Music of Remembrance is about not forgetting not just Hitler, but the atmosphere in Europe which gave rise to Hitler, the intolerance of people towards those other than they. Most of MoR’s presentations have had to do with the Holocaust, but last Monday’s concert, the last in MoR’s 16th season, went back to 1918 and a German-made movie made then by non-Jews for non-Jews about the travails endured by a young Russian Jewish girl who wanted to go to university in St Petersburg.
It’s surprising that it was possible to make such a movie as The Yellow Ticket during the last days of World War I, part of it filmed in Warsaw’s ghetto. It is sympathetic to the girl’s difficulties and obstacles at a time Jewish girls in Russia could only move from their villages with the issuance of a yellow ticket—a permit identifying the bearer as a prostitute.
Today it is fascinating to see a movie from the very early days of the art. There are few lines of dialog attached. Mostly the action must be inferred from facial expression and body language, in which silent film star Pola Negri excelled.
Alicia Svigals, klezmer fiddler and founder of The Klezmatics, composed music to go with the movie, and was here to perform it in an expanded version commissioned by MoR with clarinetist Laura DeLuca and Canadian jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner. Svigals used a variety of Jewish and European musical idioms in the score, but they are subtle influences and not readily recognizable. Suffice it to say her music supported the movie unobtrusively and successfully.
The work of two Holocaust poets, set to music by Lori Laitman, occupied the central part of the program. Romanian Jew Paul Celan survived the camps, dying by his own hand in 1970, and his poetry is seared by the horror of his experiences. His famous poem Todesfuge (Death Fuge) from 1948 is a surrealistic word painting of that horror. The “black milk” drunk at all times of day and night and repeated throughout the poem is perhaps the polar opposite of the milk of human kindness. Towards the poem’s end—it’s not long—the digging of graves under duress and the gaze of blue eyes as “he” plays with his vipers, and the repeated comment that “this Death is a master in Deutschland” add to the chill. Laitman set this for a baritone (Erich Parce) and solo cello (Walter Gray), and creates a sense of the horror’s inevitability and driving force, the innocent caught in its mesh.
A short song cycle In Sleep The World is Yours comprises three short poems by a cousin of Celan’s, which Laitman set for soprano (Megan Chenovick), oboe (Benjamin Hausmann) and piano (Mina Miller). Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger died at 18 in the camps, but these poems are far more mature than her age would suggest, probably thanks to her experiences. “Lullaby” implies that only in sleep can a child evade the cold reality, “Yes”is perhaps about the enormity and the distance of freedom, and “Tragedy,” the most overt, describes in four short lines the recognition of doom. Laitman uses motifs in the oboe to illustrate the poems, while the piano provides a harmonic underlay with almost continuous pedal. She makes it possible for the listener to hear all the words which, after all, is what these settings are all about. Both authors’ poems are well and tellingly performed. These were world premieres: of the English version of Todesfuge, and the first hearing of In Sleep The World is Yours.
The program began with the only lighthearted work, Martinu’s Serenade No. 2 from 1932. The Czech composer escaped to the U.S in 1941 for fear of retribution for his political activities with the Czech resistance. This delightful trio for two violins (Elisa Barston and Mikhail Shmidt) and viola (Susan Gulkis Assadi) was performed with precision, panache and charm.
