Lost songs in the Magdeburg barracks

In January 2016, the quartet known as Flowered Horse recorded a CD entitled Lost Songs in the premises of the Magdeburg Barracks. This was part of the Humanita project, launched by a secondary school of trade and services in Teplice. The quartet itself is named after the leading song of a prewar program, jointly composed by two former Terezín Ghetto inmates, music composer Karel Reiner (1910 – 1979) and writer Norbert Frýd (1913 – 1976), who created it, still before their deportation to Terezín, for children in Jewish orphanages.

The new album features six selected songs from the original cycle in an arrangement by singer and flutist Zuzana Hanzlová, harmonium player Jaroslav Svoboda, clarinetist Michal Hrubý and double bass player Petr Tichý.

Furthermore, the recording contains musical arrangements of six extant tunes from the Old Czech Play Esther (students of the Teplice secondary school presented their own costume designs, originally created by František Zelenka for the Terezín performance, in the Magdeburg Barracks as part of the Humanita project already in June 2015). The songs were originally prepared by E.F. Burian, a Czech postwar playwright and actor, for his Déčko theater (both Frýd and Reiner were known to cooperate with that theater company). Music for the Terezín performance of Esther, directed by Norbert Frýd, was once again composed by Karel Reiner. The new CD also features one of Reiner´s prewar songs from his cycle Three Love Songs, namely My Ancient Love.

For the cover of the album released in June 2016, Norbert Frýd´s daughter Žanda wrote a sleeve-note recollecting her father and portraying many personal adventures involving the title Flowered Horse, while stressing the topical relevance of these songs – more than 70 years old – in the world today.

St