Podcasts

Composer revives music written by Auschwitz orchestra

On a research trip to Auschwitz, my next guest discovered a one-page fragment of a musical composition titled “Futile Regrets”.   It’s quite well known that inmates performed music both for the SS and in the open air in the camp, but the works would have been chosen carefully to reflect the politics of the camp.    So to discover a personal composition allowed for a very powerful insight into the emotions of an inmate at the concentration camp.  Leo Geyer is a composer and conductor who had been commissioned to write a piece in memory of Sir Martin Gilbert, a British holocaust expert, and so he decided to complete this unsigned work. Leo Geyer joined Sean on the show today... see more