"Rêve de France": Lotoro's appeal to revive a lost symphony

Composer Maurice Soret during the recording of the symphony "Rêve de France"

by Francesco Lotoro (President of the ILMC Foundation)

Dear Friends of the ILMC Foundation , I am writing to you once again to update you on the Foundation's activities and to receive—I hope—your help.

In the coming weeks, the Foundation will undertake one of the most complex and difficult operations to recover and rescue the music produced in civilian and military captivity during the Second World War , another of the numerous operations already carried out and underway (works written during deportation by Dutch musicians, the writing of the 54 songs written in Sachsenhausen by Aleksander Kulisiewicz, etc.).

This is the digital transfer and score of the Symphony 'Rêve de France' written by conductor and composer Maurice Soret (pictured above) during his internment at Stalag IIIA Luckenwalde as a French prisoner of war. Conductor of the PTT-Nord Radio Orchestra before his internment, Soret himself conducted the Symphony 'Rêve de France' at the Stalag in 1941; after the war, he became director of the Lille Radio Orchestra. He died in 1961, and no trace of 'Rêve de France' remained.

Finding his relatives was a very laborious undertaking but after years, thanks to the help of his French friend and collaborator Dominique Losay (also the son of a French composer prisoner of war, André Losay), we tracked down his only daughter, Frédérique Andrée Soret, in a town in the French Pyrenees.

The bad news was that the manuscript score of the Symphony had been lost, and Frédérique had no idea where even a copy might be; I verified that there was no trace of it, not even at SACEM in Paris. However, Frédérique had kept two Pyral discs , similar to the old 78 rpm records (photo below); these are matrix discs, and their four sides contain the recording of 'Rêve de France' that Maurice Soret recorded after the war at the studios of Radiodiffusion Française.

The two Pyral albums with the recording of "Rêve de France"

Although the original score has been lost, after a painstaking process of mastering, cleaning, and sound engineering, the audio of 'Rêve de France' will be recovered; subsequently, it will be my task to extract the score from it , a difficult but not impossible undertaking, and one that has been successfully accomplished with other audio sources (Westerbork songs, Sinti and Roma songs, etc.).

Operation Soret will not take long, but it is certainly expensive , and the Foundation is currently facing other expenses, making it impossible to sustain further costs.

At the same time, Operation Soret cannot be postponed any further, as the two Pyral disks have already been subjected to two moves and the high temperatures of last summer, only partially mitigated by the air conditioning kept constantly on in the Foundation Archives; the disks are very old and could deteriorate further.

I ask you to help me with your financial support to bring Operation Soret to fruition. As in other similar circumstances, I will be happy to cite your names in the encyclopedia "Thesaurus Musicae Concentrationariae," which will be published in 2025, and in any other way the Foundation makes possible.

I count on your help, however small or large , and it will be my duty and honor to keep you updated on the progress of Operation Soret.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

Francesco Lotoro

The financial goal to be achieved is €24,000.00 (twenty-four thousand/00).

You can send your financial contribution via bank transfer to:

Institute of Concentration Camp Musical Literature

BANK : INTESA SanPaolo

BRANCH: 55000 - Centralized Third Sector Branch

IBAN: IT94 Y030 6909 6061 0000 0103 682

SWIFT CODE: BCITITMM

REASON: Operation Soret

Or you can send a check made payable to:

Institute of Concentration Camp Musical Literature

In this case, please send by registered mail to:

Institute of Concentration Camp Musical Literature

Via V. Marone 38/C - 76121 Barletta (BT) - Italy

Or you can pay via Paypal by clicking the following button:

REASON (optional): Operation Soret

The ILMC Foundation will issue a regular receipt

For any problem you can write to:

info@fondazioneilmc.it

or call/send a WhatsApp message to +39 347 7517282