UA music prof Daniel Asia could very well put the Fred Fox School of Music on the universal music map this weekend.
For the first time in the United States — and the first time in decades worldwide, for that matter — audiences will hear works by 20th century Czech composer Hans Winterberg, a Jewish composer whose works were banished after World War II and later, upon his death in 1991, were housed in the Sudeten German Music Archive under a contract that they would not be released publicly until January 2031.
That contract was voided in July 2015.
Several of Winterberg’s works will be played over four concerts this weekend as part of the ninth annual University of Arizona “Music + Festival.”
The 2016 installment is “Forbidden Composers — Schoenberg, Weill, Winterberg,” exploring the works of three early 20th century Jewish composers whose works were influenced by the Holocaust and banned by the Nazis during World War II.
While Schoenberg (“Verklärte Nacht”) “and Weill (“The Threepenny Opera”) have long been rediscovered worldwide and their works widely performed, Winterberg, a German-speaking Czech interred by the Nazis in a Czechoslovakian ghetto, has remained virtually unknown.
“All the (Winterberg) pieces we are going to be playing we are playing for the first time” in the U.S., Asia said “It’s pretty damn unique to be able to resurrect a composer whose music nobody has heard for 40 years. There might be pieces here that could sit in the repertoire” alongside Bartók and other great composers.
Festival founder and architect Asia, who spends months planning and curating the annual three-day event, is bringing in Florida’s Amernet String Quartet for the festival’s spotlight concert Sunday afternoon.
The four will perform string quartets of all three composers including Winterberg, whose works they have never played before, Asia said.
The Music + Festival will feature 170 UA student and faculty musicians including the Arizona Wind Quintet, Arizona Symphony Orchestra, UA Wind Ensemble and UA Studio Jazz Ensemble.
“It’s about the only thing we do at the university in the Fred Fox School of Music that involves everybody in the school of music,” said Asia, who said his primary goal with the annual festival is to champion 20th and 21st century composers.
“I want to show people there is marvelous music in the 20th century that is out there,” said Asia, a widely published composer and teaches composing at the UA.
