Book contents
17 - Terezín Pianist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2023
Summary
In 1943, the actress Zdenka Fantlová was playing the part of Aphrodite in a cabaret, Rabbi Akiba was no Liar – or was he?, written by Josef Lustig and Jiří Spitz. After one of the performances in the attic theatre of the Dresden Barracks, she had her only personal encounter with Klein, a chance meeting:
The lights of the theatre were already out, and I was the last to leave. It was quite early, because of the curfew, maybe around eight o’clock. Just as I was leaving, Gideon comes in. He hadn't been at the performance, and he just came in to practise. So he says, ‘Don't go. Stay here, and I’ll play something for you,’ and I thought, well, an invitation like this from such a good-looking young man, and I’m the only audience, so I said, ‘OK, if you want to’. So I was sitting there on a bench, at the front, and he got up on the stage, and there was a big piano, with legs and everything, don't know what make it was, and he sat down, and he played Chopin's Etude Op. 25, No. 12 in C minor. And I was sitting there, thinking this is not true. It was surreal, a genius playing in this attic, and I, a nobody, sitting in the audience. He should be playing in Carnegie Hall with an elegant audience. Yet, where are we? We’re in prison. It was extraordinary. When he finished, we both left. And that was the scene, like out of a film.
Whether playing to a single person, to a larger audience, or the ‘inner circle’, as Jan Fischer described it, Klein's recital performances in Terezín maintained the standard of excellence and virtuosity that he had established in Prague. There were any number of pianists in the ghetto, and once concerts became sanctioned and well established, venues were set up, confiscated pianos from Prague began to arrive and practice rosters were prepared for the players. Norbert Fryd recalls:
Whoever was a musician had to be auditioned, because enthusiastic amateurs wished to enrol themselves for concert practice just as eagerly as renowned pianists. Due to cramped accommodation space, it was also necessary to economise on every free available room where a large audience could fit in.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Don't Forget about MeThe Short Life of Gideon Klein, Composer and Pianist, pp. 204 - 214Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022