The Mozart Question

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Narrated by Michael and directed by Simon Reade, The Mozart Question is beautifully enhanced and embellished with extracts of music by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Vivaldi. Featuring actress Victoria Moseley, violinist Daniel Pioro and the Storyteller’s Ensemble, the performance interweaves words and music to tell this haunting tale of survival against the odds. Of course, I do not know York as well as its sister church in Canterbury. It is not familiar in the same way, but every time I have been I have been overwhelmed by its beauty and magnificence. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? It is a wonderful world out there. There are times when it can be hard to go on believing that. But always believe it, Paolo, because it is true.’ When former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo was walking around Venice, two chance encounters resonated in his mind: a street violinist playing late at night to a single enraptured child, then finding himself shortly thereafter in an unknown square that he realised was part of the ghetto from which Jews had been sent to the gas chambers.

Records of the performances survive including concert programmes which provide an insight into the type of music that was played. German marches, popular melodies, operettas and works by well-known composers including Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Strauss were often to be found in the programmes. Formal performances usually consisted of two parts, with an interval, and lasted for the duration of between 8 and 10 pieces. Michael Morpurgo lives in Devon with his wife Clare. He has three children and seven grandchildren. A Barn Theatre production in association with Bob & Marianne for Anthology Theatre and The Everyman Theatre Cheltenham.Michael Morpurgo's amazing story writing combined with the great illustration by Michael Foreman just made this book interesting. There is a brief account of the Holocaust, there was orchestra playing Mozart's in concentration camps.

Join us for our magnificent Festival launch night, brought to you in collaboration with York Minster and The Ebor Lectures. The combination of music and word introduced a perhaps lesser known history of the Holocaust; that of the concentration camp orchestras. Varying in size, structure and formation the orchestras consisted of both amateur and professional musicians. For example, the first camp orchestra in Auschwitz I was established in December 1940 and was led by Franz Nierychlo. Upon its establishment it consisted of 6 musicians including violin, trumpet and saxophone but grew to almost 100 musicians by 1942 and over 120 by 1944. He put the two ideas together, recalling the camp orchestras that the Germans had formed among their captives, to amuse themselves and deceive new arrivals, Mozart being the Offizier composer of choice. What, he wondered, would have been the reaction of those musicians, had they somehow survived, to taking up their instruments in the future? Toward playing Mozart in particular?Michael Morpurgo has thrilled and delighted huge numbers of young readers since becoming a children’s author in the early 1970s," Wood said. "Action for Children’s Arts is delighted to recognise Michael’s outstanding contribution by presenting him with the J M Barrie Award 2016. His work will undoubtedly, like Peter Pan, stand the test of time, making him a truly worthy recipient of this award." perished and to remember the events – and new musical creations also appeared. The first of these were created in the Displaced Persons camps at the end of the war, where survivors tried to come to terms with their experiences and loss. Increasingly music became one of a variety of artistic mediums through which both those involved and those removed from the Holocaust tried to respond to its occurrence.

Covering some of the same ground as Arthur Miller's Playing for Time, The Mozart Question explores how something so sublime such as Mozart's music can be used for evil purposes, but with such a light touch that it shirks nothing and yet is supremely suitable for family audiences. After being forced for his own survival to serenade his fellow Jews to their deaths, Paolo's father has vowed never to play his violin again, but Signor Horowitz, also a member of the concentration camp orchestra, believes in the healing power of music. Morpurgo knows of the healing power of storytelling, too, and this is very much a tale of the corrosive effects of secrets and lies as they are passed from one generation to the next, and the redemptive power of truth and art. There are chinks of beauty that can be grasped at even in the darkest times. It is difficult for us to imagine how dreadful was the suffering that went on in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. The enormity of the crime that the Nazis committed is just too overwhelming for us to comprehend. In their attempt to wipe out an entire race they caused the death of six million people, most of them Jews. It is when you hear the stories of the individuals who lived through it – Anne Frank, Primo Levi – that you can begin to understand the horror just a little better, and to understand the evil that caused it. Gilbert, Shirli (2005) Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps.Oxford: Clarendon Press. A reporter sent to Venice to interview world-renowned violinist Paolo Levi is told she can ask him anything about his life and career, but on no account must she ask him the Mozart question. But it is Paulo himself who decides that it is time for the truth to be told...

As defeat became increasingly likely, the Nazis went to great lengths to disguise their crimes. All evidence of the death camps in Poland – Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno – was erased; facilities were dismantled, pits were filled in, and trees were planted. After the Soviet Red Army captured Majdanek almost intact in July 1944, the Nazis began to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, when the camp was liberated in January 1945, the ruins could still be seen. I grew up as a schoolboy under the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral, singing in its choir and cloisters, went to communion there in the crypt every Sunday morning, so a great cathedral is part of my being. Each is different, but each is a magnificent statement in stone and stained glass, of faith and hope, and the men and architects who built them, inspired by faith. They built them for worship, for music and song, for the gathering of a community, to pray and to contemplate.

This is a tale simply but powerfully told. It introduces the reader to the power of music, memories and the holocaust. It is written in such a way as to inform but not to scare children into having nightmares. Andrew Bridgman's performance as Paulo makes you wish that it were longer. Music is central to the piece. As Bridgemont plays the violin live or we hear recorded, music it gives an emotional lift to the production but, more than that, it makes the audience doubly aware of the 'Mozart Question' of the title: our response to music and what happens when something we love becomes associated with something horrible and brings a sense of guilt. Paulo's parents and his teacher have met before, they share an experience and a memory that is painful to live with and Mozart especially is part of it victims, around 200,000 Roma (gypsies) and at least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled men, women and children were also killed, while some three million Soviet prisoners of war died in Nazi captivity.One day, Benjamin decided to meet Paolo's parents, and this is when Paolo understands why his father has been hiding his secret and a great reunion of survivors happened. This haunting novella is a Holocaust tale of trauma, strength, survival and ultimately reunion. A young journalist is given the opportunity to interview Paolo Levi, a famous violinist, but she is told that under no circumstances is she to ask him the Mozart question. If she does, he will refuse to continue the interview. Not even knowing what the Mozart question is, she opens the interview by telling him she won't ask it. Instead she asks how he started playing the violin. After a few tense moments, he decides to tell her his story, a childhood tale of finding a street musician, a wonderful violinist who begins to teach him about the instrument. He tells the musician about his father's broken violin and asks if he could practice on it if it were mended. The musician mends the violin, and the lessons start. From this beginning, the boy learns not only how to play the violin, but he also learns the story of his parents' traumatic past. This book raises many questions about what one might do to survive, the power and significance of music, and the effect of the events of one generation on the next Ghetto An enclosed area of a city, town or village where Jews were forced by the Nazis and their collaborators to live. Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto without permission, and disease and overcrowding were rife. conditions were as awful as many other places, but despite this a rich cultural scene developed in Theresienstadt. A host of different artists and performers spent varying amounts of time in the camp-ghetto, with famous composers like Viktor Ullman and Gideon Klein making sure that Theresienstadt became famous for its musical activities.