The main focus of the Art Chamber Ensemble concert will be the work of Jewish composers who created in the period preceding the outbreak of World War II. We will therefore hear stylistically diverse and differently inspired, yet rarely performed pieces by, among others, Joachim Mendelson, Szymon Laks and Józef Koffler.

Joseph Achron has gone down in history as an excellent violinist, but also a composer. From 1899, he studied at the Sankt Petersburg Conservatory, both in the violin class with the distinguished Hungarian master Leopold Auer and in composition under the supervision of Anatoly Lyadov. His joining the ranks of the Society of Jewish Folk Music has a powerful effect on his work. The Hebrew Melody for violin and piano op. 33, which will be performed this evening, was created as a result of Achron’s fascination with the religious music of Ashkenazi Jews and gained fame thanks to its interpretation by the legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz.

Born in Warsaw in the late 19th century, Joachim Mendelson left for Paris in the 1920s – like so many composers of his generation – and joined the Association of Young Polish Musicians (Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonais). He eventually returned to Poland, where his Sonata for violin and piano was composed – just a few years before his tragic death at the hands of the Gestapo in 1943. In it, Mendelson clearly turns towards Neoclassicism, a current close to Szymon Laks. His Sonata for cello and piano belongs to the early stage of Laks’s work, who – like Mendelson – had the opportunity to draw from Parisian culture. In this piece, you can hear inspirations from Polish folklore, and at the same time, harmonious formal solutions reminiscent of French Impressionism.

It is believed that Józef Koffler was – next to Karol Szymanowski – the most important Polish composer active in the interwar period. The Capriccio for violin and piano op. 18 written in the middle period of his work, is the result of Koffler’s interest in the aesthetics of new music. The avant-garde work uses, among other things, the technique of dodecaphony. The evening will be crowned by the Piano Trio No. 2 “Silent Voices” by Benjamin Lees – a contemporary American composer with Jewish roots. The piece was written specially for a concert commemorating Jewish musicians murdered during World War II, which took place at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.