By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent
As this paper goes to press, Seattle Symphony music director Gerard Schwarz has just returned from his biggest Jewish conducting assignment ever. As part of a weeklong New York conference, “Only in America: Jewish Music in a Land of Freedom,” Schwarz joined an impressive array of scholars, fellow artists, and generous philanthropists in launching the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. This project of 50 CDs, to be released a few at a time over the coming months, represents the culmination of years of research, documentation, rehearsal and recording.
On November 8, Schwarz conducted the U.S. premiere of newly reconstructed highlights from Kurt Weill’s 1937 Jewish epic, The Eternal Road. That program, entitled “Voices Unveiled: Impact of Jewish Culture on American Music,” also included “Klezmer Rondos” by Paul Schoenfield (see the CD review on this page).
Then, on November 10, Schwarz led the world premiere of The Challenge of the Muse by Samuel Adler, as well as music by Bloch and Bernstein, on a program called “Ancient Inspirations-American Voices.”
The project’s artistic director, Neil W. Levin, a professor of Jewish music at the Jewish Theological Seminary, “opened up a world of music that I didn’t know,” says Schwarz, explaining why, at the height of an internationally acclaimed conducting career, he agreed to Levin’s request to record, perform, and serve as an artistic advisor for the Milken Archive project.
“I felt like I could learn from him, because my knowledge of composers like Achron and Berlinski was minimal to nonexistent. I knew Milhaud has written a ‘Sacred Service,’ but wait till you hear this Berlinski!” Schwarz enthuses.
The Berlinski isn’t out yet, but the first five CDs in the collection include long-neglected works by Weill, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Achron, and Bernstein, in addition to the Klezmer-related CD you’ll read about in this issue of the Transcript (the rest we’ll discuss on Dec. 12). The respected classical music label Naxos is releasing the Milken series, under the imprint of its “American Classics” edition. Naxos is now the primary recording home of the Seattle Symphony.
Schwarz credits Milken Family Foundation president Lowell Milken for the combination of passion for the music and financial commitment that made the Archive possible. He also credits Levin for having “enticed me, really, with a tremendous knowledge of Jewish music, which means basically music written on Jewish themes…. I felt like I could learn from him.
“This whole project is new to me in the sense that it’s very specifically Jewish,” Schwarz confesses. “I’ve done the odd concert for the Federation, or in Israel, but never been involved like this.”
Seattle Symphony audiences get a little extra benefit next week from Schwarz’s work at the Milken conference: he’s had extra rehearsal time with Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony (Symphony No. 3), which the SSO performs November 20, 21, and 23 with John Kuether, narrator, and Cantor Marina Belenky as soprano soloist. In New York, where he did the Bernstein Kaddish last Monday evening, Schwarz’s narrator was Tovah Feldshuh, who joined him at Lincoln Center on her one night off from performances of Golda’s Balcony on Broadway.
A sampler CD, Introducing the World of American Jewish Music (Naxos 559406, www.milkenarchive.org or www.naxos.com), offers nineteen examples of the wide variety of music either just out or yet to be released on the Milken Archive, from Milhaud to Bernstein, Abraham Kaplan to Kurt Weill.
Stay tuned. We’re in for a long, interesting ride.