E-Mail This Article to a Friend Victims and bohemians Viktor Ullmann, plus Teatro Lirico d’Europa, the Tokyo Quartet, and BMOP’s Boston connection BY DAVID WEININGER

The composer Viktor Ullmann was born in 1898 in a town on the Austrian-Silesian border. Although baptized a Catholic, he was of Jewish descent. To a certain point, his life resembled that of any number of European composers of the period: he studied with Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, composed, and took up a variety of jobs as a freelance musician. Eventually, of course, the shadow of the Nazi regime began to darken his life, as it did that of every European Jew.

In 1942, he was deported with first wife, Martha, and his third, Elisabeth, to the concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt), a city outside Prague. After the war, Terezín became notorious for its role in Nazi propaganda: it was famously transformed into a "show camp" for a Red Cross visit in 1944. (After the visit, the organization reported that the Jews were being treated humanely.) For whatever reason, it also boasted considerable musical talent: besides Ullmann, the composers Hans Krása and Gideon Klein were interned there, and there was a variety of ensembles and even a society for new music. But these cultural trappings were a mere prelude to the terror to come. In October of 1944, Viktor, Elisabeth, and many of his colleagues were sent to Auschwitz, where they died two days later. (The Czech conductor Karel Ancerl was the only one of this group who survived.)

The past 20 years have seen the rediscovery of composers who perished during the war, in many cases courtesy of Boston’s Terezín Chamber Music Foundation. Honest æsthetic judgment remains elusive, however; often, one listens less out of a desire to understand the music than in an attempt to vindicate the composers and somehow to undo the horror. It’s not so easy to appreciate what the music is trying to do and assess how well it succeeds.

So what is Viktor Ullmann’s music like, and is it any good? He never followed Schoenberg down the path of atonality, never mind serialism. A more comparable spirit is Hindemith, with whom he shared an impulse to write tonal music liberally spiced with dissonance. His occasional incorporation of jazz brings him close to Kurt Weill. Those works that are played with any frequency reveal a composer of considerable skill; how much more they show is still to be determined.

As with any composer, conscientious performing and close listening are what’s needed, and Ullmann has an excellent champion in James Conlon. The American conductor programs his works and those of other "Holocaust composers" as often as he can. Next weekend, he and pianist Garrick Ohlsson will perform Ullmann’s Piano Concerto in its Boston Symphony Orchestra debut. The piece, which was written in 1940, shares the bill with a far better known WW2 work: Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (the Leningrad), which trades equally in searing intensity and straightforward banality. Performances, at Symphony Hall, are January 20 at 8 p.m., January 21 at 1:30 p.m., and January 22 and 25 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $27 to $105; call (617)-266-1200.

Ohlsson and Conlon will also perform at a benefit concert for the Terezín Chamber Music Foundation. That’s on Monday January 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the Huntington Ballroom at the Colonnade Hotel. Tickets are $135; for more information, call (857) 222-8263.

LONG PLAYERS. It’s a safe bet that the world isn’t waiting around for another performance of La bohème. Puccini’s erstwhile tearjerker is one of the world’s most popular operas; these days, what with Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway production and the long-running success of the musical Rent, you can hardly throw a rock without hitting a production. Nevertheless, the distinguished Bulgarian company Teatro Lirico d’Europa is bringing it around for three performances. What’s more, the company has added a performance of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia ("The Barber of Seville") to the weekend run. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m. on January 20 (Barbiere), 21 (Bohème), and 22 (Bohème) and at 3 p.m. on January 23 (Bohème) at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, and tickets run from $35 to $75; call (800) 233-3123.

The Tokyo Quartet has been around with various members for almost 35 years, and recent reports on its current line-up have praised its golden, burnished sound. Its Jordan Hall program next Friday is in the familiar classical-modern-romantic mode, with Toru Takemitsu’s A Way A Lone sandwiched between the first of Mozart’s Prussian quartets (K.575) and the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, the sublimely elusive E-flat Opus 127. That’s on January 21 at 8 p.m., courtesy of the Bank of America Celebrity Series, and tickets are $43 to $53; call (617) 482-6661.

Finally, it’s always good to get to know more of Boston’s own composers, and in that spirit, the adventurous souls at the Boston Modern Orchestra Project are offering "The Boston Connection," an evening of music by a cross-section of local talent that includes Michael McLaughlin, a doctoral student of Lee Hyla at NEC, and Eric Chasalow, who teaches at Brandeis. Works by Donald Martino, Elliott Schwartz, and William Thomas McKinley round out the program, which will be under the expert guidance of Gil Rose. That’s on January 22 at 8 p.m. at Jordan Hall, and tickets are $19 to $38; call (617) 363-0396.