A MUSIC COMPETITION AS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR A NEW CULTURE OF REMEMBRANCE

WOLF DURMASHKIN COMPOSITION AWARD

VIDEO TRAILER:
WDCA REVIEW INTERNATIONAL JEWISH-GERMAN WEEK MAY 2018
https://vimeo.com/wolfganghauck/wdca2018

PERIOD: 1.7.2017 to 31.12.2024
FOCUS: Music, historical research, commemorative culture
TARGET GROUP: Composers up to 35 years of age
PLACE OF EVENT: Munich

COMPETITION

PUBLICATION TERMS OF PARTICIPATION: July 2, 2024
SUBMISSION DATE: August 30, 2024
JURY SESSION: September 2024
COMPETITION LANGUAGE: German and English
AWARD-WINNING CONCERT AND PREMIERE: November 9, 2024, Munich

COMPETITION AND CONCERT

Composition competition 2024
November 9, 2024, Munich University of Music and Performing Arts

COMPETITION 2024

The association “dieKunstBauStelle e.V.” from Landsberg, the Gustav Mahler Private University Klagenfurt and the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich (HMTM) are jointly offering the Wolf Durmashkin Composition Award 2024.

We are looking for composers up to the age of 35 who deal with the Holocaust in a new work for accordion, viola and percussion. A total of up to 3,000 euros in prize money will be awarded. The deadline for entries is August 30, 2024. The premiere of the award-winning works is planned for November 9, 2024 in Munich, in memory of the victims of the November 1938 pogroms.

The international Wolf Durmashkin Composition Award will take place for the second time in 2024 and will focus on “Music and the Holocaust”. The competition is named after the Jewish musician Wolf Durmashkin from Vilnius, who was killed by the National Socialists in a concentration camp in Estonia in 1944.

“The competition attracted international attention when it was held for the first time in 2018,” emphasizes Wolfgang Hauck from dieKunstBauStelle e.V.

Prof. Lydia Grün, President of HMTM, adds: “For us, participation in this competition is an expression of our university’s lively remembrance work and our fundamental responsibility for the basic democratic values of our society. Critical artistic perspectives on our present day emerge from the confrontation with National Socialist crimes. This competition therefore provides an important impetus, also for our students.”

Prof. Jakob Gruchmann, Professor of Composition and Music Theory in Klagenfurt, sees above all the far-reaching potential of the competition for international cooperation. Together with Prof. Jan Müller-Wieland, Professor of Composition at HMTM, he developed the conditions for the competition.

The prizewinners’ concert will take place on November 9, 2024 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich.

The concert on November 9, 2024 is intended to commemorate the Reichsprogromnacht of 1938. That night was a turning point, a beacon for what was to come, it was a prelude to the Holocaust.

OCCASION AND BACKGROUND

Wolf Durmashkin came from a Jewish-Polish family of musicians from Vilnius, Lithuania. On the one hand, he was committed to traditional Jewish culture, while on the other, the family cultivated the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. Wolf Durmashkin conducted the Vilnius Symphony Orchestra, was a choirmaster, but also composed and performed together with members of the family at musical activities in the Vilnius ghetto. He was separated from his family and died in 1944, one day before the liberation by the Red Army, in a German concentration camp in Estonia that had been set on fire by the SS.

The concert was intended to commemorate the largely forgotten DP orchestra, which was initially named after its founding place, St. Ottilien. It consisted of the last survivors of the persecution and extermination of Jews in Lithuania. They came from the ghettos of Kaunas and Vilnius and had also survived the Kaufering/Landsberg subcamps. The ensemble had its first performance on May 27, 1945, exactly one month after the liberation of Landsberg by the Americans. The musicians therefore called it a “liberation concert”.

Since history should be more than just a reconstruction, a composition competition will be announced at the same time, which is explicitly aimed at young musicians under the age of 35.

It is named after Wolf Durmashkin, who was denied a promising career as a conductor. At the age of 30, he died in a German concentration camp in Estonia.

As a result of this international competition, the world premiere of the winning compositions took place as part of the concert on May 10, 2018. The concert on May 10, 1948 was the starting point for the projects.

This was commemorated in Landsberg on May 10, 2018, the 70th anniversary.

But it should also be more: The participation and involvement of the present. The competition contributed to this with the world premieres of the winning compositions.