My Grandfather Pál Hermann: A Journey of Personal and Musical Discovery

In the film project ‘VISUALS’ Paul van Gastel, grandson of the Hungarian cellist and composer Pál Hermann, charts his personal journey of discovery of his grandfather. Here Paul gives us a glimpse of his grandfather’s hopeful beginnings and details the events surrounding the completion of Pál’s cello concerto, begun 100 years ago but left unfinished by the then-young, flamboyant composer, who later became a victim of the Nazi regime. In van Gastel’s words: “The film accompanies the music, not the other way around”.

A promising start; a horrific end

In 1924 Hermann was 22 and had moved to Berlin. Life seemed promising. You can hear it in the first movement of the concerto. He had just finished studying cello at the Budapest Liszt Music Academy. He had started composing as a teenager for the sheer love of it, asking conservatoire professor Zoltán Kodály for private composition lessons while handing him a manuscript through a departing tram window. He also had composition lessons with Béla Bartók. 

He started a family, travelled Europe as a solo cellist until 1933 when his life was complicated by the tragic death of his wife Ada and WW2 approaching. He left his daughter in the care of Ada’s family, moved from place to place, fought in the French army against the Nazis, narrowly escaped death, and then had to go into hiding as he was Jewish. He was deported and killed in 1944 under horrific circumstances.

New musical life – rediscovery and restitution

About 25 of his music manuscripts survived, but his cello concerto was unfinished. In 2018 Italian composer Fabio Conti completed it by piecing together fragments of other Hermann compositions. Thus, all the cello parts you hear in the Hermann-Conti Cello Concerto are by Hermann’s signature; Conti looked after orchestration and interweaving of various themes and pieces, and the structure of the concerto. There were long exchanges about how to go about such an undertaking. A consensus was found. In the concerto we hear Hermann the composer and Hermann the cellist. We hear his life, his tragic end, his being reborn as a composer and how musicians and audiences worldwide now keep him alive. 

• The 1^st movement shows enthusiasm and beauty, hope and energy. 
• The 2^nd movement is Conti’s retrospective view on Hermann’s disappearance, with war images and darkness. The solo cellist doesn’t play in this part until the cadenza at the end, Hermann’s resurrection. Hermann the composer lives. 
• The 3^rd movement shows the project of the reconstruction of concerto, the interviews with artists and academics from all over the world. 
• The 4^th movement is a mystical zone rather detached from all matter and intention, for everyone to interpret freely. 
• The 5^th movement is the celebration today of Hermann’s music.

The world premiere in 2018 in Lviv, Ukraine, of the completed concerto, was more than 90 years after Hermann had started it. In that same year the audio recording of VISUALS was made during the live US premiere of the concerto by the Bellingham Symphony under the baton of Yaniv Attar. 

I was in the right position at the right time to be able to coordinate the project, and teamed up with documentary maker Hanh Nguyen, who filmed the project for seven years. Together we chose from family photographs and the filmed material to tell their journey of discovery and adventure: VISUALS. 

All musicians and other contributors to the project refused economic compensation for their efforts. 

Timeline of key events

• April 2016 — Inauguration concert of the Pál Hermann scholarship, Colburn Music School, Los Angeles (USA). British cellist Clive Greensmith, his students, and Beth Nam performs Hermann’s chamber music. Bob Elias of Recovered Voices gives lectures on Hermann’s life and music. Setting up of freely accessible online sheet music archive of Hermann’s music (IMSLP).
• October 2016 — Recovered Voices Symposium, Greensmith gives the lecture “One Cellist to Another: Reflections on the Pál Hermann Cello Concerto” and panel discussions on the importance of (completion of unfinished) music written by supressed WW2 composers. Los Angeles (USA) based documentary maker Hanh Nguyen joins. Berkeley (USA) based lecturer Carla Shapreau starts research on the whereabouts of Hermann’s cello.
• 2017 — Brainstorming with musicians and academics about how to reconstruct Hermann’s unfinished Cello Concerto. Choice of Italian composer Fabio Conti to do the job. Crowdfunding takes off.
• October 2017 — Performance of 1^st movement of Hermann’s cello concerto, Fresno Festival student orchestra, conductor Thomas Loewenheim, Fresno (USA). 
• May 2018 — World premiere of the Hermann-Conti Cello Concerto, Lviv, Ukraine, cellist Clive Greensmith and the INSO orchestra, conductor Theodore Kuchar. The sound recording of this event was used for the UK record label Toccata Classics: a 3-CD set on Hermann’s surviving music. Research and filming about Hermann’s childhood years and education in Budapest (Hungary), and further research and interviews at the Liszt Academy of Music. 
• October 2018 — The first visit of Paul van Gastel (Hermann’s grandson) to Hermann’s presumed place of death, Fort 9, Kaunas (Lithuania), with the May 1944 wall inscriptions of the prisoners of the 73^rd convoy from Drancy (France) to the Baltic States still intact.
• November 2018 — American premiere of the Hermann-Conti Cello Concerto, Bellingham, USA, cellist Clive Greensmith, Bellingham Symphony Orchestra, Israeli conductor Yaniv Attar. The sound recording of this event was used for VISUALS.
• 2019 — Research and filming about Hermann’s years in The Netherlands. First drafts of documentary Following Pál (expected 2024, Running Reel Films). Various concerts and recordings with Hermann’s music. Installation in Fort 9 Kaunas Museum of sound device paying Hermann’s music for visitors.
• March 2020 — Recordings of 2^nd CD in the Toccata Classics Hermann compilation, Lviv, Ukraine. Nguyen and van Gastel start VISUALS.
• June 2020 — Teaming up with Oxford (UK) based writer and researcher Kate Kennedy, who starts her book Cello (Bloomsbury Publishing) about the stories of four cellists, one of whom Hermann. She travels extensively through France and Eastern Europe to do fieldwork research on their backgrounds.
• 2022-2023 — Recordings for 3^rd and final CD in the Toccata Classics Hermann series in four different recording studios in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Ukraine.
• September 2024 — Launch of Kate Kennedy’s book Cello on 29 September 2024, Wigmore Hall, London.
  

Pál Hermann Recordings