By Donna Gordon Blankinship, Editor, JTNews
Even the most hardened student of Holocaust art may be shocked by Music of Remembrance’s newest commissioned piece, “Camp Songs” by acclaimed American composer Paul Schoenfield, which will premiere at the organization’s April 7 concert.
The new work for vocal and chamber ensemble is a setting of five poems written in the concentration camps by a non-Jewish, Polish inmate. After liberation, the poet, Alekander Kulisiewicz, devoted his life to collecting music and poetry written by camp prisoners. His collection is now housed in the archives of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which is where Schoenfield and Mina Miller, Music of Remembrance artistic director, went in July 2000 to find inspiration for this new composition.
Miller said she was attracted to the sad, sentimental poems in Kulisiewicz’s collection, but Schoenfield had something else in mind.
The composer choose the most raw, sarcastic expressions. “The most hardened student of Holocaust art will find these poems shocking because they really lay bare the raw life, the fury seething within the horrors of this time,” Miller said. The poems are caricatures, which Schoenfield has said, “in Joseph Conrad’s words, ‘put the face of a joke upon the body of truth.’ They are an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”
They will be sung in Polish, but the English translations will be printed in the concert program. Miller reluctantly shared a few lines from the translation of one poem, called “The Corpse Carriers Tango,” which speaks of the working conditions of the prisoners who toiled near the concentration camp ovens as “it’s warm where he works, but very pleasant.” And that’s probably the most gentle line of the poem.
A pre-concert lecture at 6:45 p.m. by Bret Werb, musicologist of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will introduce the texts and talk about the Kulisiewicz collection and the museum’s archives. A journalist by profession, Kulisiewicz was born in Krakow in 1918. He was denounced for anti-fascist writings and arrested soon after the German takeover of Poland. Sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin, he wrote 54 poems and songs over the course of nearly six years at the camp.
Miller described the music in Schoenfield’s piece as “extraordinary.” It will be performed by clarinetist Laura DeLuca, cellist David Tonkonogui, pianist Mina Miller, violinist Mikhail Shmidt, doublebassist Jonathan Green, mezzo-soprano Julie Mirel and baritone Erich Parce.
“Paul is just a genius. It will be very interesting to see the reaction of our audience. It will challenge our audience as to what really is Holocaust art.”
Working with Schoenfield on this new composition has been a learning experience for Miller and an exercise of walking the talk of artistic freedom. When you commission a world-famous composer to create a new work for your organization, you do not do so with the caveat that he must create something popular.
“I left everything open to him, because I feel that artists should have that freedom,” she said, adding that it was a coup for Music of Remembrance to get Schoenfield to do the commission, since he is the kind of composer that the New York Philharmonic commissions.
“Paul has helped give us perspective,” Miller added. Two weeks ago, when he was in Seattle, he was a guest on Dave Beck’s radio show on KUOW. Schoenfield said during that program that when he saw the movie “The Producers,” he decided if was ever going to express his anger to God about the Holocaust, it was going to be like that.
Also on the Holocaust Remembrance Day concert program are three uncontroversial pieces. The concert, “Not in Vain,” is a salute to the musical legacy of the Holocaust, which affirms that even crimes against humanity could not silence the voice of resistence.
“Three Songs to Poems by Arthur Rimbaud,” written in Terezin in 1943 by Hans Krasa, will be performed by baritone Eric Parce, Laura DeLuca on clarinet, Susan Gulkis on viola and David Tonkonogui on cello.
“Sonata for Flute and Piano,” composed in 1941 by Herman Berlinski, will have its West Coast premiere at this concert. It will be presented by Jody Schwarz on flute and Mina Miller on piano.
“Five Pieces for String Quartet,” composed by Erwin Schulhoff in 1923 will be performed by Mikhail Shmidt on violin, David Tonkonogui on cello, Jonathan Green on double bass and Mina Miller on piano.
Tickets for the April 7 concert are $20, or $15 for seniors and students. For more information, call 206-365-7770 or e-mail [email protected], or visit the organization’s Web site at www.musicofremembrance.org.