Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

> Recordings Overview Music of Remembrance's recordings are essential to our objective of creating a permanent memorial, and bringing this music and its message to a worldwide audience through CD sales, broadcasts and libraries.
NEW! Jake Heggie - For a Look or a Touch NEW! Based on the true story of two teen-age lovers the Holocaust tore apart forever, the dramatic song cycle For a Look or a Touch casts long-awaited light on the fate of gay Germans in the Holocaust. By famed young American opera composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, the MOR commission evokes both Berlin’s wild cabaret night-life and brutal Nazi horrors, while making a desperate, poignant plea for remembrance. MOR's For a Look or a Touch CD (Naxos) also includes In Memoriam by the Seattle Symphony’s Gerard Schwarz, a beautifully meditative, elegiac piece for cello and string quartet, in honor of cellist David Tonkonogui (1958–2003). >From acclaimed American art song composer Lori Laitman comes The Seed of Dream. Her song cycle illuminates the grief, misery, and unbending resistance in each classical line of poetry by Abraham Sutzkever, written during his time in, and after his escape from, the Vilna Ghetto. Visit Amazon through the link to the left, and Music of Remembrance will receive a percentage of the purchase price.
Our recording of Hans Krása's children's opera Brundibár, available wherever Naxos CDs are sold, has been busy winning critical acclaim. To read review highlights, click here. Order our new Brundibár CD online at Amazon -- and a percentage of your purchase will go to support MOR. Featuring Seattle Symphony conductor Gerard Schwarz, our ensemble of Seattle's leading chamber musicians, Joseph Crnko's Northwest Boychoir, and young professional vocalists in the lead roles, the recording took place May 15, 2006, after our sold-out performances at Seattle's Benaroya Hall. This recording is first and foremost a memorial to the dignity and courage of the children who were victims of the Holocaust, as we remember that nearly all the original child performers of Brundibár perished at Auschwitz. The first Brundibár CD with the new English libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner (who also collaborated with Maurice Sendak on the children's book of Brundibár), also includes Hans Krása's Overture for Small Orchestra (with pianist Craig Sheppard), and contemporary American composer Lori Laitman's song cycle I Never Saw Another Butterfly, based on poetry written by children at Terezin, in an arrangement for soprano (Maureen McKay) and clarinet (Laura DeLuca). CD purchase price includes an $8 contribution to Music of Remembrance.
In May 2004, Naxos released our second recording devoted to Thomas Pasatieri's Letter to Warsaw, commissioned by Music of Remembrance. The compact disc release coincided with the world premiere of Letter to Warsaw on May 10, 2004 at Seattle's Benaroya Hall. Letter to Warsaw is the extraordinary musical setting of one woman's intimate first-hand account of life in the grip of the Holocaust. American composer Thomas Pasatieri created this powerful song cycle, setting six texts by poet/cabaret artist Pola Braun. Braun wrote these texts while in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Majdanek concentration camp, where she perished in 1943. Through Pasatieri's music, Braun's voice of witness tells an unforgettable story reminding us that each victim of the Holocaust was a unique individual. CD purchase price includes an $8 contribution to Music of Remembrance. Art from Ashes, vol. 1 has earned high praise, and was nominated for a 2003 Grammy Award. Gramophone magazine called the disc "a rewarding musical start to a promising commemorative series," and described its "fine performances of worthy rediscoveries." These rediscoveries include Dauber's Serenata (Terezín, 1942), Schulhoff's Five Pieces for String Quartet (1923), and Berlinski's Sonata for Flute and Piano (1941). This disc also includes the world premiere recordings of two MOR-commissioned works to date: David Stock's instrumental trio A Vanished World, inspired by Roman Vishniac's famous photographic essay, and Paul Schoenfield's Camp Songs, a chamber music setting of five poems written in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II by non-Jewish political dissident Aleksander Kulisiewicz. Camp Songs was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and the composer joins MOR's musicians for this recording.