It is beautifully crafted: the boy's secret is paralleled by other secrets that his parents eventually reveal that take us into the darkest hours of their lives and of mid-twentieth century history. In Simon Reade's adaptation, directed by Julia McCone, this becomes an engrossing piece of theatre, making a powerful impact in just 55 minutes.

A son and grandson of actors, Michael has acting in his blood and enjoys collaborating and performing live adaptations of his books at festivals, concerts and theatres. As defeat became increasingly likely, the Nazis went to great lengths to disguise their crimes. All evidence of the death camps in Poland – Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno – was erased; facilities were dismantled, pits were filled in, and trees were planted. After the Soviet Red Army captured Majdanek almost intact in July 1944, the Nazis began to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, when the camp was liberated in January 1945, the ruins could still be seen. The last weekend of May saw the climax of the 27 th Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, an annual festival for book lovers in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye. Amongst the hundreds of events, including talks and discussions from Stephen Fry, Simon Schama and Antonia Fraser, was a dramatic adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s The Mozart Question.Sir Michael Morpurgo OBE is one of the UK’s best-loved authors and storytellers. Appointed Children’s Laureate in 2003, he has written over 130 books, including The Butterfly Lion, Kensuke’s Kingdom, Why the Whales Came, The Mozart Question, Shadow, and War Horse. War Horse was adapted for a hugely successful stage production by the National Theatre and for a film directed by Steven Spielberg. His book Private Peaceful was adapted for the stage by Simon Reade and made into a film, directed by Pat O'Connor. He was awarded the OBE for his writing in 2006. Through the characters in The Mozart Question we come across a variety of different countries, from the West to the East of Europe. Together with the journalist we learn that Paolo’s parents were originally from Warsaw and Venice, and Benjamin from Paris. This geographical spread and the circumstances under which they were brought together remind us that the Holocaust was not an event that occurred in a faraway place, but instead touched many countries and many people across the continent. Such widespread involvement teaches us that the Holocaust was not something that ‘the Germans’ did to ‘the Jews’ in some faraway place; it was rather a European event which presents challenges to all of us regardless of our nationality or religion.

Many of Michael’s books have been adapted for the stage. These include Private Peaceful, Kensuke’s Kingdom, Why the Whales Came and The Mozart Question, and most notably, the National Theatre’s production of War Horse. This production of Michael’s moving and powerful story of survival on the Western Front reached number one in the Observer’s top ten theatre performances and was also awarded the best design prize in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. This production has now moved to the West End’s New London Theatre. DreamWorks Studios announced in December 2009 that they had acquired the rights to the film War Horse. The Holocaust can be defined as the persecution and extermination of around six million Jewish men, women and children. It was not an inevitable occurrence but it did draw on short and longer-term trends in history. Anti-Jewish prejudice had a long history in Europe, but the rise of science in the 18th and 19th centuries saw hostile perceptions about the Jews no longer based just on religion. Instead, new scientific thinking and findings were manipulated to justify hatred of Jews, with the ideas of humans belonging to different races of differing values fighting for survival now used for old prejudices. After the upheaval and bloodshed of World War One, such irrational thoughts became more intense and popular – particularly, but not exclusively, in Germany. His 2007 novella revisits the haunting fact that some Nazi death camps were pitifully alive with the sound of music: select musically talented inmates could save themselves, however briefly, by filling the air with commanded classical strains. They entertained their captors, ‘greeted’ arrivals, and provided a counterpoint of artistry, by turns sad and collaboratively sadistic, to the savagery and slaughter.The three of them were brought by train to the concentration camp from all over Europe...all Jewish, and all bound for the gas chamber and extermination like so many millions.’

