[Music] Brundibár Arts Festival: Fragments of a Diary

After its 2023 premiere in Brussels, the Brundibár Arts Festival is back at Full Circle!

This year's theme is " Fragments of a Diary"

Programme

Josima Feldschuh : Bal Ptaszkow -piano
Chopin: Polish songs - tenor and piano
Josima Feldschuh : Mazurka no.6 - piano
R. Panufnik: Votive - string quartet
Josima Feldschuh : Nocturne in G minor - piano
Szymanowski: Trois Chansons op.32 – tenor and piano
Interval
Josima Feldschuh : Shabbattiada - piano
Bacewicz: Piano Quintet
Volodymyr Runchak: Brundibár Arts Festival Special Commission 2024 “Fragments of a Diary” dedicated to Josima

Josima Feldschuh was a wunderkind pianist and composer from a Jewish family in Warsaw. She died in 1943 at the age of 15 whilst fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto. Josima would talk about how she wanted to become a composer one day, to “prove to the world” that women are not only capable of playing pieces written by others, but also of composing music themselves.

She left a manuscript of perfectly handwritten 17 piano pieces which she composed from as early as age 9 up to her death. These are currently kept at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem.

We have selected four of those pieces which will be interspersed throughout the Concert programme. The closing piece will be a Brundibár Arts Festival Commission 2024 dedicated to Josima. The piece is written for piano quintet and tenor. Sections from Josima’s father’s diary will be used for the vocal part which will be sang in Polish.

We have commissioned the piece to be written by Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Runchak (Artistic director of the International Festivals of New Music “Kharkiv contemporary”, “New Music in Ukraine” and International All-Ukrainian Music Festival “Ukrainian Day of the accordion”). At the time of writing the special commission, Volodymyr was a war refugee in Poland.

Artists

Violin: Magdalena Filipczak, Lonneke Van Straalen

Viola: Nathan Braude

Cello: Robert Max

Tenor: Alex Aldren

Piano: Nicola Eimer, Yoshi Kawamura

ABOUT BRUNDIBAR ARTS FESTIVAL:

Brundibár Arts Festival, founded by Alexandra Raikhlina, was launched in January 2016 as the first annual Festival in the UK dedicated to the Music and Arts of the Holocaust. Located in Newcastle and Gateshead, the Festival takes its name from Hans Krása's children's opera "Brundibár" (meaning bumblebee), which was first performed publicly by the children of Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943. Brundibár Arts Festival seeks to find new ways to positively document the astonishing achievements of artists under adversity, and to keep their stories alive through music and the arts.

*Maison de la Culture Juive, tickets here.