Ravinia 2023 Issue 6

DICK KATTENBURG (1919–1944) Trio à cordes Dick Kattenburg was born into a prosperous Dutch family of garment manufacturers, originally from the Alsace region of France. Founded in 1911, Hollandia-Kattenburg opened its main factory in Amsterdam six years later. The company specialized in the manufacture of waterproof rainwear and employed more than 700 workers, many of whom were Jewish, by the time German forces invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. Since the unified Nazi armed forces (Wehrmacht) were one of Hollandia-Katten- burg’s major clients, the workers and their families initially enjoyed protected status as “Rüstungsjuden” or “armament Jews” and were exempt from deportation. Hanns Albin Rauter, the Austrian-born police command- er and highest-ranking SS officer in the Netherlands, eventually dismantled those protections and began deporting workers in October 1942. Levie (Louis) Kattenburg, who worked at the family textile factory, and his wife Hel- ena van Tijn raised three children—Debo- ra (known as Daisy), Dick, and Martin—in the nearby country town of Bussum. As a youth, Dick received his first violin and composition lessons from Hugo Godron, a teacher at the local Muziekschool van Toonkunst. His studies continued at the private Collège Musical Belge in Antwerp, where he earned diplomas in violin and mu- sic theory in 1936. He returned to Bussum to teach music and compose, advertising his parents’ home address in Het Joodsche Weeb- lad (The Jewish Weekly; September 5, 1941). Kattenburg studied orchestration privately with Leo Smit during the summer of 1942, at first in his residence in Amsterdam and, as the risk to Jews increased, through secret correspondence. Kattenburg presented the world premiere of his Trio à cordes in December 1938 on a con- cert featuring music by Godron’s advanced Dick Kattenburg composition students. The three perform- ers—violinist Kattenburg, violist Theo Kro- eze, and cellist Anton Dresden—were me- morialized on the cover page of the score in an ink and watercolor illustration by the composer. The back cover contained more menacing imagery: a portrait of Adolf Hitler and a soldier give a “Heil Hitler!” salute. In- stead of signing his own name, Kattenburg penned the pseudonym “Van Assendelft Van Wijck” on the manuscript. The local daily newspaper, De Gooi- en Eemlander , published a succinct review of the performance on December 19: “A fairly compact piece showing remarkable mastery and a very personal style; looking forward with great interest to his [Kattenburg’s] fur- ther development.” His other compositions range widely in terms of style influence and scoring. Kattenburg loved jazz and often incorporated syncopated rhythms and ex- tended harmonies in his scores. One novelty piece from 1936, Tap Dance , calls for four- hands piano and a live tap dancer. Some compositions displayed the influence of folk music, while others reveal Kattenburg’s awareness of modern techniques à la Stra- vinsky and Ravel. Fearing for his own safety, Kattenburg went into hiding in Utrecht sometime around 1942. His musical activities proceeded un- abated, though he maintained a cautious- ly low profile and frequently changed his lodgings. The violist Kroeze remembered ushering his friend to a secret hiding place on the Nachtegaalstraat—a shopping dis- trict name after the inn De Nachtegaal (Nightingale)—“disguised as a bricklay- er (‘a ridiculous sight with his Jewish face and habit’).” Despite such precautions, Kattenburg was arrested during a raid on a movie theater on May 5, 1944, and sent to the Westerbork transit camp. Sometime on or after May 22, he was transported to Auschwitz. His death certificate asserts that Kattenburg died on September 30, 1944, somewhere in Central Europe. Dick Kattenburg self-portrait on a score (1937) The story of Kattenburg’s music does not end there. One of his few known compositions at the time of his death was a flute sonata written for and dedicated to Ima Shalom Sara Spanjaard-van Esso, a Jewish flutist and nurse based in Amsterdam. Kattenburg had gifted the manuscript to van Esso, although she never performed the score. As an elderly woman, van Esso donated the manuscript to the Leo Smit Foundation in Amsterdam, whose founder and artistic director, the flutist Eleanore Pameijer, played the music quite frequently. News of these performanc- es eventually reached the daughter of Daisy Kattenburg—the composer’s sister—who began rummaging through her mother’s be- longings only to discover a cache of musical scores. Years before, Daisy had placed two dozen of Dick’s manuscripts from the period 1936–44 in the attic for safekeeping. SÁNDOR KUTI (1908–1945?) Serenade for String Trio Sándor Kuti grew up in the poor Óbuda neighborhood of Budapest, which was estab- lished in 1712 as a Jewish enclave (including a permanent synagogue) on the estate of the Zichy family following the expulsion of Jews from Buda and Pest. Despite the family’s modest circumstances, his parents somehow found a way of nurturing their inquisitive son’s musical abilities. “From the age of 3, my favorite pastime was to invent various scenes and to add music to them,” Kuti recorded in a brief 1944 autobiography written in a German labor camp. “My first notated compositions date from my ninth year.” He entered the Fer- enc Liszt Academy of Music at age 18, study- ing composition with Ernő Dohnányi and graduating with an Artist Diploma. Kuti shared his diploma recital with pianist Georg Solti, the longtime music director of the Chi- cago Symphony Orchestra, who fondly re- membered his classmate: “I am convinced that, had he lived, he would have become one of Hungary’s greatest composers.” Sándor Kuti By the time of his graduation, Kuti’s compo- sitions, especially those for piano, had gained national and international recognition. His works included three string trios, two string quartets, choruses, songs, and pieces for chil- dren. The Serenade for String Trio in three movements originated in 1934. The spirit of Hungarian folk music leaves an imprint on this music, though it is couched within a modernist musical language. Kuti’s lyrical, joyous first movement ( Allegro giocoso ) leads to a rhythmically propulsive Scherzando and poignant Adagio ma non troppo . Kuti composed music even after his incar- ceration in a German labor camp, where he perished in 1945 or, possibly, late 1944. A three-movement sonata for unaccompanied violin, notated on hand-lined paper, was his last known composition from the summer of 1944. Kuti managed to smuggle the score out of the camp to his pregnant wife, “with lots of love and longing.” GIDEON KLEIN (1919–1945) String Trio Gideon Klein emerged from humble rural beginnings to become a rising star of mod- ern Czech music. The large Klein family lived a modest, traditional existence in the Moravian town of Přerov, supported by his father’s income as a cattle dealer. Fortunate- ly, his parents recognized 6-year-old Gide- on’s exceptional musical ability and arranged piano lessons with Karel Mařík. As his tal- ents grew, the Kleins sought a more ad- vanced teacher in Prague for their son. At age 11, Gideon began lessons once a month with Růžena Kurzová, the wife of renowned piano pedagogue Vilém Kurz. Klein moved to Prague permanently in 1931 under the supervision of his older sister Eliš- ka Kleinova and enrolled in the Jirásek gram- mar school in the autumn. He entered the Prague Conservatory in 1938 as Kurz’s piano student and completed the piano master class Gideon Klein by Charlotte Buresová (1944) RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 41