About the creation

Suite in Memoriam for oboe. clarinet, bassoon and piano (1947, dedicated to the Jewish victims of the holocaust in Poland) consists of five short movements which flow into one another. In the second and fourth movements, Edel uses melodies which the Jews of Poland had made their own: the whereas those of the fourth movement were sung as Sabbath hymns (zmiroth). The remaining movements, although they are the composer's own original music, are, nonetheless, deeply steeped in the atmosphere which Edel absorbed as a child. To quote the composer on this particular work of his: "I did not attempt here to express the terrible tragedy which took place in the 20th century in the heart of Europe, for no art can possibly express it. I attempted only to preserve the sounds inseparably bound to the spiritual life of millions of men, women and children who were cruelly slaughtered,, suffocated and bury by barbaric murderers for their one and only unforgivable crime - that of being Jews".