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Terezín/Theresienstadt

from: Deutsche Gramophon

Release Date March 25, 2008
Out of context, the music on this memorial CD to the composers who were led to death at Terezin, Hitler's showplace among the concentration camps, could seem almost wistful. We get a snapshot of genres as separated as cabaret, simple lullabies, and serious classical lied. One could be walking down the street in Berlin in the Thirties. But we are in Terezin instead, and wistfulness turns to tragedy. The lullabies come from a nurse wo chose to enter the gas chamber with her sick kids, still singing, rather than abandon them. The possibility for heartbreak is endless. The simple fact that almost every composer's dates end in the same year, 1944, triggers the specter of horror.

Von Otter, Gerhaher, and company respect the dead -- as ... Read More: