Concert Review
Music of Remembrance began its 11th season over the weekend with a very different kind of concert than usual, one involving the silver screen. There were traditional chamber music works at the beginning of the program, but the anchor was a screening of the 1920 silent film, "The Golem," with a live performance of incidental music written in 1997 by Israeli composer Betty Olivero.
The concert began simply enough, with a lovely work for violin and piano, "Before the Ark" by American composer Simon Sargon, with violinist Leonid Keylin and festival director Mina Miller on the piano. This is a gem of a piece, plaintive and passionate by turns; it was the perfect way to open another season of Music of Remembrance — a series devoted to honoring Holocaust musicians and their work.
The second work shot straight to the heart. "Found in a Train Station," a work for soprano and a chamber ensemble, was written last year by the young Israeli composer Lior Navok. It is based on a note found in a Polish train station, pinned to a baby, written by a mother about to be shipped off to a Nazi death camp. Soprano Vira Slywotsky read the heart-rending text of the note, alternating with a vocalese that floated, wailed and showed every kind of emotion one could expect at the horrifying moment of giving up one's child in the midst of a nightmare.
"The Golem," made in Germany in 1920, has been beautifully restored with English text. It depicts the troubles of the 16th-century Jewish community in Prague, how they are saved (and then nearly destroyed) by the creation of a clay man who is brought to life by a rabbi's magical arts. The movie seems prescient at first, considering what Europe's Jewish community was about to endure. But one must remember, the Holocaust was not the first pogrom, only the largest and most systematically evil.
The incidental music by Olivero is written for string quartet and clarinets (alto and bass), which were played heroically by Seattle clarinet goddess Laura DeLuca. The score is remarkable for its variety, from dissonance to klezmer joy to Renaissance courtliness.
Overall, the film and the music were powerful and very well received. The overwrought style of visual acting produced some unanticipated laughter from the 21st-century audience at times where the drama and music were completely earnest, even tragic. But that didn't dampen a remarkable event from outstanding musicians in a consistently outstanding and moving series.