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The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson

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To a musician, his instrument is a partner, an extension of himself.

Frances Brent explores the fate of Lev Aronson and the prized

instruments that passed through his hands as a way of understanding

what was lost and preserved during the Holocaust. Born in Germany, but

raised in Russia and Latvia, Aronson traveled through the music world

of Europe with great expectations and encountered its cultural collapse

first hand.

In the Riga Ghetto and in German concentration camps Aronson is

forced to reshape his own identity in order to survive. He loses his

lover but marries a young dancer who helps him rebuild his life as a

musician. In the camps, he “think-sings” the concertos he knows from

memory, establishing a sense of time and patience that gives him the

strength to survive. After the war, he became the principal cellist in

the Dallas symphony, renowned worldwide as a teacher of cello.

Brent paints a moving portrait of a Jewish musician who transcended

his own personal losses to transmit the culture of musical Europe to a

generation of Americans.