By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent
This season, we witness a musical event unprecedented in the history of Jewish life and the recording arts. The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music has released the first of 50 planned CDs representing composers, performers, periods and genres, crossing the spectrum of both religious and secular music, by and about Jews in America.
The gradual release of the entire Milken Archive collection is to take place between now and 2005, so Jewish music lovers will have a lot to listen to and talk about for a long time to come.
Most — but not all — of the composers represented in the Milken Archive are Jewish. When they are not, for example in the case of Dave Brubeck, their music has been deemed relevant to the American Jewish experience (such as Brubeck’s “Gates of Justice” oratorio, due out next year). The project represents an immense investment of money, time, and talent.
From Yiddish theatre to Leonard Bernstein, Darius Milhaud to Benzion Miller, the Milken Archive, launched in 1990, spans a vast array of Jewish talent, inspiration, and subject matter. Recorded over a four-year period in concert halls all over the world — including Seattle’s Benaroya Hall — the Milken Archive CDs also bring to the popular medium of the CD booklet an impressive amount of scholarly writing about the history and musical context of this art.
Among the notable names on the Archive’s advisory board is Seattle Symphony Music Director Gerard Schwarz: he and the SSO appear on a number of the Milken recordings, both the ones already out and those to come.
Abraham Ellstein: Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage, Vol. 1
Vienna Chamber Orchestra and others, Elli Jaffe, conductor, with vocalists Robert Abelson, Bruce Adler, Robert Bloch, Joanne Borts, Amy Goldstein, Benzion Miller, Elizabeth Shammash, Nell Snaidas, and Simon Spiro
Here are 16 songs by Ellstein and a few other songwriters active in the world of Yiddish vaudeville and “Second Avenue” theatre, Yiddish films and radio during the great wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to America at the turn of the last century. This was the entertainment that satisfied a generation torn from the old country.
Among the female voices, the standout in my ears was mezzo-soprano Joanne Borts, whose fluent Yiddish and gutsy delivery in “Grine Kuzine” defines the song, a classic tale of the disappointment and downfall of an innocent young immigrant. Too bad she’s only on that one track.
Amy Goldstein’s “Abi Gezunt” is a little more operatic than the song seems to want. She is gorgeous in a romantic duet with Simon Spiro from Ellstein’s 1946 Second Avenue Theatre musical, “Ikh Bin Farlibt” (“I’m in Love”).
Robert Abelson’s powerful baritone lifts “Der Dishvasher” up into noble territory: a strong man, deeply hurt, just keeps on doing his job. If shmaltzy music is your passion, here’s the original unrendered schmaltz. And if you’ve just got a passion for American musical theatre, the combination of these recordings and these notes makes for an eye-opening history lesson. An accompanying booklet contains translations of the songs; transliterations of the Yiddish are available on the Milken Archive Web site.
Speaking of booklets, be forewarned: the Milken Archive notes are so extensive that the CD booklet can hardly contain them; hence their publication in very small type.
Seattle Syphony Music Director Gerard Schwarz conducts music by Joseph Achron (Suite from “The Golem” and “Two Tableaux from the Theatre Music to Belshazzar”). Also on the Achron CD: “Violin Concerto No. 1,” with violinist Elmar Oliveira and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Silverstein.
The concerto, not a well-known piece, had me thinking of Achron’s British contemporary, Vaughan Williams. Like the soloist in his often-recorded “The Lark Ascending,” Achron’s violinist swoops and trills around harmonies and melodic lines drawn from the composer’s native music. In the case of Achron, that music, which he appears to have meticulously researched, is traditional Torah trope.
Maestro Schwarz is also the conductor — with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra — on a CD of highlights from Kurt Weill’s The Eternal Road. Weill may be best known in the U.S. as the composer of the song “Mack the Knife,” which hit the pop charts in the 1960s.
Fleeing to the U.S. in the path of Nazi threats, Weill resettled in New York and pitched in with his art to show his solidarity with his fellow Jews. As part of a feverish team of hundreds, he wrote the music for The Eternal Road, a huge 1936 opera house spectacle the likes (and budget) of which Broadway may never have seen before: a fusion of Zionist ideals, religious faith, and the musical heritage of Bach and Handel.
On this CD of excerpts, Schwarz conducts seven operatic soloists, full chorus and orchestra, in dramatic scenes from the Bible. As with all these recordings, the performances meet the highest musical standards, and the notes reflect thorough research.
The Italian Sephardic composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was in the midst of a successful career when, like Weill, he had to flee the threats of Europe and resettle in America. Like Achron, he wound up in Hollywood: Jascha Heifetz arranged a contract with MGM for him. The Milken Archive issues a CD featuring this composer’s “Naomi and Ruth,” his Sacred Service for Sabbath Eve, and notable selections from his Prayers My Grandfather Wrote (three short pieces for organ) and Memorial Service for the Departed. Performers include the much-recorded and well-respected orchestra known as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.
Leonard Bernstein’s craggy face continues to sell CDs, as you can see in a short stroll through the classical music section of any local music retailer. But this Leonard Bernstein — the one on this disc titled A Jewish Legacy — is not so often heard. No West Side Story dances here. The nervous energy, the familiar Bernstein American edginess is here, but the inspirations for these mostly short tracks are folksongs, or psalms, or legends. Most important work on this disc is “Halil,” a 15-minute concert piece for flute and orchestra Bernstein dedicated to a young Israeli flutist who was killed while serving his Army duty.
This is not the first recording of this work, but it is a robust reading, featuring flutist Bonita Boyd. Exciting, by turns jazzy and sober, the piece reflects a young talent, an untimely death, and the survival of music. It’s especially worth getting out the magnifying glasses for the notes accompanying this CD: they’re by Jack Gottlieb, Bernstein’s longtime assistant, who includes a personal essay about the composer in addition to the thorough program notes that characterize this entire recording project.
In fact, each disc in this project showers the listener/reader with such abundant information that it’s hard to take it all in. It will take time to adjust to the existence, in our musical environment, of all these recordings of all these international stars in the service of Jewish culture. We’ll be seeing, and hearing, these blue-and-orange Milken/Naxos CDs for some time to come. We can only hope that one day, some of the Archive’s rediscovered musical ideas may blossom as another new American music. Again.
Not from Milken, but definitely archival: Di Eybike Mame/The Eternal Mother: Women in Yiddish Theater and Popular Song 1905-1929
Wergo, distributed by Harmonia Mundi; www.wergo.de
An illustration of the struggles and triumphs of female Jewish performing artists 100 years ago. This remarkable album demonstrates, for one thing, the diverse talents of women who sang both popular and concert music in vaudeville and Yiddish theatres. It also demonstrates a significant investment by the German label Wergo in the effort to salvage the documents of a once-thriving culture. Harmonia Mundi, a respected classical music label, is managing U.S. distribution. According to the insert, this is one of eight recordings in a “Jewish Music Series” from Wergo, including rereleased early klezmer masters as well as contemporary renditions of popular and religious Jewish song.
In Di Eybike Mame, not only do these birdlike voices return to life, with their antique sound as clean as it can get, but extensive historical notes anticipate that you’ll be asking, “and who is this woman?” over and over again.
A four-page essay sets the stage, and then we learn, track by track: who was considered sexy; who was operatically trained; who among these mostly European-born singers traveled where, with which troupe, and with what kinds of costumes. We learn how many of these women were not just singers, but writers, directors, theatre managers, and impresarios.
Want an authentic rendition of “Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen”? Try the 1916 recording by Jeanne Feinberg. How about a Yiddish song that celebrates women’s newly granted right to vote? Clara Gold recorded one in 1921. Molly Picon, who created the trouser role in Yidl Mitn Fidl wrote songs as well as she sang them. And did you know that there were khazantes — female cantors — performing on the vaudeville circuit? One, “Lady Cantor Madam Sophie Kurtzer,” sings here in a very cantorial 1924 rendition of the kiddush, the Sabbath blessing over wine.
Most of these tracks were recorded in New York, a couple in Lemberg, one in London.
Even if the tear-jerker of the title isn’t your cup of tea, even if your taste in female vocals generally leaves out the old-timey ones (think Snow White), still: if you have any interest in women’s history or Yiddish song, you must get acquainted with this recording.
Cantors: A Faith in Song. Music from this fall’s PBS TV show of the same name, featuring three outstanding voices: Alberto Mizrachi of Chicago; Naftali Hertsik of Jerusalem; and Benzion Miller of Brooklyn. Very dressy orchestral and choral accompaniments, a “three tenors of the bimah” event recorded in concert, with the Netherlands Theatre Orchestra and the Ne’imah Singers men’s choir from London, in Amsterdam’s historic Portuguese synagogue. Everything from “Sunrise, Sunset” to a “Kol Nidre.”