Holocaust Diaries

Oct 10, 2013, 09:26 AM

A rather extraordinary new piece of music was performed in Britain for the first time this October. Diaries of Hope takes the words written by children held in concentration camps during the #Nazi period, children who wrote poems, and children who wrote diaries, and turns them into a series of choral works. The idea came from the Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, best known for his music used in feature films. It's having its world debut in Poland this week, but tomorrow's opening at the #Barbican will be the UK premier. Diaries of Hope is an emotionally- painful piece of work to listen to, but it also raises questions - why add music to words which are, by any measure, painful enough to read already? These are, after all, first-hand accounts by children who know they face almost certain death. Zbigniew Preisner has been speaking to The World Tonight, about his work, and what he hoped it would achieve.