Poster for Hans Krasa’s children’s opera Brundibar, which was performed many times in Terezin

THERESIENSTADT was the 1940s concentration camp the Nazis wanted you to see. A propaganda vehicle, it sold the world an idea of itself as something like a spa town for displaced intelligentsia; and of course, the truth was otherwise. Vast numbers perished, either in the camp itself or by dispatch to Auschwitz.

But because so many of Theresienstadt’s inmates were selected for their prominence as artists, writers and musicians, cultural life somehow flourished amid dire conditions. There were concerts, orchestras. Two operas – fairly well-known now – were written for performance there. And it’s become the focus for a whole body of scholarship that finds its way to concert platforms – as will happen this Saturday, March 9, when the celebrated Nash Ensemble take over Wigmore Hall for a day of music, talks and films devoted to the subject.

On the programme will be works by composers Hans Krasa, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Gideon Klein… all of them killed eventually. And though, as another inmate put it, they were “dancing under the gallows”, the dance was both heroic and defiant. “Our will to create was equal to our will to live,” said Ullmann. Find out what that meant on Saturday. Details: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/ nashensemble.org.uk

• If you remember the tune for “Try the taste of Martini” – and who wouldn’t: it was one of the most famous ads on TV, running for decades – then you know the music of Christopher Gunning who, when he wasn’t writing hymns to alcohol consumption, composed symphonies, concertos, and a catalogue of other concert works. He died last year but thankfully his music lives on. And some of it gets played at Cadogan Hall on March 10 when the RPO and guest artists including guitarist John Williams deliver a memorial concert. Proceeds to the Help Musicians charity. cadoganhall.com

• Plenty of opera opens this week, mostly on the dark side, with ENO reviving its David Alden production of Janáček’s Jenůfa March 13-27 (eno.org), and Covent Garden reviving its Leiser & Caurier Madam Butterfly Mar 14-Apr 13, with star soprano Asmik Grigorian in the title role (roh.org.uk).
Also at the Garden, in its smaller, downstairs Linbury Theatre, is a chamber piece called Giant that I saw at its premiere in last year’s Aldeburgh Festival and found disturbing. Based on the true tale of a 19th century surgeon/grave-robber and his obsession with the body of an 8ft Irishman that he puts on public display, it isn’t pretty. But Sarah Angliss’s music bathes the gore in a mesmerising sound-world of 18th-century instruments combined with electronics. March 8-15. roh.org.uk

And for something that won’t leave you traumatised, there’s a student show of Britten’s deathless Albert Herring (think 1950s Ealing comedy in small-town Suffolk) at the Royal Academy of Music, March 12-15. ram.ac.uk

• Lastly, the truly named Salon Music series continues March 8 in Hampstead Lane, Highgate, with a recital by violinist Madeleine Mitchell and her London Chamber Ensemble. Music by Howells and Debussy with supper afterwards. Super-civilised, intimate, and probably sold out by now (it’s getting popular) though worth trying for tickets. salonmusic.co.uk