IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Name: Discovering "L’Assedio Dei Sogni, The Siege of Dreams”
Start: 2026-10-20T11:00:00+0300
End: 2026-10-20T11:30:00+0300

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Discovering "L’Assedio Dei Sogni, The Siege of Dreams”

Tuesday October 20, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am EEST

Statehood hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

I work with a small not-for-profit reissue label called Recordiana, dedicated to discovering and digitising out-of-print South African recordings where master tapes no longer exist. Through this work, I recently became involved in the rediscovery of a piece of music, an original war time composition, that had not been heard for over 80 years.

The story begins with my partner in Recordiana, Rob Allingham, a long-time music archivist and record collector (formerly archivist at Gallo Record Company). In the 1990s he purchased a large box of South African 78rpm shellac records at an estate auction.

Among them were ten mysterious white-label test pressings with handwritten notes referencing “Zonderwater 1946” and “Gallo (Pty) Ltd”.

Zonderwater was the biggest Prisoner of War detention camp built by the Allies during World War II. Located 43 kms east of Pretoria, South Africa, more than 100,000 Italian soldiers captured by the British on the North and East Africa fronts were interned at Zonderwater from April 1941 to January 1947.

Following the precepts of the Geneva Convention to the letter, the South African camp management focused on the humane treatment of their captives, and the camp developed into a productive and creative hub with POWs engaged in numerous activities in the endless fight against boredom and depression. Musical performance was a key part of these activities. (Dr Donato Somma, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007.)

Through our research we have determined that in December 1946, three of the most prominent musical talents in the camp, Mino Martucci, a renowned violinist in Italy prior to the war, pianist Davio Almangano and composer Raoul Maccari recorded ten performances for recording engineer, John Hecdt of the Gallo Recording Company.

Nine of the recordings are light classical pieces such as 'Capresse Viennoise' and 'Nocturne in E Flat’ made popular in the 1920s and 30s by the likes of Fritz Kreisler and Yehudi Menuhin. The other two recordings are solo piano pieces played by Davio Almangano - including the recording of an original composition for piano: a piece identified with a note on the sleeve as 'composed in captivity' called 'L'Assedio Dei Sogni’ (The Siege of Dreams), composed by a POW named Raoul Maccari.

This specific composition and recording has never previously been heard, nor was any information
about the recording session ever documented, as these recordings were never issued for commercial release by the company and the 10 shellac "test pressing" 78” RPM discs remained in the private collection of the recording engineer until his death in the 1980s.

This presentation will offer an opportunity for delegates to hear the remarkable story of how these specific recordings were recently re-discovered, digitised and preserved for future generations through the work of Recordiana and the ILMC (Institute of Concentrationary Musical Literature) foundation in Italy - and an opportunity to hear, for the first time, an original composition performed and captured in the Zonderwater POW camp in 1946: "L’Assedio Dei Sogni, The Siege of Dreams.”

The presentation was successfully delivered at the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) conference in 2024 (Stellenbosch, South Africa) on a panel chaired by Ferenc Janós Szabó (Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian of Sciences and the Liszt Ference Academy of Music)

Speakers

Duncan John Shelwell

Partner, Recordiana

Duncan John Shelwell is a practicing and published photographer, music curator and researcher, currently working and exhibiting in Cape Town, South Africa.He is a partner in RECORDIANA https://recordiana.bandcamp.com a non-profit record label and music consultancy digitising out-of-print South African recordings. Previously, he was head of catalogue at Sony Music Africa until 2018, before that working at Gallo Record Company, Africa’s oldest independent label from 2005... Read More →

Tuesday October 20, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am EEST
Statehood hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Short Presentation, Hybrid

Zoom link https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86939636277
Zoom password 289030

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IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Duncan John Shelwell

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Duncan John Shelwell

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