Memories of a legendary concert tour
Just weeks after the end of the war, Yehudi Menuhin and Benjamin Britten traveled through northern Germany and played for and for the benefit of survivors.
Set an example is an important book, published at a time when anti-Semitism is threatening to spread again. Werner Schmitt, initiator and co-author of the book, documents the concert he organized at the Bergen-Belsen Holocaust Memorial in 2016. It was dedicated to the memory of the legendary concert tour of July 1945, which Yehudi Menuhin undertook together with the composer Benjamin Britten through northern German towns and villages. They also performed in a movie theater in the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The camp had been liberated by Allied troops on April 15 of the same year.
The concert took place in the presence of survivors of the camp. Together with Britten, Menuhin played a program that included works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Claude Debussy, but cannot be fully reconstructed due to the sources. The memorial concert with the duo Aleksey Semenenko (violin) and Inna Firsova (piano) included the Chaconne by J. S. Bach, the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, the Sonata by Edvard Grieg, works by Chausson, Debussy and Tchaikovsky, and even the Kaddish by Maurice Ravel was played as an encore.
The recording on two CDs is included in the book, which summarizes impressions of the historic concert tour in words and pictures, when the two great musicians played for the benefit of surviving victims. The authors, Werner Schmitt, cellist and long-time director of the Bern Conservatory, and Hendrick Feindt, literary historian and media scientist, have created more than just a documentation with this book: they have set an example that needs to be recognized today more than ever.
Zeichen setzen/ Taking a Stand. Yehudi Menuhin / Benjamin Britten / Bergen-Belsen 1945, edited by Werner Schmitt, 100 p., 2 CDs, Fr. 57.00, Müller & Schade, Bern 2018, ISBN 978-3-905760-19-4
