Kristallnacht: Remembrance and Renewal

The program is divided, roughly, into three sections to present a narrative of the Jewish experience in the 20 th Century. The first section symbolizes the “Promise” that after centuries of oppression and exclusion, Jews might finally be accepted at the highest levels of European society, particularly in Germany and Austria. The regional Jewish composers of the pre- and post-WWI eras – Mahler, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg and many others -- were recognized and even praised for their bold works in the pre-World War II musical scene. The second section is “the Disintegration” as fascism and racism obliterate the careers and, then, the very lives of the Central Europe’s finest composers. We will examine this tragic period from the inside – via the work of the doomed Theresienstadt artists – and from the outside, as Jews living safely in the United States react to the catastrophe and reflect upon it. The third section, “Renewal,” features Jewish composers who prospered in the post WW II era, largely by emigrating to the United States.I.

I. The Promise:  Erich Korngold was born 1898 in Brno, Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic. At age 8, he played his first cantata for Gustav Mahler, who was so astonished he convinced Alexander Zemlinsky to pay for the boy’s tuition at a prominent music school. At age 10, Korngold enraptured the Viennese music going public with his brilliant ballet "Der Schneemann." His String Sextet, which we will perform tonight, was composed a few years later in 1916. Here's what Richard Strauss remarked at the time: “One’s first reaction that these compositions are by a child are those of awe and concern that so precocious a genius should follow its normal development …. This assurance of style, this mastery of form, this characteristic expressiveness, this bold harmony, are truly astonishing!”

Korngold proceeded to live up to that promise winning top honors from the Austrian Government. In the mid-30s, what was originally planned as a short stint in Hollywood to work film scores, became a permenant home and profession for the next decade thanks to the coming of the Nazis and the Anschluss. Korngold’s return to formal composition was widely considered a flop (though the works are gaining warm acceptance now) and he died a bitter man at the age of 60.

II. The Disintegration: Pavel Haas, born 1899, and Gideon Klein, born 1919, were promising composers in the vibrant German-language community of post-Hapsburg Bohemia. Like their coevals Hans Krasa and Victor Ullmann, Haas and Klein were imprisoned by the Nazis in the Potemkin-like “model” camp of Theresienstadt, were they were permitted to compose for inmate ensembles and provide an entertaining cover for visitios. As WWII wore on, the inmates were transferred to Auschwitz where they were put top death. Their work lives on through manuscripts copied and saved by their comrades.

III. Remembrance and Renewal News of the Nazi atrocities emerged fitfully in America, home to so many Jewish refugees and immigrants. Leonard Bernstein, born 1918 to Russian immigrants and descended from a long line of rabbis, completed his musical studies just before the war. In 1942, while pursuing post-graduate conducting studies with Koussevitzky and collaborating with Copland, Blitzstein and other luminaries on pop and classical projects, Bernstein wrote his first symphony, called the "Jeremiah". It springs from Old Testament chapters concerning the angry prophet Jeremiah, who predicted to an unheeding public that God's wrath would fall on the nation of Israel.

Born in 1900, Kurt Weill built a brilliant career in post WWI Germany. He electrified the avante-garde with his brilliant, ironic compositions that hybridized classical music with cabaret. Weill’s musico-dramatic collaborations -- “Three Penny Opera,” and “Mahagonny” – with the literary giant Bertolt Brecht came to characterize the expressionist spirit of the Weimar period. For this reason he was hated by the Nazi political movement and force to flee Germany, first for Paris in 1933 and then the U.S.A in 1937.

The “Kiddush” that we will perform was composed in 1946 on a commission from the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. The melody and arrangement are in Weill’s colorful cabaret style. He dedicated the score to his father Albert, who survived the Holocaust and became a citizen of the new state of Israel. Weill himself became a U.S. citizen and did some great work here. (Think "Lost in the Stars" and "September Song".) But professional disappointments and ill health meant his best work was behind him. Weill was working a musical of "Huckleberry Finn" when he died of a heart attack in 1950.

Max Janowski was born in Berlin in 1912. After studies in piano and organ in his native Germany, Janowski joined the faculty of the Mosashino Academy in Tokyo in the early 1930's as head of its piano department. He immigrated to the United States in 1937 and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, Janowski became a popular choir director and voice teacher (Met baritone Sherril Milnes was one of his students). The "Avinu Malkeynu" we will perform is one of only a few compositions, but it's extremely well-known and beloved. Janowski died in 1991.

A choral piece in a similar vein is Morris Barash’s “Unetane Tokef”. Born in 1903 in New York, Barash studied composition with the famed Roger Sessions at the New School and performed in choral group under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. He joined the faculty of the Hebrew Union College School of Sacred Music in 1952. There Barash accompanied many of the greatest cantors of the day and became a leading composer for the Hebrew liturgy (specializing in the Liberal/Reform tradition). His “ Unetane Tokef, ” subtitled ‘Let us acclaim the majestic sanctity of this day’, is a classic of that genre.