Quartets 3 4 And 5

"I spent [...] almost three years in Oswiecim and my biographies, both the psychical and musical ones, could not resist the influence of what I saw and experienced there. [...] It was hard to return to a normal life, like to an interesting book which one stops just in the middle. Much water was to run under the bridge before it all settled somehow and before composing made sense to me again" - said Szymon Laks (1901-1983) in an interview of Tadeusz Kaczynski for "Ruch Muzyczny" (21/1964). The number 49543 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, an outstanding composer, violinist, writer, a passionate linguist and translator, admitted that it was music that saved his life: in the extermination camp where he was from 1942 to 1944, he was a kapellmeister, musician, and copyist of the male orchestra. It was also there that he arranged and performed together with instrumentalists-prisoners Three Warsaw Polonaises by an unknown author from the 18th century for a chamber orchestra. They were found by accident and published by the Polish Music Publishing House already in 1950 and became the first published camp music literature.