Best-selling authour Wendy Holden reads Zuzana’s account of today, April 15th, 75 years ago. This was the moment 18 year old Zuzana experienced the liberation of Bergen Belsen.
TEN ESSENTIAL FILMS AND TV SERIES TO WATCH WHEN YOU’RE CONFINED TO HOME - Zuzana is in brilliant company with some of the year’s best!
For those looking for inspiration, Zuzana: Music is Life (UK Jewish Film streaming service) is not to be missed. Winner of Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival in 2017, Harriet Getzels and Peter Getzels gorgeous account of hope and resilience tells the story of 90-year-old Zuzana Ruzickova. After surviving three concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and decades-long oppression under the Czech Republic totalitarian regime, Zuzana went on to achieve global fame as a gifted harpsichordist. She is the only musician to ever record all the keyboard works of Bach.
If you are a Ruzickova fan and collect vinyl, then you will be pleased to learn that Warner Music has released a special, limited edition of Zuzana’s favourite music, which is being sold with a DVD of the documentary. This is on sale for a limited time only, and is available on Amazon in the US and Europe; as well as through Euroarts.
One Hundred Miracles: A Memoir of Music and Survival was selected by the Financial Times as one of 2019’s best books. “Through surviving Auschwitz, and the brutalities of the early Soviet era, the music of Bach shines like a beacon of hope.”
“‘Bach provides a sense of order in a world of disorder,’ [Ruzickova] said in ‘Zuzana: Music Is Life,’ a documentary film released in 2017. The memoir offers more evidence of the significance of her art to her stability in terrifying times, taking her from her earliest memories through the camps to Stalinism, the Velvet Revolution and beyond.” — The New York Times, September 12, 2019
Premiering on PBS television, Zuzana: Music is Life will air on New York City’s brand new arts channel, which was recently launched by WLIW & WNET. Dates are May 6, 7, and 10. Check the full schedule here.
Listen to Wendy Holden, the best-selling co-authour of ONE HUNDRED MIRACLES, together with Mahan Esfahani, Zuzana’s extraordinary harpsichord student, on BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters. Their lively and insightful discussion about Zuzana’s life and her love of Bach starts at 3.14 - and the link is here.
Pictured here during Music Matters is Wendy Holden.
Zuzana Ruzickova’s memoir, ONE HUNDRED MIRACLES, is now available for purchase from Bloomsbury here. And the reviews are in!
The Daily Telegraph called Zuzana: Music is Life "a compelling story of terrible suffering surmounted by incredible bravery.”
The Big Issue recommended ONE HUNDRED MIRACLES, Zuzana Ruzickova’s memoir, calling it “extraordinary.”
And it’s here! Zuzana Ruzickova’s memoir, ONE HUNDRED MIRACLES will be out in the UK on April 18 and the first review, by the Times of London is excellent! Co-authored by Wendy Holden.
Always on the cutting edge of new ways to lift the harpsichord out of the perception that it’s a ‘dated’ instrument, Mahan Esfahani is featured in NEW SCIENTIST playing music composed by Artificial Intelligence for the harpsichord.
NYC Premiere of ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE
ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE will have its New York City premiere on Thursday, September 27 at 7:00pm at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space.
Discussion to follow with filmmakers Peter and Harriet Getzels; Frank Vogl, Executive Producer and co-founder of Transparency International; and Hanna Arie-Gaifman, Director, Tisch Center for the Arts, 92nd Street Y.
To purchase tickets, click here.
ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE DEBUTS IN KOREA
ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE screened twice at the 14th Jecheon International Music & Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea.
The Pugnacious Performer Who Wants to Take the Harpsichord Mainstream
Zuzana's protege Mahan Esfahani was profiled in The New York Times after a performance at Carnegie Hall. Click the link above to read about it.
UK CRITICS CIRCLE SPECIAL AWARD
The UK Critics Circle recognized Zuzana Ruzickova in London with a special award on Friday 10 February, 2018, presented by Mahan Esfahani after his performance in Wigmore Hall. Receiving the award for Zuzana on this special occaision was her great niece, Julia Vogl.
Special Collector's DVD & Vinyl Disc
In honor of what would have been Zuzana Ruzickova's 91st birthday on January 14th, the European distributor EuroArts has launched a limited-edition special collector's DVD of the film, with a vinyl disc of some of Zuzana's favorite pieces of music which she selected for the disc before she died.
The DVD and LP are now available on Amazon in Europe and for pre-order in the UK. The set can also be bought through EuroArts.
A HUNDRED MIRACLES
We are thrilled that BLOOMSBURY has announced a book deal for a memoir about Zuzana, entitled 'A Hundred Miracles'.
Mahan Esfahani remembers Zuzana in the NEW YORKER, and an upcoming music lesson that never happened.
