Title: Concierto para Leah
Description: Concierto para Leah follows a musical format of four movements and a coda to tell the story of a young woman with a prodigious talent for the violin, whose goal is to become concert violinist. Landa explains: “In 1939, Leah and her family leave Hamburg to travel to Cuba on a boat full of Jews, who, like them, were seeking escape from the Nazis. The Cuban Government forces them to return to Europe and the Felton family arrives in Paris. When the Nazis invade France, they are sent to Auschwitz, where her family, her illusions, and her violin disappear. [But] memories stay with her until the end of her days, along with the number tattooed on her arm. Forty years later, a famous pianist, raised in Puerto Rico and residing in Paris, begins a harrowing search that will lead him to discover something devastating and to understand the origin of his virtuosity.”
Subjects: Fiction, Jewish musicians, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), St. Louis (Ship)