One of the great stories in Henk Brouwer’s manuscript tells about a ‘Klankloze Klavier’ (Soundless Piano), as Brouwer calls it. In Changi, Brouwer made a practice piano from waste materials to keep his fingers supple. His fellow inmates laughed at him, but Brouwer took revenge by giving a silent concert, the third part of the second piano concerto by Tchaikovsky. His friends listened breathlessly and treated him to a huge applause at the end.

For the exhibition in Museum Bronbeek we reconstructed this Soundless Piano. Later we found out that Henk Brouwer was not the only one with a soundless practice piano: composers as Mozart and Liszt also had one. Attached a picture of ‘our’ piano and one of a soundless piano at the Lisztmuseum in Raiding, Austria.

Emotional opening of our exhibition ‘Gevangen in beeld’ in Museum Bronbeek, Arnhem. With a posthumous honouring of Landstormsoldier Henk Brouwer: his son Menno came over from South Africa to collect the Mobilisation Cross. With Henk Brouwers work Museum Bronbeek honours an almost forgotten group of Dutch POW’s.

You can visit the exhibition until 6 January 2019. 

Photo’s: Willem van Gerwen & Karin Veenendaal

Recently we received two mails from Australia: first from mrs Yvonne McLoughlin, saying that she found the portrait of her father-in-law George James McLoughlin, painted by Henk Brouwer in September 1945 (photo left). A few days later Jennie Perry surprised us with the Henk Brouwer-portrait of Ian Perry, signed 24 October 1944 (photo right). Great additions to our exhibition, that will be opened 9 August at Museum Bronbeek, Arnhem! See the Portrait Gallery for their stories.