On the eve of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, Music of Remembrance will begin its 12th season with a concert that commemorates Jewish acts of heroism during the Holocaust.
The Nov. 9 fall program, “Cantillations,” incorporates contemporary pieces as well as works from Holocaust-era composers to remember the past and inspire the future.
The two contemporary works are “Sparks of Glory” by American composer Paul Schoenfield and “Cantillations” by Israeli-born Ofer Ben-Amots. Also, soprano Megan Hart of the Seattle Opera will perform Yiddish art songs by Lazar Weiner. The remaining pieces are by Czech composer Pavel Haas and Hungarian composers Sándor Vándor and László Weiner, all murdered during the Holocaust.
MOR’s artistic director Mina Miller said audiences can expect a deeply spiritual experience through the performance.
“It strengthens one’s soul,” she said.
Schoenfield started playing piano at age 6 and wrote his first composition a year later. He was an assistant to Russian-born composer Nikolai Lopatnikoff at Carnegie-Mellon University and then at age 22 received his doctorate in musical arts from University of Arizona.
“Sparks of Glory” premiered on the West Coast in MOR’s 1999 concert. He wrote “Sparks of Glory” in 1995 based on accounts written by the Polish-Israeli journalist Moshe Prager.
Prager worked as a journalist for the Warsaw daily Dos Yiddishe Tageblatt, and became a secret worker for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee after Nazi Germany invaded Poland. He persuaded JDC officials to carry on relief and rescue activities and proceeded to smuggle himself and the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, to British-controlled Palestine. Prager published his first collection of stories, titled “Sparks of Glory,” there in 1952.
Schoenfield took four of these stories and condensed them with the help of lyricist Frank Oteri to transform the work for a concert setting.
In the introduction to Prager’s collection, he writes that his stories “are all accurately recorded. And if they appear to border on the miraculous, it is because they mirror an age of miracles. And if they make the soul tremble, it is because they are echoes of a terrible and lofty time.”
Yet, Miller said, “There is a spark of human spirit through all of these stories that resonates with our mission and looks to the future…. They are precious gems of Jewish courage.”
Clarinetist Laura DeLuca, a frequent performer with MOR, played Schoenfield’s “Sparks of Glory” back in 1999.
“Paul is a great composer and he really captures the angst and sweet and sourness of what was going on at the time,” she said.
DeLuca said to expect high energy from Schoenfield’s piece, and even a feeling of frenzy. She has not worked with the composer of “Cantillations,” Ofer Ben-Amots, but said his work represents to her beauty over tragedy.
“This piece doesn’t have a narrative,” she said. “It emulates what you would hear in a synagogue.”
“Cantillations” is a short 10-minute piece in two movements that draws on synagogue motifs by blending Judaica and the cantorial style found in the Berlin-Frankfurt
region with contemporary effects.
“People [will be] exposed to beautiful melodic fragments, that real people use in their synagogue,” Ben-Amots said. “It connects us to these people just by listening to the music.
Ben Amots said that these melodies that survived the Holocaust were a reminder of those who did not.
“Once upon a time these people were singing these things,” he said. “These people are no longer here, but the melody lives forever.”
Miller said Music of Remembrance concerts usually draw in crowds from all over the United States, but she hopes this season brings in more of the Seattle community.
“[People] think that it will be depressing,” she said.
DeLuca acknowledged that some music the audience will hear did come “from the pen of a composer whose destiny led to a tragic ending.
“There’s always the underlying reminder, referring back to that time and what was going on,” she said.
However, Miller emphasized that the music is uplifting and consistent with MOR’s mission to allow voices to be heard that were once silenced during the Holocaust.
Ben-Amots said that concert series like MOR are increasingly important “as time goes on and history fades into the past, and people forget the Holocaust and this remarkable part of history.”
But it shouldn’t just be history that brings listeners to Benaroya Hall on Nov. 9.
“Everything is in the highest quality and level of musicianship,” Ben-Amots said.
DeLuca added that the composers and musicians involved in the concert are all dedicated to the concerts and keeping the music alive.
This is a “one-night-only concert with the best musicians in the world,” Miller said. “It’s not just a concert that can be easily duplicated.”
Claire Burns is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.