Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

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MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE CHAMBER SERIES PREMIERES ‘CAMP SONGS’
- Melinda Bargreen, The Seattle Times, April 9, 2002

Now in its fourth year, the Music of Remembrance concert series has amassed an impressive record of performances with some of the region’s finest musicians and repertoire that is always thought-provoking. If the series, headed by artistic director Mina Miller, did nothing more than present works of composers who died in the Holocaust, that would be a worthy aim - but it does considerably more.

On Sunday, for example, the series presented the world premiere of the new "Camp Songs" by Paul Schoenfield, a composer whose jazzy and energetic "Café Music" has already become a contemporary classic. When Schoenfield was commissioned to write "Camp Songs", he and Miller examined death-camp poems found in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., as likely texts, and the composer decided to set five poems by Aleksander Kulisiewicz (a non-Jewish survivor of the camps, imprisoned for his politics).

These are not mournful poems, but angry, sarcastic ones that resonate with mockery and bitter wit. Schoenfield has set them to high-energy music that pulls together ethnic, classical and jazz elements, sometimes recalling Mahler’s songs, Kurt Weill’s ballads and klezmer traditions. It’s hard to imagine better interpreters than baritone Erich Parce and mezzo-soprano Julie Mirel, who perform alternate songs and unite in the finale, all with considerable drama and exuberance. The instrumental ensemble (violinist Misha Shmidt, cellist David Tonkonogui, clarinetist Laura DeLuca, double bass Jonathan Green and Miller at the piano) is an equal partner with the soloists; De Luca’s superb clarinet really functions as a third human voice.

The texts ironically describe the gusto of those who gas and burn the inmates of the death camps; there’s an ode to Sachsenhausen as a "heavenly paradise," and a despairing 1940 cry to "Mister C"(Churchill), who puffs his cigar while Europe crumbles. It’s strong stuff - and Schoenfield’s settings have made these poems live anew.

There were other rewards Sunday, including Parce’s performance of Hans Krasa’s "Three Songs to Poems by Rimbaud," and flutist Jody Schwarz’s performance in the Herman Berlinski Flute Sonata - all huge, liquid tone and subtle, expansive phrasing. A particularly nice surprise: Erwin Schulhoff’s colorful and vivid "Five Pieces for String Quartet," with brilliant playing by Shmidt, violinist Leonid Keylin, violist Susan Gulkis Assadi and cellist Mara Finkelstein.

Next season for Music of Remembrance, by the way, starts Nov. 3 with the world premiere of a chamber work by noted opera composer Thomas Pasatieri, with Gerard Schwarz conducting.

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