Lost Voices, Living Music
The Jerusalem Music Centre
A concert in the Into the Light series
Israel Contemporary Players
Artistic Director: Dan Yuhas
Music of Hungarian-Jewish composers, whose career and lives were affected by the Nazi regime, alongside works by their well-
known Hungarian contemporaries
Kuti Sandor (1908-1945) Serenade for string Trio
Pártos Ödön (1907-1977): Agada (1962) (vla, pno, perc)
György Kurtag (1926- ) Homage a Robert Schumann Cl. Vla. Pno
Weiner László (1916-1944): String Trio (1938) (vl, vla, vc)
Sandor Veress Trio for winds
Over the past decades, an increasing number of works by Jewish composers active throughout Europe before and during the Nazi era have been rediscovered. The Into the Light project is dedicated to bringing this lost music out of the archives around the world where it has long been preserved. Like other concerts in the Into the Light series, Voices from the Danube is not intended merely as a historical tribute. Its aim is to restore these works to their rightful place on the concert stage. By presenting music by composers who perished in the Holocaust alongside that of their contemporaries, the program reveals the richness of the Hungarian musical tradition and the significant role Jewish composers played in shaping it.
At the heart of the program are works by the Hungarian-Jewish composers Sándor Kuti and László Weiner, whose creative lives were cut tragically short during the Holocaust. Their music is presented alongside works by Hungarian-Jewish composers who survived the Nazi occupation, including Ödön (Eden) Pártos, who fled Europe for Palestine in 1935, and György Kurtág, widely regarded as one of the greatest living composers, who recently celebrated his 100th birthday. Kurtág survived the Holocaust as a Jewish child in Romania and later moved to Hungary, where he studied with Sándor Veress, whose music is also featured in this program. Many of the composers represented here were students of Zoltán Kodály, Veress's teacher, making this concert a reflection of a continuous and influential tradition of Hungarian musical creativity throughout the twentieth century.
The program has been compiled and is presented by composer Dan Yuhas, Music Director of the Israel Contemporary Players.
Sándor Kuti was a Hungarian Jewish composer, pianist, and conductor whose music reflected both Hungarian musical traditions and a distinctive modern musical language. Educated at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, he was regarded as one of the promising composers of his generation. During World War II he was conscripted into forced labor service and was deported to Germany in 1944, where he disappeared and is believed to have been murdered in the Holocaust in 1945. His surviving chamber works, including the celebrated Serenade for String Trio, have been rediscovered in recent decades and are now recognized as part of Hungary’s lost musical heritage
Ödön Pártos was a Hungarian-born Jewish composer and violist who immigrated to Palestine in 1935. A central figure in the development of Israeli art music, he served as principal violist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and integrated European traditions with Jewish and Middle Eastern influences. He received the Israel Prize in Music in 1954.
György Kurtág is widely regarded as one of the greatest living composers of contemporary classical music. Born in 1926, he celebrated his 100th birthday in 2026. A former student of Sándor Veress at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Kurtág became known for his intensely expressive and often highly concentrated musical language. His works, ranging from brief miniatures to large-scale vocal and operatic compositions, have had a profound influence on contemporary music worldwide.
László Weiner was a Hungarian Jewish composer, pianist, and conductor regarded as one of the most promising musical talents of his generation. A student of Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, he developed a distinctive musical voice rooted in Hungarian musical traditions. During World War II he was deported to a forced labor camp in Lukov, Slovakia, where he was murdered in 1944 at the age of 28. His rediscovered chamber and orchestral works are now recognized as an important part of Hungary's lost musical heritage.
Sándor Veress was one of the leading Hungarian composers of the generation following Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, both of whom were his teachers. A respected composer, ethnomusicologist, and educator, he later taught such major figures as György Ligeti and György Kurtág. After emigrating to Switzerland in 1949, he developed a highly personal style that combined Hungarian folk influences with modern compositional techniques.
Israel Contemporary Players
Founded in 1991, the ICP is widely regarded as the best ensemble of its kind in Israel. Its activity has impacted the country’s musical life and popular appreciation of contemporary music. The ensemble regularly commissions, performs and records works by Israeli composers and so far has premiered over 100 Israeli compositions, besides performing an international repertoire from the 20th and 21st centuries.
The ensemble collaborates with the finest European and Israeli conductors and soloists, including Michel Tabatchnik, Peter Rundel, Jonathan Nott, Ilan Volkov, Fabian Panisello, Christian Eggen, Dietrich Henschel, Irvine Arditti, Boris Berman and George Benjamin, to name just a few. The ICP, which was awarded the National Lottery Foundation prize for excellence in Israel, is internationally renowned and receives frequent invitations to perform at the most prestigious venues and festivals in Europe and Asia.
The concert series “Discoveries” is performed regularly at Heichal Hatarbut Tel Aviv.
The ensemble consists of 17 players.