Diaries of Hope is a new five-movement work for orchestra, choir and soloists by Polish film score composer Zbigniew Preisner which premiered on 8th October 2013 last at the White Stork Synagogue in Wroclaw, Poland. The UK premiere took place in the Barbican Hall in London four days later. The score is entirely based on the writings of Jewish Polish children who fell victim to the holocaust during the Second World War. Following a visit to the Yad Vashem children memorial in Jerusalem in the early 1990s, Zbigniew Preisner started sourcing written accounts from that period.
I was looking for a Polish counterpart of the Diaries of Anne Frank. When I read the memoirs of Rutka Laskier, David Rubinowicz and poems by Abram Koplowicz and Abram Cytryn, I realized that these very dramatic writings, they have one thing in common, they are written with hope […] These are harrowing descriptions of daily life, the fate of entire families and their immense suffering. Zbigniew Preisner
Diaries of Hope is an emotionally charged score featuring vocal contributions from 13 year old soprano Archie Buchanan and from Dead Can Dance contralto singer and film score composer Lisa Gerrard who collaborates here with Preisner for the first time. This version of “Lament” is a 5 minute-long radio edit of the 17 minute original piece. Haunting and powerful.
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