by Ken Hoover
October 19, 2008, Durham, NC: The Mallarmé Chamber
Players presented
a Yom Ha'Shoah (Holocaust remembrance) concert at the Nelson Music
Room on Duke University's East Campus that provided an occasion for
grief, inspiration, and celebration. Of course, Yom Ha'Shoah usually
is observed in the spring, on the 27th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar.
However this program has been in the works for a couple of years or
more, and this was the first occasion when all the necessary musicians
were all available. The outstanding artists involved in the program
were violinists Jacqueline Saed Wolborsky and Dovid Frielander,
violist Suzanne Rousso, cellist Nathan Leyland, clarinetist Fred Jacobowitz,
pianist Elizabeth Tomlin, and baritone William Adams. Elizabeth Spragins,
a music historian who has delved deeply into the history of music during
the Holocaust, shared some information and a sense of reality about
some of the composers whose music was on the program. She also
shared some of the remarkable story of Alice Herz Sommer, a gifted
and accomplished pianist who was interred at Theresienstadt (or Terezin)
and performed there often. Viktor Ullmann dedicated his second Piano
Sonata to her. She survived the camp and lives today in London, still
positive and accepting the joy of life at 105.
The concert began and ended with two movements of Osvaldo Golijov's
Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Golijov, born into
a Jewish family in Argentina in 1960, is one of the hottest living
composers,
and this piece especially has earned him world-wide admiration from
professional musicians and audiences alike. It was written for string
quartet and clarinet and embodies a virtual history of the Jewish people:
exile, Diaspora, Holocaust, and the joy and wails of raucous klezmer
are all included.
We heard Erwin Schulhoff's Five Pieces for String Quartet,
a suite of dances set in a modernist and often sardonic style. There
is
a Viennese waltz, unmistakable but also unmistakably twisted. The second
movement, marked "Alla Serenada," reminded me of some of Mahler's childish
marches at the beginning and in a plucked section near the end. The
third movement had hints of Stravinsky, or even more so of Bartók.
The fourth movement, "Alla Tango milonga," is the most lyrical; it
is rather seductive and beautiful. And the final movement, "Alla Tarantella,"
is
a driving, energetic burst of energy. Schulfoff was born in1894, and
most of his creativity came from a prolific period in the 1920s. In
spite of the hints of influence from other composers, his work bears
a uniquely individual stamp. He died of tuberculosis in the Wulzburg
prison camp in Bavaria in 1942, another victim of the years of insanity
in Germany.
Closing the first half of the concert were two of the camp songs that
were so important in Terezin, providing mockery of the over-bearers,
entertainment, and relief from the constant uncertainty and terror.
Two songs by the eclectic contemporary composer Paul Schoenfield
were re-workings of pieces by Aleksander Kulisiewicz, who was interred
at Sachsenhausen from 1939-45. They are like cabaret songs of a secret
society, sung magnificently in all their dark humor by Adams.
After intermission, we heard Viktor Ullmann's Piano Sonata No. 7, performed
convincingly by Tomlin. This was his last completed work before he
was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. Thankfully, Ullmann was able to give
the autographs of his music to a friend to hide, and they have all
been published (including his opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis,
which was my
joy to hear and review last
February). The sonata is a musically accomplished and rewarding
piece with dark moods and complex rhythms. It ends with a phenomenal
set of variations that start in a decidedly minor mode, sounding folksy
at times and jazzy at times, and closes with a vigorous fugue – Ullmann
facing his certain death with an eye to a future that would somehow
be better, perhaps, if we never forget – never forget.... While
we grieve the loss of so much talent and promise, we celebrate the
courage,
endurance, and inspiration of an heroic culture.
As indicated above, the concert closed with the haunting, mystical
music of Golijov — a prayer, a meditation on the meaning of life
from the beginning to the end and what all of our human experience
may yet
come to. It is not too much to hope.
After the concert, there was a reception in honor of Anna Ludwig Wilson,
co-founder of the Mallarmé Chamber Players and Artistic Director
for 25 years. In her honor, a fund for the creation of new music was
announced by MCP's new Artistic Director, Suzanne Rousso. We add our
personal and collective expression of gratitude to Anna Ludwig Wilson
along with our best wishes for rewarding experiences ahead.
