Rediscovering the Past —
music of Simon Laks
"I am not good at talking about myself, especially in public. I am not always sure what is appropriate to say and what should be left unspoken. In a way, I appear to be a rare case among Polish composers because I spent almost 3 years in Auschwitz, and what I saw and experienced there could not leave my psychological and creative sides untouched.”
S. Laks
Simon Laks — in between
It has been a great privilege and pleasure to work on his amazing music. The CD consist some prominent chamber and solo music works, and a world premiere of Concerto da camera (1964) for piano, 9 wind instruments and percussion.
Not only is the music featured on this record a true testament to Simon Laks’s talent, but it also constitutes a reflection of his life suspended between presence and oblivion. As a young Polish emigrant composer, he broke through and successfully developed his career in Paris, which was the cultural capital of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. His music was played by the most prominent musicians of that time. Somewhat surprisingly, he discarded artistic activity more than once. The time he spent in the concentration camp was a time away from music, although it was music that helped him survive there. However, at the end of the 1960s he stopped composing altogether due to his disappointment with humanity constantly repeating the same mistakes that led to suffering, and because he didn’t want to bow to the doctrines of the new avant-garde.