Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED IN POWERFUL MUSIC, WORDS
- Emily Russin, The Seattle Times, November 5, 2002

"Suffering doesn’t kill you - only death," the heavily accented voice of Isabella Leitner intoned at the start of "Fragments of Isabella," the world-premiere piece by Thomas Pasatieri based on Leitner’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated book. The 52-minute blend of taped narration and music follows the Hungarian-born girl from the ghetto to Auschwitz to America.

That Music of Remembrance, the organization whose mission centers on remembering musicians killed in the Holocaust, premiered this portrait of survival on the 64th anniversary of Kristallnacht ("the night of broken glass") was all the more resonant for the near-capacity audience at Nordstrom Recital Hall.

Music of Remembrance, which marked the start of its fifth season with this unforgettable story, has consistently offered daring performances featuring the area’s best players. "Fragments," conducted by Seattle Symphony Maestro Gerard Schwarz, featured, among others, Seattle Symphony members Jeannie Wells Yablonsky (violin), Susan Gulkis Assadi (viola), David Tonkonogui (cello), Laura DeLuca (clarinet), as well as Jody Schwarz (flute) and Music of Remembrance’s artistic director Mina Miller (piano).

In a program devoted to works by or influenced by those silenced by the Holocaust, every note is fraught with meaning. In "Fragments," Pasatieri, who is notable for composing more than 400 songs, delivers a wallop by simply letting Leitner’s recorded voice provide the aural drama; the music can merely reiterate the emotional heights and depths.

Leitner herself was led on stage on the arm of the composer while the crowd stood in tribute. The diminutive woman, in a long black gown and shawl, wiped tears from her face and declared, "In a deep sense, I consider this the funeral of my family."

Before intermission, a stellar group played the chilling "Study for Strings" by Auschwitz victim Pavel Haas. Two weeks after being featured in a Nazi propaganda film performing this work, the composer and most of his musicians were sent to the gas chambers. Led by Schwarz’s baton and first violinist Mikhail Shmidt’s expressive gestures, the 12-part ensemble pushed Haas’ penetrating folk songs past moments so bleak and brittle it was as if the notes augured the future.

David Stock’s "A Vanished World," commissioned by Music of Remembrance in 1999, received a stirring performance by flutist Jody Schwarz, violist Susan Gulkis Assadi and harpist Valerie Muzzolini. Traditional Jewish melodies passed conversationally between the trio, only to be interrupted by cacophonous moments reminiscent of human screams.

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