Future Memories: Lotoro's journey in search of music written in concentration camps has landed in France.

Francesco Lotoro a Parigi con Jean-Louis Haguenauer

Francesco Lotoro's journey in search of music composed in concentration camps and other places of civilian and military captivity around the world between 1933 and 1953 has landed in France this time. The project "Future Memories: Lotoro's Journey to Save the Lost Music," of which this journey is also part, is promoted by the Fondazione Istituto di Letteratura Musicale Concentrazionaria ETS and supported by the Claims Conference (New York), the Puglia Region, the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe (London), the Righteous Persons Foundation (Los Angeles), and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (Paris) . The journey was undertaken alone.

Lotoro flew to Paris to meet Jean-Louis Haguenauer, a piano professor at Indiana University and the son of the French-Jewish composer Yves Haguenauer. Haguenauer was taken prisoner in June 1940 and interned in Oflag IX Spangenberg, later transferred to other Oflags, and locked up in a block reserved for Jews and Communists. Confined to solitary confinement, he wrote pieces for solo piano and for soprano with piano accompaniment. Jean-Louis Haguenauer gave Lotoro the musical manuscripts his father had written while imprisoned.

In the photos: a young image of Yves Haguenuer at the pinoforte and some of his musical manuscripts