[TOP: In my own voice; Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin; MSR Classics MS 1278; BOTTOM: The Last Quartet: A Violinist's Memoir of the Holocaust; Alfred Mur; E-Book, 170 pp.]
The April 7, 2010 issue of the Newsletter of the African American violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins gives the details of her public speaking engagement at 7:30 pm Friday, April 9, 2010 within the context of the Sabbath Service: “Invited speaker at the Hebrew Tabernacle on Ft. Washington Avenue in Manhattan on the occasion of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance. The focus of the talk will be about publishing the memoir of survivor, violinist Alfred Mur entitled 'The Last Quartet: A Violinist's Memoir of the Holocaust.'”
“In the immediate aftermath of World War II, violinist and Holocaust survivor Alfred Mur could not help but tell people of his terrifying experiences. ‘You should write this down,’ they all encouraged him. So The Last Quartet was written between 1951 and 1952 but it has not been available to the public until now, July 2009. 'My boss looks at me as if I were my own ghost… He didn’t even dream that I escaped from the concentration camp…They are surprised to see us. No one has come from outside for many months; they say it over and over again…'
“Read the incredible story of how Alfred Mur and his brother Fredi, now 98 and 94, not only escaped the Nazis in Poland, but kept their hope alive throughout their ordeal through the power of music. 'Here in the Krakow ghetto, in this place of death and agony; I hear music in my mind. It is music broken into short fragments; a melody from a quartet, a passage from a concerto, a motif from a symphony. Nothing is complete. Music comes dancing in my mind, but it dances right out again. I feel a great need to make music – to play another quartet… if it is to be my last quartet, let it be my last quartet; but music I must have.'
Introduction
by Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violinist
“From the very first page, his life story during the war unfolds with poignant and gripping scenes about his many escapes from death at the hands of the Nazis, while watching his own family being executed or taken on the death trains to Auschwitz. This memoir, entitled “The Last Quartet”, is deeply moving and insightful, a paradoxical story of death, cold hatred and terror juxtaposed with the sublime music played by his quartet, and the love shared between two brothers who actually managed to escape together after hiding for years apart from one another. Alfred is originally from Krakow where he was forced into the ghetto there. He worked as a furrier in order to remain useful to the Nazi war effort and thus alive. However, as music was his passion, he assembled a quartet of friends to read chamber music regularly for as long as it was still possible in the ghetto. This was much to the chagrin of some and a beacon of inspiration to others. Following the war, Alfred Mur joined the Prague Philharmonic. Mr. Mur prefers to think of this as a ‘violinist's memoir’, not a 'holocaust' document. Understandably, that term does not conjure any pleasant memories for him.”
Kelly Hall-TompkinsAfrican American Violinist
In my own voice
Alfred Mur
The Last Quartet
A Violinist's Memoir of the Holocaust
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