The play is performed by nine actors, eight of them also professional musicians, and searing though the story might be, it’s composer Rudy Percival’s musical rearrangements that speak most eloquently in Jessica Daniels’s production. Records of the performances survive including concert programmes which provide an insight into the type of music that was played. German marches, popular melodies, operettas and works by well-known composers including Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Strauss were often to be found in the programmes. Formal performances usually consisted of two parts, with an interval, and lasted for the duration of between 8 and 10 pieces. We open with a young reporter being sent to interview a great violinist Paolo Levi. There’s just one thing she is told not to do and that is to ask the Mozart question.For others like Paolo’s father however, art was corrupted by their experiences of the Holocaust. A famous philosopher named Theodor Adorno once remarked that to create art after Auschwitz was ‘barbaric’, and, although he later revised this position, many people seized upon his idea. According to this thinking, since the Nazis had used and exploited art in all its forms to promote their ideology and beliefs, it was no longer appropriate or possible to make art for art’s sake. Equally it was said that no poem, painting or song could ever really represent the horrors of the Holocaust, and that no one could really understand what happened in the camps unless they were actually there. Because of this it was said that it was better not to try and do so. Michael Morpurgo's amazing story writing combined with the great illustration by Michael Foreman just made this book interesting. There is a brief account of the Holocaust, there was orchestra playing Mozart's in concentration camps. Every performance was your best performance, not to please them, but to show them what you could do, to prove to them how good you were despite all they were doing to humiliate you, to destroy you in body and soul.’

For more information about the work of Farms for City Children, please visit www.farmsforcitychildren.org This is one of the most moving and eloquently written novels I've read in while. For any musically inclined child from 8 or so upwards then they, and indeed you, can't fail to be incredibly moved and gripped all at the same time as the story unfolds. In addition, any child who has a love of writing and yearns one day to be a journalist then this novel will give them that further boost of determination to get there. The Mozart Question will undoubtedly bring tears to your eyes and Michael Foreman's illustrations are a delight to behold. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Nazis tried to find a ‘territorial solution’ to what they saw as the ‘Jewish Question’. While part of Poland would be incorporated into Germany, another area would be used as a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of Jews. Before being moved to the edges of the Nazi empire it was decided to cram large numbers of Jews together in towns and cities. As various plans came to nothing, these areas were sealed off from the non-Jewish population and the conditions within the ‘ghettos’ became deadly due to starvation, disease and overcrowding.Music was also found within the camps of the Nazi empire. Here,orchestras were not normally formed by Jews but rather by the SS, partly for their own entertainment but also for public performances. These musical groups would commonly perform when trains arrived in the camps so as to reassure the new prisoners, but would also play as prisoners left for work or were being subjected to selections. Orchestras were found, not just in concentration camps, but even in the extermination centres such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. In this way the ability to make music both offered an opportunity to resist Nazi dehumanisation and the potential to increase one’s chance of survival – even if only for a few days, weeks or months. One day, Benjamin decided to meet Paolo's parents, and this is when Paolo understands why his father has been hiding his secret and a great reunion of survivors happened. Lesley McInley gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is asked to interview Paolo Levi, the famous violinist. He’s brilliantly talented, but very particular when it comes to talking about his personal life. Lesley is asked to avoid bringing up “the Mozart question” at all costs. When she meets Levi, however, she’s so nervous she begins to babble, “’Well, I know I can’t ask you the Mozart question, Signor Levi,’ I began, ‘because I’ve been told not to. I don’t even know what the Mozart question is, so I couldn’t ask it even if I wanted to, and anyway, I know you don’t like it, so I won’t.’” Although Levi has ended interviews in the past when journalists have asked him why he won’t play Mozart, he decides to tell his story at last – to Lesley. She (and we readers) learn that his parents were Holocaust survivors, musicians (violinists) whose lives were spared so that they could play to calm other Jews as they were put to death. Levi’s father vowed never to play again after his experiences in the concentration camp, but his son, Paolo, comes to love music and the violin as much as his parents once did after he meets and befriends Benjamin Horowitz, a violinist who plays the streets of Venice. Horowitz helps Paolo repair his mother’s violin and begins to teach him to play. Soon they are playing together. When Paolo comes clean about his secret lessons, his parents (and Benjamin) tell him their stories of survival. Although Paolo’s parents are extremely proud of him, his father asks him one favor – that he never play Mozart (the music they played most often in the concentration camp) while he is living – and Paolo keeps that promise. Accurately billed as suitable for eight-year-olds and above, it is told in primary colours. If sometimes the dialogue in the first half is clunky, and if sentiment can turn sententious—"Don’t you stop believing in the good"—this is a worthy, disturbing yet entertaining piece of theatre for a family audience. He put the two ideas together, recalling the camp orchestras that the Germans had formed among their captives, to amuse themselves and deceive new arrivals, Mozart being the Offizier composer of choice. What, he wondered, would have been the reaction of those musicians, had they somehow survived, to taking up their instruments in the future? Toward playing Mozart in particular?