By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent
In a season marked by war, the upcoming concert by Music of Remembrance carries special importance. On Sunday, April 27, MOR commemorates Yom HaShoah with “An Unsilenced Music.” The concert features the world premiere of “Fathers” by Lori Laitman, a song cycle based on poems of longing and comfort; a set of sharp-tongued cabaret songs first performed in the Sham Café at the Terezin concentration camp; and klezmer-inspired 1920s Yiddish theatre music.
In Terezin, there was no food or drink in the so-called café, but there was satire of surprisingly strong content; very little of it was actually banned, says MOR Artistic Director Mina Miller. Little of this very topical music was written down, however. Painstaking work by scholars and survivors rescued prisoners’ witty and sarcastic new lyrics to popular tunes of the day. Miller suggests, “It’s as if ‘Saturday Night Live’ came out with new lyrics to the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’
“One maxim of the songs and satire that were produced in Terezin was, ‘any genre but tragedy,’” she explains. “When you look at the music that comes from there, it doesn’t wallow in self-pity; it’s full of life. In fact, some of it is absolutely hilarious! Of course, as you find yourself laughing, you come near to tears, too, because you know what happened next. Most of the composers on this program have an end date of 1944.”
With Miller at the piano, mezzo-soprano Julie Mirel and baritone Erich Parce will bring the cabaret songs to life.
Now in its fifth season, Seattle’s Music of Remembrance is unique among chamber music organizations in its commitment both to music by composers who perished or fled from Hitler’s fury, and to music by living composers in response to the Holocaust. “MOR is dedicated to the idea that beauty transcends suffering,” says Miller. “Our work is built on examples of moral resistance and courage from one of history’s darkest times. We honor the spiritual defiance of those who managed to create.”
“Our organization isn’t a political one,” Miller asserts. “But I feel that the world circumstances intensify the need for what we do. When we honor these musical voices, this is part of the message we carry: the message of people who resisted, and used music as a way of political criticism, anti-Nazi resistance; it stresses our need to not be silent.”
The American composer Lori Laitman views beauty as “what’s ultimately going to save the world.”
Laitman’s extensive compositions, most of which are songs, are known for their lyricism and accessibility.
“I found my voice writing for voice,” says the Maryland-based composer. Born into a musical family and educated at Yale, Laitman has achieved a great deal of critical success. Her settings of Emily Dickinson and Sara Teasdale are particularly respected, but, she says, “I’m continually drawn to the poets of the Holocaust. Obviously. I’m a Jew, and I’m a mother, and I’m a human being.”
“Fathers” for baritone and piano trio is Laitman’s fourth Shoah-inspired song cycle. Her “Holocaust 1944” received its world premiere in Seattle at MOR’s November 2000 concert. She based “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” on children’s poems from Terezin. Her song cycle “Daughters,” like “Fathers,” is built mostly on the poems of Anne Ranasinghe.
Ranasinghe, a child refugee from Nazi Germany who spent her teen years in England, ultimately remade her life in Sri Lanka. Now considered one of that country’s most honored poets, Ranasinghe—nee Annelise Katz—writes longingly of her murdered father.
Laitman found Ranasinghe’s poems in Hilda Schiff’s collection Holocaust
Poetry, and the two began a long-distance friendship. “I feel this kinship with her,” Laitman says. “You know, she lost everybody.”
Laitman will present a pre-concert talk in the Nordstrom Recital Hall one hour before the concert. Ranasinghe was originally scheduled to join her, but was unable to make the difficult trip from Sri Lanka. It would have been their first in-person meeting.
In “Fathers,” fragments of one hopeful song “return as a healing balm before each of the harsher songs,” says the composer, “so that the music can be like a bandage, soothing and repetitive.” “Fathers” will feature baritone Erich Parce, who premiered “Holocaust 1944” with MOR, joined by violinist Jeannie Wells Yablonsky, cellist David Tonkonogui, and pianist Mina Miller.
“A lot of people who feel that chamber music is ‘too highbrow’ will find this concert very enjoyable,” says Artistic Director Miller, “especially because of the klezmer style of the Joseph Achron piece.” Originally written for a Yiddish theatre performance of a Sholom Aleichem story, Achron’s Stempenyu puts the fiddle out front: it’s a musical retelling of the story of a shtetl heartbreaker who loses his own heart to a woman as talented as he is.
Rounding out the concert will be another local premiere of a composition from Terezin, “Fantasy and Fugue for String Quartet” by Gideon Klein, and the return of a composer MOR audiences love to cheer. Erwin Schulhoff’s 1924 “String Sextet” promises the buoyant energy of the best sophisticates of his time.
Says Miller, “I chose it because our players play his music so incredibly well. We’re putting together all our fabulous Russian Jewish players, and the piece is very accessible.”
Music of Remembrance has come to the attention of the international arbiters of musical excellence, as well. Paul Schoenfield’s song cycle “Camp Songs,” which was featured on its first CD, Art From Ashes (released in 2002), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in music. The album, which also includes other MOR successes, is available on the MOR Web site and will also be for sale at the concert.
The concert “An Unsilenced Music” is Sunday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m., with pre-concert lecture by Lori Laitman at 6:30, in the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya. Tickets are $25 general admission and $20 for students or seniors. For tickets and more information visit www.musicofremembrance.org, or call 206-365-7770.