Composer Paul Schoenfield in Seattle for CD Signing at MOR’s November 9 Concert

Above: Gerard Schwarz conducts Rudolf and Jeanette

 

SEATTLE, WA—October 21, 2009—Known for its performances of Holocaust-era chamber music, Seattle-based Music of Remembrance has also played a leading role in the commissioning of contemporary music inspired by the Holocaust and its legacy. MOR’s fifth CD, to be released in the U.S. by Naxos on November 17, 2009, will include recordings of three commissions by American composers. Paul Schoenfield is the pianist for his Camps Songs and Ghetto Songs, and Gerard Schwarz conducts his Rudolf and Jeanette.
 

“Our mission is to ensure that the voices of musical witness to the Holocaust are heard,” said MOR’s artistic director, Mina Miller. “We try to commission new music that brings overlooked perspectives to light. Our last CD presented the testimony of a gay Holocaust survivor. In our new recording, Paul Schoenfield highlights the poetry and songs of a forgotten folk hero, and Gerard Schwarz recalls the lives and the love of a Viennese couple – his grandparents – in a world that turned against them.”
 

On the disc, Schoenfield’s works give musical voice to two men – one who survived, and one who perished -- and their evocative words that communicate rage and bitter humor, tenderness, and fragile hope.  Camp Songs is a setting of five poems written by Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a non-Jewish Polish journalist who survived six years as a political prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The songs are full of mordant humor and bitter irony. A crematorium operator boasts of his enthusiasm for his work; the concentration camp itself is mocked in a sarcastic alma mater; Hitler’s approaching end is greeted with schadenfreude. Camp Songs was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in its setting with the original Polish texts. This CD is the first recording of a new English version. It features baritone Erich Parce and mezzo-soprano Angela Niederloh. Schoenfield joins the instrumental ensemble as pianist.
 

Schoenfield’s Ghetto Songs (2008) draws on the lyrical legacy of Mordecai Gebirtig, a carpenter by trade whose folksinging and acting earned him a reputation as Poland’s “Yiddish troubadour”.  Gebirtig was forced to the Krakow Ghetto in April 1942, and before his murder there two months later he composed poems in a notebook which has been preserved. Ghetto Songs sets six of these poems. “It is very different from Camp Songs,” said Schoenfield. “These poems by Gebirtig are written across this whole range between hope and gladness and despair.” The song cycle opens with Gebirtig talking hopefully to a portrait of his daughter, but descends into despair as their reunion remains uncertain. Later he rejoices in a ray of sunshine, and the cycle concludes with Gebirtig’s meditation on Jewish resilience. Mezzo-soprano Angela Niederloh and baritone Morgan Smith are joined by an instrumental ensemble that includes Schoenfield as pianist.
 

Gerard Schwarz composed Rudolf and Jeanette, his second MOR commission, in memory of his mother’s Viennese parents, Rudolf and Jeanette Weiss. Denied exit visas, they were deported to a Riga concentration camp and shot there in 1942. “Rudolf was exactly my age now when he was murdered,” wrote the Seattle Symphony conductor in his composer’s notes for the piece.  Scored for a 14-piece chamber orchestra, the work opens with a haunting melody, juxtaposes a Nazi march theme with nostalgic Viennese waltzes, and concludes with a funeral march. Schwarz’s son Julian, winner of MOR’s first David Tonkonogui Memorial Award, is one of the cellists on the recording.

The CD’s release coincides with MOR’s November 9, 2009 concert, Cantillations, at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. Paul Schoenfield and Gerard Schwarz will attend the concert, and will be available for disc signing.

Online Orders: www.musicofremembrance.org/recordings and everywhere Naxos recordings are sold

 

Camp Songs (2001) World premiere recording*
Texts by Aleksander Kulisiewicz (1918–1982)

Commissioned by Music of Remembrance

*New English version translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Jerzak

 

 

Angela Niederloh, mezzo-soprano; Erich Parce, baritone

Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Walter Gray, cello; Jonathan Green, double bass; Paul Schoenfield, piano

 

Recorded: November 18, 2008, Seattle, Benaroya Hall: Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall

Produced, engineered, and edited by Albert G. Swanson

Ghetto Songs (2008) World premiere recording

Poetry by Mordecai Gebirtig (1877–1942)

