Rückblick und Konzert zum Gedenken an die Novemberpogrome 1938

2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the death of composer Viktor Ullmann, born in Teschen/Hungary in 1898, deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz in October 1944. Pianist Senka Brankovic and actor Helmut Mooshammer took this commemoration as an opportunity to include Ullmann's melodrama “Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke”, which he composed while still in Theresienstadt in the summer of 1944, in their repertoire. Viktor Ullmann was a student of Arnold Schönberg, whose 150th birthday is being celebrated this year.

The artists on their program: “‘Courage has become so tired and longing so great’ - this sentence is at the beginning of Rilke's poem and it ends with the words: 'There he saw an old woman weeping.' These harrowing sentences outline the theme of life in all its complexity. Rilke shows us an 18-year-old soldier, full of longing, tenderness and desire, wonder and courage, in tremendously touching, poetic images. We are fascinated by the fact that this poetry can be read in a completely new way in our time. In every line you can read the sorrow, the loss, the transience. And then Viktor Ullmann comes along. In the Theresienstadt concentration camp, he countered the humiliation and threat to life posed by the Nazi regime with the power of creativity and set Rilke's 'Cornet' to music. The poet's poetic suggestion finds a congenial echo in the musician's composition. It is an honorable mission for us to make this masterpiece come alive.”

Senka Brankovic studied in Salzburg and Vienna, teaches at the University of the Arts and the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin and is an internationally renowned concert pianist. Helmut Mooshammer teaches at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and at the Theaterakademie Hamburg and currently performs at the Deutsches Theater Berlin.