Where History Laps on Artistry’s Shore
By Amelie Melsness
The Polish Music Center celebrates composer and Holocaust survivor Szymon Laks at last fall’s Paderewski Lecture-Recital.
On the evening of October 19th, USC’s Newman Recital Hall opened its doors for the USC Thornton Polish Music Center’s 40th anniversary. Murmurs in Polish and English echoed off its high ceiling as guests waited for a lecture from guest lecturer and pianist Dr. Grzegorz Mania.
Dr. Mania painted a detailed portrait of the Polish composer Szymon Laks, best known for an experience that ultimately has nothing to do with his craft. Laks was a multidisciplinary firecracker: subtitle translator, film composer, creative writer, math and philosophy aficionado, and political essayist. He attended the Paris Conservatoire from 1927 to 1929, where he led the Association of Young Polish Music to uplift the visibility of his home country’s musical heritage. His son Andre even mentioned Laks’ dark and ironic sense of humor. But the composer’s multifaceted self has been historically overshadowed by his time at, and subsequent retelling of his experience interned at Auschwitz-Birkenau. After being sent to the camp in 1942, he was made Kappellmeister of the camp orchestra.
In his book “Music of Another World,” Laks is unsparing in his depiction of camp life. He doesn’t paint the orchestra as a resilient fight for liberation – proving the hope music can instill, rather, a day-in, day-out fight to survive.
The original version (1948) by Laks and another survivor was rewritten in the late 60s to be more palatable for Polish and international audiences. Dr. Mania and Andre Laks are currently working on reissuing its first, rawest iteration. The Polish Music Center (PMC) followed the Paderewski Lecture-Recital with a concert at LA’s Museum of Tolerance to spotlight the story’s restoration, one proven essential to scholars who value the document for its unfiltered account of life in the camp.
Dr. Mania loves Szymon Laks’ music. He encountered Laks as a composer before ever knowing him as a Holocaust survivor, which he believes was important in his understanding of the artist.
“The music itself is not about camp,” Dr. Mania noted. “When we speak about Laks, we usually associate him with the label “camp composer,” “camp music,” a conductor of the orchestra in the most diabolical camp out of many. And yet, he was a composer before and after.”
Especially considering the musical genius of Szymon Laks.
“As a musician, [Laks’ music] sounds really interesting. It’s something new. […] So music got me to Laks. The Sonata, then the three pieces, and then I learned that there is an amazing story.”
The musicians on the stage of Newman Recital Hall maneuvered the rollercoaster ride of Laks’ compositions with impassioned dexterity. Each piece jostled by constant contradiction, whipping from bright jaunts to ominous, foreboding darkness, darting through pockets of chaos before breaking into serenity. It was sonic cinema that reflected his scoring experience, a riveting, royal adventure plot that poked fun at itself.
It was evident that the performers, most being members of the Polish Junior Musicians Association, were fully enjoying themselves. Violist Matthew Pakola constantly smiled to himself as cellist Miles Reed’s brow furrowed with feeling. Laks’ mischief and emotion was infectious.
Laks’ propensity for fun-spirited play, ardor and wit lies in contrast with contemporary neoclassical’s intellectual leanings. Combining passionate Polish folk tradition, jazz elements and French elegance cultivated uniquely succinct yet moving experiences for Laks. Mania loves this deviation from the norm, and so do audience members; he can read it on their faces.
“It’s always like they feel a little bit uplifted, like, ‘We expected something contemporary, something serious that we will have to think about,’” Dr. Mania remarked. “And there is such [in Laks’ work]. It is very intellectual, yet you feel very light.”
This sense of lightness, of flying – could speculatively be attributed to when the majority of these Laks compositions were written, around three or four months after his liberation from Auschwitz. Therein lies the paradoxical relationship between art and artist: the subjects are simultaneously indelibly intertwined and exist in a vacuum.
“Sometimes the personal life affects music, yes, but very often, their music is somehow separate. [Artists] create it in a different state of mind, even if you know some personal issues are there,” Dr. Mania asserted. He then mulled. “It’s an eternal question: whether we can understand art through the life of the creator, or [if] we should interpret it separately, or how separately we can do it.”
This quandary can be explored through the Polish Music Center’s (PMC) expansive archival work. What started as five Skrowzewski manuscripts in the basement of USC’s Doheny Library in 1985 has since expanded to over 200 manuscripts of over 60 different composers. Photographs, legal documents, artwork collections, book collections and family letters (many written by Laks) enrich the archive further. These artifacts give these compositions rich context to better appreciate Poland’s musical history, especially for researchers and scholars.
Much of the PMC’s archive is collected through personal connections with Polish composers’ families, such as the one fostered by the Center with Andre Laks. When director Marek Zebrowski started in 2005, he was offered a collection of Henryk Wars’s manuscripts from the composer’s widow. In 2024, this same collection was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list – a rare honor for a collegiate institution at the international level.
Post acquisition, PMC dedicates hours combing through materials to make sure they’re organized in a way that’s helpful to academics. Founder Wanda Wilk pioneered the archive’s digitization process in 90s, setting the stage for a formidable online archive and presence.
Polish Music Center assistant director and alum Krysta Close (BM ‘03, Vocal Arts) had been managing its database for over 20 years before archive specialist Thomas Fechner (DMA ‘20, Classical Guitar Performance) joined in 2025. Close’s work isn’t just an extension of her passion for music, but a childhood dream of being a UN diplomat realized. She applies her Master’s in Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg, earned while working at the PMC, to coordinate an array of the Center’s regional and international endeavors, including their youth exchange program between California and Poland, launched by the formidable annual Paderewski Festival.
“A lot of what I do is very much wrapped up in public diplomacy work. I see that as all connected to what I originally wanted to be growing up,” Close shared.
Planning off-campus events and programs such as those is always a challenge, but Zebrowski was thankful that the on-campus Paderewski Lecture-Recital was smooth-sailing in light of all his other commitments, including publishing his book about his friend, the late David Lynch.
“Of course, I had to worry about the Polish musicians who were flying in. You never know what can happen at LAX these days,” Zebrowski lamented. “But there were no problems, my goodness.”
He hosted members of the Polish Jewish Musicians Association, Dr. Mania and Bartosz Koziac, in his home in the midst of planning the Museum of Tolerance event.
“I ended up running basically a bed and breakfast and also dinners for them. They were rehearsing at my house, because I have a piano, and there were chamber music rehearsals.”
Zebrowski’s tuckered out. But even if he’s exhausted, he still thinks it’s worth it.
“It is exciting. It is a lot of work. But, you know, this is something that is stimulating, intellectually and physically as well. That’s how the Polish Music Center keeps going and keeps gaining recognition all around the world, by such programs. I mean, Laks, I was happy to present his life story and his music at USC, because he really is a remarkable composer.”
Not only a remarkable composer, but a remarkable person.
“To survive the Holocaust and to be creative and to write beautiful music is nothing short of miraculous, and to share this experience with the audience is really a gift.”
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Featured photo credit: Samantha Navarro
