The Czech Centre and The Spiro Ark are delighted to host you

  Pavel Haas Tomas Spurny & Brian Bannatyne-Scott Viktor Ullmann

Date: Tuesday 5 June

Time: 7.30 pm

Venue: The Spiro Ark Centre - 25-26 Enford St, W1

Price: £10

Songs from the Theresiendstadt Ghetto by Pavel Haas and Viktor Ullmann as well as Dvorak's wonderful ten Biblical Songs performed by Scottish singer Brian

Bannatyne-Scott and Czech pianist Tomas Spurny.

Program:

Brian Bannatyne-Scott (Bass), Tomas Spurny (piano)

Dvorak – 10 Biblical Songs in Czech

Interval

Haas---Chinese Songs

Ullmann---Hafiz Songs

Performers:

Brian Bannatyne-Scott was born in Edinburgh and studied at the University of St Andrew’s and the GSAMD. He has appeared at major venues and festivals such as La Scala , Milan, Paris Opera, Opera National du Rhin, the Salzburg Festival, ENO, the Royal Opera and The Edinburgh International Festival.

His recent engagements include Baron Ochs in "Rosenkavalier" in Bielefeld, Swallow in Opera North's award-winning "Peter Grimes", Parson in the "Cunning Little Vixen" at the Bregenz Festival, Hobson in "Peter Grimes" in Brussels and Bilbao, Geronte in "Manon Lescaut" at Opera North and Poet in Philip Glass's "Orphee" at the ROH. His extensive discography includes "King Arthur" (Purcell) on DG Archiv, "Midsummer Night's Dream" on Philips, Handel's "Tolomeo" on Mondo Musica and "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" on EMI.

The pianist and musicologist Tomáš Spurný was born in the Czech Republic into a family of musicians who taught him to play piano and bagpipes. Later he followed piano studies by obtaining a music degree. After graduating he became involved in joint Czech-German musicological and ethno-musicological projects.

As a pianist Tomáš Spurný devotes himself to chamber music and song accompaniments, collaborating with many Czech and overseas singers. In addition he heads the folk ensemble The Bagpipers of the Bohemian Forest, with whom he has performed both at home and abroad, also publishing two separate, thematically distinct CDs of reconstructed, authentic Czech folk music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Music from Theresienstadt:

Pavel Haas (1899-1944) was an important successor to his teacher, Leoš Janáček. His promising career as a composer was violently interrupted in December 1941, when he was taken off to the Terezín concentration camp.

Haas’s FOUR SONGS to the words of Chinese poetry were composed in February April 1944. Haas chose to set to music four poems from the collection New Songs from Ancient China. These poems, written in a quite different situation, took on a new meaning in the Terezín ghetto. The songs were first sung in the assembly hall of Terezienstadt Town Hall on 22nd June 1944. Not long afterwards, on 17th October, Haas was murdered in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), composer, pianist, choirmaster, conductor and music critic, was one of the victims from among the Prague German Jewish musicians in World War II. On 8th September 1942 he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Even in the extremely difficult conditions of the Terezin ghetto he succeeded in maintaining his artistic activity. Ullmann was deported to the Auschwitz death camp, where he died in a gas chamber, probably on 15th October 1944.

Only a part of Viktor Ullmann’s work has so far been found. Before the outbreak

of the Second World War Ullmann wrote some forty works, mostly orchestral, chamber and piano compositions and two operas. His literary works and approximately twenty fragments of his almost finished or complete compositions written in Theresienstadt have also been preserved.