Pavel Haas’s Study for Strings (1943) was written for Karel Ancerl’s orchestra within the Terezin camp, which was low on available repertoire. The piece had the “honor” of being premiered during the 1944 Nazi filming of a propaganda film that proclaimed the delights of living in the model camp for the Jews. Its second performance the next day turned out to be its last, for shortly afterwards the orchestra was deported to Auschwitz. Taxing on the musicians, the composition challenges players with many tempo and dynamic changes. Fellow composer and critic Viktor Ullmann provided a positive review of its debut performance:

A masterfully, polyrhythmically interesting introduction leads to an ingenious, energetic fugue-exposition, whose marked theme with its hiatus becomes easy to remember, and lets rise a svelte fugato, followed by a lively folkloristic flavored scherzando; after a resting point, which takes the place of a slow movement—in fact, we even recognized two themes—there follows an abbreviated reprise of the fugato and a thrilling motoric coda as finale.

The original score was lost by the end of the war, but upon return to Terezin Ancerl found the orchestral parts, missing only the bass part. It was since reconstructed, although Ancerl himself did not conduct the work again.

Here is an excerpt from Study for Strings.                                    
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