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This week at the Liszt Institute in Brussels, culture was presented and experienced as a living reality. The event Loss and Revival: A Roma Jewish Musical Journey through Transylvania, a joint initiative of MCC Brussels and the Liszt Institute, offered an evening shaped not by symbolism but by lived transmission, personal encounter, and musical continuity.
The program opened with remarks by Ambassador Dr. Tamás Iván Kovács, who connected the discussion to Holocaust remembrance while drawing attention to the frequently overlooked Roma victims. He described Roma and Jewish cultures as essential components of Europe’s shared heritage and emphasized that continuity is preserved not through declarations or institutions alone, but through human exchange. Music, he noted, is often able to carry memory where words fall short, holding together experiences of loss, survival, and renewal.
Moderated by Dr. Katalin Deme, Senior Research Fellow at MCC Brussels, the panel brought together performers and scholars whose work bridges academic research and living tradition. Levente Major, musicologist, violinist, and member of the Transylvania founded Üsztürü ensemble, traced how Jewish musical traditions survived the Holocaust through Roma musicians who preserved them orally, beyond formal institutions. These melodies endured not as archived artifacts, but as living practices that were played, adapted, and passed on across generations.
A defining moment of the evening came from Eduardo Tonietto, cellist and artistic director of Brussels Muzieque, who has performed alongside leading Jewish musicians including Mischa Maisky and the Jerusalem Quartet. He opened his contribution by singing a Jewish song in Hungarian, a language he does not speak. The gesture quietly challenged the assumption that heritage must be mediated by identity, language, or bureaucracy, suggesting instead that tradition survives because it is shared.
Tonietto later placed this musical inheritance within a broader European perspective, recalling how Homer’s epics were transmitted orally for centuries while continuing to shape the cultural foundations of Western civilization. In a similar way, Jewish music carried by Roma musicians represents a form of continuity that resists erasure precisely because it remains alive in performance. The evening ultimately demonstrated that culture, when lived rather than staged, can speak with an authenticity that no policy framework can replicate.
