Martin Ellerby

Duration: c. 22 minutes

 

Audio:

 

 

 

Publisher: MEM

 

Programme Notes:

 

Epitaph VII: Memento (Terezin) for Clarinet in A and String Quartet (2008)

 

1. The Closed Town

2. Arbeit

3. The Silent Hunger

4. Fear

5. The Butterfly

6. Tears

7. The Deportation Train

8. Forgotten

9. To Olga

 

'The seventh in  a series of pieces reflecting atrocities associated with events related to World War II, Memento takes as its subject the Nazi concentration camp located at Terezin in the former Czechoslovakia. Nine brief movements form a dramatic scena of varied moods. Individual movement titles are taken from a selection of pictures and poems created by the young inmates of the camp. All these, and more, can be found in the widely available published collection entitled ...I never saw another butterfly... Some 15,000 children passed through Terezin between 1942 and 1944, of whom fewer than 100 survived. The clarinet plays the part of an innocent butterfly able freely to roam around the camp and to witness different events and experiences. The work is in the form of an arch, beginning with an eerie depiction of the town featuring string harmonics. The central movement, The Butterfly, is openly romantic, and the whole piece leads to the final, optimistic movement which uses fragments from Dvořák's Songs my Mother taught me.'

Instrumentation:

Clarinet in A

String Quartet

 

Performance Notes:

 

Available Recordings: