related works
The Periodic Table : for orchestra / Jakob Klaasse
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
picc fl fl-a ob eh 2cl cl-b fg 2h 4tpt 2trb trb-b tb timp perc hp pf cel str
Dance of the Olives : for orchestra / Chiel Meijering
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Piece : for orchestra / Wassim Ibrahim
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
picc 2fl 2ob 2cl 2fg 4h 2tpt 2trb trb-b tb 5perc hp str
Ouvertüre : for orchestra / Fré Focke
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
pic 2fl 2ob 2cl sax-a 2fg cfg 3h 3trp 3trb tb timp xyl cel perc 2vl vla vc cb
composition
The Periodic Table : for orchestra / Jakob Klaasse
Other authors:
Klaasse, Jakob
(Composer)
Description:
In 1944 Italian-Jewish chemist Primo Levi (1919-1987) is sent to Auschwitz and is imprisoned there for 14 months. Thanks to a combination of luck, perseverance and superhuman effort he survives, one of five, out of 650 people transported with him. He spent the remainder of his life bearing witness to the war and writing about his experiences. Books like ‘If This Is a Man’, ‘The Truce’ and ‘If Not Now, when?’.
In ‘The Periodic Table’, Levi connects events in his life to chemical elements. The 21 chapters of the book, autobiographical anecdotes, are based on his ancestry, his studies, his work, his arrest, interrogation and imprisonment in Auschwitz, and each is linked to, and named after a chemical element.
The book inspired me to write 21 short pieces for orchestra. ‘The Periodic Table’ is dedicated to my father, who suffered a similar fate and, like Primo Levi, spent the rest of his life looking for a way to find meaning in what happened to him during WWII and how to deal with it.
Jakob Klaasse, 2019