and detailed musical analysis, 'Don't forget about me' recounts Klein's life from his Moravian childhood (he was born in Prerov in 1919), charting the development of his musical talent. It presents the first detailed examination of how the teenage Klein engaged with the numerous artistes who were at the centre of the vibrant cultural environment of pre-war Prague. Klein was finally transported to an isolated and bleak Auschwitz sub-camp, in the freezing closing weeks of 1944, where he was killed in a massacre by the retreating prison guards.

His story, along with the compositions which remarkably survived Terezín, is one of the most fascinating of Czech Jews during the Holocaust, and documents how one young man continued to make music in the face of evil.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fligg, David

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword Zdenka Fantlová
Author's Note
Acknowledgements

Introduction
I Prerov (1919-31)
1 The Family
2 A Moravian Childhood
II Prague (1931-41)
3 School Years
4 Prague Compositions I
5 Italy
6 Prague Compositions II
7 Student Years
8 The War finds Prague
9 Prague Compositions III
10 Making Music under Occupation
11 Family and Friends under Occupation
12 Final Works in Prague
III Terezín (1941-44)
13 Establishing the Ghetto
14 First Cultural Activities, and Terezín's First Piano
15 The Free-Time Administration and the Youth Care Department
16 A Terezín Personality
17 Terezín Pianist
18 Terezín Compositions
19 Klein's Final Year in Terezín
20 A Final Composition
IV Auschwitz and Fürstengrube (1944-45)
21 From Terezín to Auschwitz
22 Klein's Last Winter and Death
23 A Last Letter
24 Aftermath
Postscript
Appendices
1 List of Works
2 Chronology
Bibliography
Index of Klein's Works
General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Fligg, David
Dr David Fligg is Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, where he was previously a Lecturer in Academic Studies, and is also Visiting Professor at the University of Chester.