The music of the Auschwitz survivor Szymon Laks has tended to be overshadowed by his autobiography, a tribute to the will to live but not to the power of art. Laks, who was deported from Paris and made himself indispensable as conductor of the camp orchestra, may have survived thanks to his ability, but music itself was, he says, no help to him or anyone else in that place. This collection of his chamber music – all claimed as premiere recordings, and sparkily played by the ARC Ensemble – speaks of musical development thwarted by an experience that only the inward-looking Passacaille of 1945 hints at. The 1927 Sonatina for solo piano, combining Chopin-like expansiveness with a dark-tinged French soundworld, is intriguing, but for all their skill, piquancy and irresistibly jazzy rhythms, the pieces from the 1960s – the String Quartet No 4, the Concertino, Divertimento and Quintet – look resolutely backwards.
