Gideon Klein (1919-1945)
String Trio

Terezin, a small town 60 kilometres North of Prague, was transformed by the Nazis into a ghetto and a forced labour camp for Jews, mostly from the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, in 1941. Paradoxically and against all odds, Terezin had its active artistic scene, with concerts, choirs, cabaret, theatre and occasionally even opera. The group of the most active musicians included the then twenty-something Gideon Klein.
He was an excellent pianist, mostly working as a performer, although he did some composing as well. He had only learned composition with Alojz Hába at the Conservatory in Prague; despite his modest writing experience, he had a very good mastery of the technique. In Terezin, he composed for special occasions or within the limits of the performance. He wrote various pieces for men’s choir, from simple adaptations of folksongs to sophisticated madrigals. In his two most ambitious works, the instrumental compositions Piano Sonata (1941) and String Trio (1944), despite various influences, he exhibited an individuality of a young artist in quest for his own path.
Trio for violin, viola and cello is Gideon Klein’s last work. It is characteristic in its fairly unconventional form. The rapid and short extreme parts, pulsating with ostinato and dancing rhythms, maintained in the style of folklore-tinged neoclassicism, serve as a frame for a more developed middle part: a cycle of variations on a Moravian folksong, highly differentiated in expression and texture. The whole lasts ca. 13 minutes, the middle part somewhat longer than the two extremities together.
In October 1944, Gideon Klein was taken with a transport of Artists from Terezin. He eventually ended up in a small camp of Fürstengrube, where he died, probably on January 1945, just before the camp’s liberation. He was yet another remarkable talent smothered too early by the cataclysm of war.

Adam Walaciński