Newsletter 8 (March 2010)
Invitation: Music Freedom Day  On Wednesday 3rd March
2010,
you are invited, together with musicians and broadcasters world-wide,
to focus on music censorship as part or the MUSIC FREEDOM DAY. An
annual global event advocating freedom of musical expression initiated
by FREEMUSE (Freedom of Musical Expression - The World Forum on Music
and Censorship).
Music Freedom Day has, over four years, grown into global event that inspires increasing numbers of musicians and concert organisers to join. Mumbai, Cairo, Kabul, Amman, The Hague, Paris and New York are some of the cities planning to organize Music Freedom Day events in 2010. National broadcasting stations in Germany, Norway, Sweden and Spain will produce special programmes on music censorship and freedom of expression. Music and musicians have always generated enemies, who censored music (Stalin censored modern composers. Hitler banned all jazz music and music by Jewish composers. US media censored the country band Dixie Chicks, and the Taliban in Afghanistan still tries to stop all music whatsoever). Because of political (e.g. Belarus, Zimbabwe, China), religious (e.g. Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan), corporate (e.g. USA: Dixie Chicks, and more), gender (e.g. Iran, Afghanistan, and more) reasons. For more about actual cases and Music Freedom Day you can find on websites http://www.FreeMusE.org . MUSIC FREEDOM DAY 3rd March 2010 Competition: win 1 x book "Daniel Pearl: At Home in the World"
 Win 1 x book "Daniel Pearl:
At Home in the World"
by
answering following question:
Partner
of the Month: Jewish Museum in Prague
Attracting between
500,000 to 600,000 people each year, the Jewish Museum in Prague is
consistently the most visited museum in the whole
of the Czech Republic. The tour of its historical synagogues and its
exhibitions (featuring a remarkable variety of items from its
collections) provides a unique cultural experience – one of the
greatest on offer in the Czech capital.
The Jewish Museum, founded in 1906, has one of the most extensive collections of Judaic art in the world, with as many as 40,000 items and 100,000 books. It is unique for the number of items it contains and, above all, for the fact that they come exclusively from Bohemia and Moravia and thus presents an integrated picture of the life and history of the Jews in the region. An independent organization run by the Czech Jewish community since October 1994, the Jewish Museum in Prague has become a dignified memorial to the victims of the Shoah and an eternal reminder of the beauty and greatness of Jewish culture. Jewish Museum in Prague U Staré školy 1 110 00, Prague 1 Jewish Museum in Prague is
co-organiser of projects "7 Candles" (Year of Jewish
Culture - 100 Years of the Jewish Museum in Prague), "Weinberger Tour" and "MAKANNA".
Meet ... composer ERWIN SCHULHOFF  (*8. 6. 1894 - †18. 8. 1942) Erwin
Schulhoff (June 8th 1894 - August l8th 1942) came from Prague
Jewish-German family. He started his musical studies at the Prague
Conservatory of Music, continued them in Vienna and Leipzig (where his
composition teacher was Max Reger) and completed them successfully in
Cologne. The promising start of his career as a composer and pianist
was interrupted by the outbreak of the 1WW, a time that he spent as a
soldier on the eastern front. This experience completely changed his
vision of the world and of the art. As the great pianist, he performed
contemporary compositions in many prestigious music festivals in
Europe. As the composer he produced many works written for piano,
chamber music and for orchestra (at the time his death he was sketching
his 7th and 8th Symphony). Following the tragic events of the 1938-39
period he was considering the possibility of settling down in the
Soviet Union (he even obtained Soviet citizenship), but he could not
make it. After the attack of Germans on the Soviet Union, he was
arrested and imprisoned first in Prague and later in the Wulzburg camp,
where he died of tuberculosis after about a one-year of imprisonment.
 His Sonata for Cello and
Piano was completed on 11th December 1914. There are no records of any
performance at the time of its creation. Finally long time after
Schulhoff's death his friend Vlastimil Musil provided this work to
Cellist Ivan Měrka who premiered it with pianist Věra Čanová
13th August 1964 in Ostrava. Thanks to its technical difficulties this
composition is not played very often, even by our opinion is, one of so
called, big cello sonatas. Schulhoff's Sonata for Cello and Piano has
been performed by Czech Cellist František Brikcius and pianist
Tomáš Víšek as part of concert tour "Weinberger Tour" reminding 40th
anniversary since the death of Jewish composer Jaromír
Weinberger.
Call for ... Stop Music Censorship  |
