Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

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ARTISTS, PREMIERE MAKE IT A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
-Melinda Bargreen, The Seattle Times, May 1, 2000

A concert in commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Week is a great idea; a concert with some first-rate artists and a compelling world premiere by David Stock is an even better one. The "Music of Remembrance" concert series has evolved from a merely promising concept to an occasion guaranteeing not only quality but also intriguing programming.

After a soulful Bloch prayer from cellist David Tonkonogui, the music-making got under way with a high-intensity performance of Gideon Klein’s String Trio. The performance reunited three of the original members of Seattle’s expert Bridge Ensemble: Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Susan Gulkis, viola; and Tonkonogui. Their ensemble was as tight and as focused as you might expect from their history together: bold, confident playing of this rhythmic, propulsive score with the poignant center movement fully characterized.

Shmidt and Tonkonogui came back for an exceedingly expressive performance of Mikhail Gnessin’s charming Piano Trio ("Dedicated to the Memory of our Lost Children"), with series director Mina Miller staying in the background at the piano.

The world premiere, Stock’s "A Vanished World," was composed for the three players who premiered it so compellingly last night: flutist Jody Schwarz, violist Gulkis and harpist Heidi Lehwalder. Ingeniously scored and highly programmatic, the work paints a picture of what Stock has called "pre-war East European Jewry," a world that vanished indeed. The harp lends itself particularly well to the atmospheric, otherworldly air that the score conveys here; at times, Lehwalder seemed to be accompanying a quaint and ghostly waltz. Folk-song elements in the tuneful score were interrupted by hair-raising, shrill sounds of alarm from the three instruments, warning of what was to come.

Shostakovich’s song cycle "From Jewish Poetry" is a set of 11 riveting little songs for three singers and piano; last night the singers were Elizabeth Hynes, Julie Mirel and Stephen Wall (standing in for the previously announced Melvyn Poll), with Miller at the keyboard. Sad and mournful, robust and occasionally merry, these vignettes leaped to life whenever Hynes unleashed her amazing voice, investing every syllable with artistry and meaning. May she return, soon and often.

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