Opera Holland Park has marked Holocaust Memorial Day in words and music annually since 2021, with a focus on music by a generation of Czech composers whose voices were silenced in the Holocaust.
This year, Kezia Bienek sings songs by Maurice Ravel, Hanns Eisler and Ilse Weber, with pianist Lada Valešová and guitarist Brian O’Doherty.
They reflect the experiences of those who suffered in the Russian pogroms (Ravel’s setting of a Yiddish folksong from the Pale of Settlement), and those who were forced into political exile by the Nazis (Hanns Eisler’s An den kleinen Radioapparat), alongside a lullaby written by the Czech composer Ilse Weber in Theresienstadt before she was deported to Auschwitz..
The film is narrated by BBC Radio 3 Breakfast’s Petroc Trelawny.
