Józef Koffler - String Trio Op. 10 (Ebony Band)

Józef Koffler - Trio smyczkowe
1928

Ebony Band Performers:
Violin - Marleen Asberg
Viola - Roland Kramer
Cello - Daniel Esser

0:00 - I. Allegro molto moderato
7:04 - II. Andante, molto cantabile
11:20 - III. Allegro molto vivace

Józef Koffler (1896-1944) was one of the many Polish composers who died during WW2. He was likely killed by Einsatzgruppe while trying to hide near Krosno after the liquidation of the Wieliczka ghetto. Koffler's early death cut short a fruitful, innovative, and influential career as a musician and professor. In 1939, he lived in the newly annexed Lviv (Lwów) and was the prorector of the Mykola Lysenko Conservatory in the Ukraine and had been appointed as the secretary of the Composers' Association of Soviet Ukraine. Having been the first Pole to make use of the tone row, Koffler brought the music of the 2nd Viennese School to Lviv before the Soviets annexed it from Poland. He was the only professor in Poland to teach atonal composition at the time, and he frequently corresponded with Schoenberg, who he never met. Before then, he had met and befriended Alban Berg in Vienna where he studied and earned a doctorate with a dissertation entitled "Orchestral Color in the Symphonic Works of Mendelssohn." Thus, Koffler's music was cutting-edge, and it featured the tone row and dodecaphony. Few of his works survived the war, and only a handful were published afterward. Given his adventurous explorations into dodecaphony, Koffler's music eagerly awaits musicological reappraisal.