On my dining table there are a few random scraps of homework for a lesson that never happened. The scraps include sheets of music paper on which I wrote out the first scene of the first act of “Macbeth.” At the beginning of each line, there’s a time signature, and under each word I notated a pitchless metrical value, as in a musical score but without any indication of the actual tones. On the back of one sheet—Was I short of blank paper? My whole life seems to be written out on innumerable scraps of this or that—I took some notes on Arthur Lovejoy’s “The Great Chain of Being,” and, for some reason, I wrote a few random terms in no discernible order. It’s clear that even a week after I’ve done this, my attempt at note-taking has failed, for I have no idea what any of these terms mean: “nominalistic motive”; “metaphysical pathos”; “the tacit assumption of each age.” These notes were in preparation for a lesson at the harpsichord with someone who died before we could meet again—Zuzana Ruzickova, with whom I studied in the last six years of her life. To explain her would mean explaining how music is more than entertainment, how every faculty of the mind and the heart devoted to music is energy well spent, and how I would be willing to plan and, if needed, change the course of my life to come closer to the ideals that she represented.
Launching the Aspen Film Festival in a town with one of the best music festivals in the world, the story of our documentary made the front page of THE ASPEN TIMES, October 2, 2017
Zuzana Ruzickova, 14 January 1927 - 27 September 2017
The New Yorker - USA
The Guardian - UK
Classical Music - UK
The New York Times - USA
The Independent - UK
Limelight - Australia
Washington Post - USA
Estado de Minas – Brazil
Akatualne – Czech
Rozhlas – Czech
Prague Daily Monitor – Czech
Liberation – France
Le Monde – France
Le Figaro – France
Suddeutsche Zeitung – Germany
Musik Heute – Germany
BR Klassik – Germany
Arutz Sheva – Israel
El Universal – Mexico
Herald Scotland – Scotland
Zoznam – Slovakia
Gramophone – UK
BBC – UK
The Guardian – UK
September 27, 2017 - We are very sad to share the news that the courageous, defiant, sharp-witted Zuzana Ruzickova is no longer with us. Her musical legacy is forever.
We are very pleased that ZUZANA will be the opening film at the Aspen Film Festival, 3-8 October, where the screening will take place at the Wheeler Opera House. On October 4 we'll be part of a panel discussion on bringing women forward to a new generation, in film.
ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE will be in the Competition Section at the Golden Prague Film Festival this September... http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/specialy/zlatapraha/en/2017/competition-programmes-4/
We are thrilled to announce that ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE is being distributed by EuroArts, one of the world's leading independent producers of classical music programs for TV and DVD. North American rights remain available. http://www.euroarts.com/tv-license/6422-zuzana-music-life
SELECTION OF PRESS COVERAGE about Zuzana since the launch of Warner Music's 20-CD Box Set in November 2016. Zuzana Ruzickova is the only person in the world to record all Bach's keyboard works, which she did over a ten year period under Czech communist supervision at the Erato studios in Paris.
Devoting One's Life to the Harpsichord THE NEW YORKER
A Survivor's Life in Music WASHINGTON POST
Where Fascism, Communism and Bach Meet HUFFINGTON POST
Music is Life WASHINGTONIAN
Memorializing Truth US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT
The Gifts of Music and Life BUTTERFLIES IN THE GHETTO
One of the Great Human Gems HERALD SUN
Mahan Esfahani: Harpsichordist with a Chip on his Keyboard NEW YORK TIMES
Happiness of Music SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
Survival Music DER SPIEGEL & SPIEGEL ONLINE
The Two Wonders of Zuzana Ruzickova SONNTAGSBLATT
The Artist of the Fugue JEUDISCHE ALLGEMEINE
The Harpsichordist Who Survived TIMES OF LONDON
Current Affairs: Zuzana Růžičková at 90 CZECH RADIO 7, RADIO PRAGUE
The Harpsichordist Who Survived Nazis & Communists: PLAYGROUND
The Spirit of Bach BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Zuzana Ruzickova's Bach Legacy GRAMOPHONE
The Miraculous Life of Zuzana Ruzickova BBC
Bach's Music is Above Human Suffering JEWISH CHRONICLE
Bringing Bach Back to Germany LE MONDE
Harpsichord Dialogues HARMONIE
The Czech Republic's Minister of Culture, Daniel Herman, presented Zuzana Ruzickova with the title of "Dame of Czech Culture" at a ceremony on Sunday, February 26th at the Vinohardy Theatre in Prague, as part of MENE TEKEL - the Czech International Project Against Totalitarianism.
A 20-CD Box Set of THE COMPLETE KEYBOARD WORKS OF BACH was released in October 2016 by Warner Music, who digitally re-mastered the entire opus by Zuzana Růžičková, an undertaking for Erato Records in Paris which took ten years, starting in 1964.
Liner Notes for THE COMPLETE WORKS OF BACH by Zuzana Ruzickova, written by Mahan Esfahani
The TIMES OF LONDON nailed it in a great interview with Zuzana Ruzickova in Prague, 18 October, 2016
Mahan Esfahani, virtuoso and Grammy winner, talks to THE NEW YORK TIMES about why the harpsichord is anything but an outdated instrument. Indeed, he plays Steven Reich on it. 8 August 2016
