Krzysztof Penderecki: Kadisz
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Passover Psalm
Leonard Bernstein: Symphony No. 3 “Kaddish”
Izabela Matula – soprano
Ágnes Molnár – soprano
Valentin Dubovskoy – tenor
N. N. – soprano
Hungarian National Choir – (chorus master: János Csaba Somos)
Cantemus Boys’ Choir Nyíregyháza (choir director: Soma Szabó)
Pál Mácsai – narrator
Hostess of the Evening – Gerda Seres
Conducted by:Gergely Kesselyák
What is it about man that for thousands of years, regardless of intelligence or civilisation, has repeatedly staged bloodbaths and sent masses of innocent people to their deaths? This pressing question lurks in the works of the evening and attempts to mourn for the victims of the Holocaust as they deserve.
We are still puzzled and often speechless about how this could actually happen in an enlightened Europe 80 years ago. But the Jewish tradition is not silent: there, the text of the Kaddish has accompanied the period of mourning for thousands of years and, despite the loss, entrusts the dead to the goodness of God. And the arts have not remained silent either, as several composers have worked with the prayer's text. In this concert, we remember, grieve, and feel comforted by such works.
5.30 pm – EXHIBITION OPENING The Director of the Foundation, Ronald Leopold, opens the Hungarian-language travelling exhibition of the Anne Frank Foundation of the Netherlands Let Me Be Myself.
6. pm – LECTURE – Dr Gábor Schweitzer, Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Social Sciences, gives a lecture with the title "I am happy to live here in the lovely beautiful feet of the Mecsek Mountains," in which he provides snapshots of the past of the Jewish residents of Pécs, the absence of the four thousand people deported from Pécs in the Holocaust, which had a long-lasting effect.
7 pm – CONCERTOn the day of the concert, the Director of the Foundation, Ronald Leopold, opens the Hungarian-language travelling exhibition of the Anne Frank Foundation of the Netherlands at 5.30 pm. The exhibition will be open for two weeks with a guided tour. The Diary of Anne Frank, who died in the Holocaust at the age of 15, has been translated into more than 70 languages, and her name has become a symbol of hope worldwide and of "the will to live in the face of all difficulties". Her life story appeals to a wide range of people, and the museum, built in the family's hiding place, is visited by more than a million visitors every year. Jewish burial customs are all about life and survival. Jewish cemeteries are often called "houses of life": in death, too, they affirm life. This is why, in addition to historical commemoration, the exhibition is about the diversity of life: it presents the German-Jewish-Dutch identity of Anne and the Frank family, highlighting in a contemporary tableau that we all have a complex identity and respect for ourselves and the other is essential to living without judgment, fuelling the fire of each other's lives and not extinguishing it.
The cross-generational impact of our shared traumas affecting whole families and communities is inevitable. Inherited individual destinies are also intertwined in collective losses. On the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust, the Pannon Philharmonic invokes the commemorating and emotionally climatic effects of music by performing high-profile compositions. The programmes accompanying the concert highlight the shared tragedy of Holocaust victims, perpetrators and those who remained silent. The legacy that affects millions of people's lives in each of us, and it is up to us whether we act against its causes. The accompanying programmes will be introduced by Dr Gábor Schweitzer's lecture from 6 pm, which will present the still painful absence of the four thousand people who were deported from Pécs. We owe the organisation of the accompanying programmes to the art historian Tünde Pusztai, a former staff member of the Pannon Philharmonic, now living in the Netherlands.
At the initiative of the orchestra on the day of the concert, the Stolperstein of a fellow Pécs-based musician, music teacher, conductor and composer Rezső Mangold will be placed on the sidewalk outside his 1944 address, 59 Rákóczi Street, opposite the music school. Rezső Mangold studied music in Pécs, Budapest and Paris. In April 1933, the board of the Israelite community entrusted him with the direction of the synagogue's choir, but before that, he led the Pécs MÁV Orchestra for five years. In 1944, he and his wife were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed. At the initiative of the German artist Günter Demnig, a Stolpersteineplaced in front of the entrance to their last known freely chosen residence will make us stop, reminding us of them and all those who were taken and never returned.
