The crime of the Holocaust and the Great War remains inconceivable. In a poignant new recording of works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Gilead Mishory and Christopher Tarnow, Yeseul Moon explores three very different artistic approaches to the horror from several generations.
Hartmann himself was an eyewitness: the harrowing sight of a trek of survivors from the Dachau concentration camp was the impetus for the composition of the piano sonata "27 April 1945", which takes up what he saw with indescribable intensity and can be heard here in the revised version. In the touching "Funeral March" Hartmann quotes the workers' song "Brothers, to the Sun to Freedom".
Gilead Mishory's "Escape Pieces" interprets the award-winning novel of the same name by Anne Michaels. The story about the boy Jakob Beer, who loses his entire family in the Holocaust, is interlaced many times in place and time. Mishory takes up this complex picture with the help of associative motifs and quotations.
Christopher Tarnow also takes his cue from a literary model: Hermann Hesse's texts express an indescribable sadness, which Tarnow takes up in very different ways - as a simple melody, or as a "sunken" song. Yeseul Moon audibly takes personal consternation to heart. With the Scherzo from the early version of Hartmann's Sonata, which quotes the "Internationale", she manages a brilliant conclusion to this fascinating programme.