Commissioned by Music of Remembrance

 

 

Angela Niederloh, mezzo-soprano; Morgan Smith, baritone

Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Walter Gray, cello; Jonathan Green, double bass; Paul Schoenfield, piano

 

Recorded: May 28, 2008, Seattle, Benaroya Hall: Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall

Produced, engineered, and edited by Albert G. Swanson

 

Rudolf and Jeanette (2007) World premiere recording

Commissioned by Music of Remembrance

 

Leonid Keylin, violin; Jeannie Wells Yablonsky, violin; Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola; Mara Finkelstein, cello; Julian Schwarz, cello; Jonathan Green, double bass; Scott Goff, flute; Ben Hausmann, oboe; Paul Rafanelli, bassoon; Laura DeLuca, clarinet; John Cerminaro, French horn; David Gordon, trumpet; Valerie Muzzolini, harp; Mina Miller, celesta & piano

 

Recorded: May 28, 2008, Seattle, Benaroya Hall: Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall

Produced, engineered, and edited by Albert G. Swanson

 

Paul Schoenfield (b. 1947, Detroit)

 

Paul Schoenfield, composer and pianist, fulfilled both roles for the May 12, 2008, world premiere of his second MOR commission, Ghetto Songs, a work based on the poetry of the beloved Polish “troubadour,” Mordecai Gebirtig, murdered in the Krakow ghetto. His first MOR commission, Camp Songs, was a chamber music setting of five poems written by the political dissident Aleksander Kulisiewicz, while imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II. Recorded on MOR's first CD, Art from Ashes, Vol. 1 (Innova), Camp Songs was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Born in 1947 in Detroit, MI, Schoenfield studied piano with Julius Chajes, Ozan Marsh, and Rudolf Serkin, and holds a degree from Carnegie-Mellon University, as well as a Doctor of Music Arts degree from the University of Arizona. He has lived on a kibbutz in Israel and was a freelance composer and pianist in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. As a composer, Schoenfield has received commissions and grants from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Commission, Chamber Music America, the Rockefeller Fund, the Minnesota Commissioning Club, American Composers Forum, Soli Deo Gloria of Chicago, and many other organizations. Though he rarely performs now, he has toured the United States, Europe, and South America as a solo pianist and with ensembles. Among his recordings are the complete violin and piano works of Bartok with Sergiu Luca. His compositions can be heard on the Angel, Decca, Innova, Naxos, Vanguard, EMI, Koch, BMG, and New World labels. Paul Schoenfield’s music was first heard at a MOR concert in November 1999, which featured the West Coast premiere of Sparks of Glory. He joined MOR’s Advisory Board in January 2000.

 

Gerard Schwarz (b. 1947, Weehawken, NJ)

 

Music Director of the Seattle Symphony since 1985, Principal Conductor of the Eastern Music Festival, member of the NEA’s National Council on the Arts, and a founding member of MOR’s Advisory Board, Gerard Schwarz has been a frequent guest conductor with Music of Remembrance. His composition In Memoriam, recorded on MOR’s fourth CD, For a Look or a Touch (Naxos), was his first MOR commission. Rudolf and Jeanette (2007) was his second. Schwarz has helped to build numerous orchestras including Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic. He began his conducting career in 1966, and within ten years he was appointed Music Director of the Waterloo Music Festival, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Eliot Feld Dance Company and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. In 1981 he founded the Music Today Contemporary Series and served as its Music Director through 1989. From 1982 to 2001, he was Music Director of New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival and currently serves as its Conductor Emeritus. Maestro Schwarz co-founded the New York Chamber Symphony in 1977 and served as its Music Director through the ensemble’s 25th anniversary season in 2002. He was Music Director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra from 2001 through 2006. His nearly 100 recordings with the Seattle Symphony alone have resulted in eleven Grammy nominations, three ASCAP awards, and Record of the Year and Stereo Review awards, and have been mainstays on the classical Billboard charts. Born to Viennese parents, Schwarz is a graduate of The Juilliard School. He is a recipient of the Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University and was named 1994 Conductor of the Year by Musical America. He holds honorary doctorates from The Juilliard School, Seattle University, the University of Puget Sound, Cornish College of the Arts and Fairleigh Dickinson University, as well as an Honorary Fellowship from John Moores University.