A world-renowned landscape painter will be painting in front of an audience this weekend to music composed in a World War II concentration camp as a way of continuing education about the Holocaust.

The Hawthorne String Quartet, made up of Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians, will perform in the city of Syracuse, Thursday through Sunday, on behalf of Holocaust and Genocide Education at Syracuse University. It will be performing four times while its members are in the area, and each performance will be a different experience for audiences, said Mark Ludwig, the executive director of the Terezín Music Foundation and founding member of the Hawthorne String Quartet.

“We have to preserve this music and fight for human rights, expression, tolerance and against oppression in general,” Ludwig said.

Sunday’s performance at 1 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3 will be the only performance that features painter Jim Schantz, a 1977 alumnus of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Schantz, who describes his works as non-traditional, romantic landscapes, will be painting while the quartet plays Hans Krása’s “String Quartet, 1921.”

When Ludwig gained access to music from Terezín, a concentration camp during World War II in the Czech Republic, he was thrilled with the music’s outstanding quality. He added that the music from that time offers invaluable social lessons.

Ludwig has been collaborating with Schantz for almost a decade. When they are in concert together, the quartet performs Krása’s piece — which was composed before he became a prisoner in Terezín — while Schantz paints in response to the music on the same stage.

“That is a wild experience,” Ludwig said. “To ask an artist to paint in front of an audience — that’s a tall order.”

When Ludwig recovered Krása’s work, he discovered that this piece was written with the intention of having a painter as an accompanist and approached Schantz with the idea.

“We tried this first at a smaller venue, and we’ve done it several times since,” Schantz said.

During the performance, Schantz will paint a semi-abstract skyscape during the Krása piece. The composition is passionate, intense at times and his painting reflects that, Schantz said.

He added that his work separate from the quartet has helped influenced his Krása skyscapes, and that painting in front of an audience doesn’t bother him.

“I would be painting in the moment with the music and not really worrying about the audience,” Schantz said. “Every time I paint it, it’s different. It really has a unique quality to it. You never know exactly what the outcome is going to be with a painting, and that’s what I think makes it interesting.”

Ludwig’s research and work as a Holocaust music scholar and art activist has been a large part of the Hawthorne String Quartet’s background. The quartet has a special chemistry, artistically and socially, that has kept them together since 1986, Ludwig said.

The Hawthorne String Quartet is made up of Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist Sato Knudsen, violinists Ronan Lefkowitz and Si-Jing Huang and Ludwig, who plays viola. The group will be performing other pieces in addition to Krása’s on Sunday.

“We get a lot of good serious work done, but we laugh a lot,” Ludwig said. “That’s really important when you spend a lot of hours together. It’s like being married to one another.”

On Thursday, they will be giving a small, informational performance at Temple Concord. Friday’s performance will be at Westhill High School, and Saturday’s performance will be with Symphoria at the John H. Mulroy Civic Center’s Crouse Hinds Theater.

Alan Goldberg, professor emeritus and coordinator of Holocaust and Genocide Education at Syracuse University, is close friends with Ludwig and said the preparation for the quartet’s visit has been in the works for the past year.

“I’ve known the quartet for a number of years,” Goldberg said. “They play a lot of things — they play music from composers who were prisoners in Terezín, who in many cases then were murdered in Auschwitz.”

The quartet’s effort to preserve Western European music and tradition is important to fighting oppression, Goldberg said.

“They’re here because we believe it’s important that this music be played,” Goldberg said. “We cannot allow anybody to rob us of our culture — contemporary or past.”

Published on January 22, 2015 at 12:01 am