Program Booklet (2018)
Soundscapes of Modernity:
Jews & Music in Polish Cities
view as pdfRutgers Kirkpatrick Choir
Patrick Gardner, Director
Paul Conrad, Accompanist
Jordan Enzinger, Cello
Yenhsuan Lee, Viola
Erin Schwab, Soprano
Jihyang Seo, Violin
Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
Part of the Fifth Annual Polish Jewish Studies Workshop
Natalia Aleksiun, Halina Goldberg, & Nancy Sinkoff, OrganizersMonday, March 5, 2018 | 7:30 p.m.
Kirkpatrick ChapelRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Program
“Boże zmiłuj się nad nami” (Psalm 67, “God be merciful unto us”)
From Ozar schire jeschurun (1881)Composed by Jacob Leopold Weiss (1825–1889)
Polish translation by Franciszek Karpiński
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir
Paul Conrad, Accompanist
“Lecho dodi” Abraham Ber Birnbaum (1865-1922)
From Hallel w’simrah (1897)Text by Solomon Alkabetz (ca. 1505-1584)
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir
Joshua Gonzalez, Solo
Paul Conrad, Accompanist
Intermezzo, Op. 2 (1900)
Paula Szalit (1886-1920)Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
Mazurek (1930)
Henryk Cylkow (1866-1945)Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
Mazurek (1930s)
Paweł Anhalt (1910-?)Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
Five Pieces for Violin and Piano (1931)
Aleksander Tansman (1897–1986)Jihyang Seo, Violin
Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
INTERMISSION
“Szkoda twoich łez, dziewczyno” (“It’s No Use Crying, Girl”) (1929)
Artur Gold (1897–1943)
Text by Andrzej Włast (1895-1943?)
Erin Schwab, Soprano
Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
Jihyang Seo, Violin
“Rochel’s keiver” (ca. 1920)
Zavel Zilberts (1881-1949)
Text by K.A. Spiro
Erin Schwab, Soprano
Enriqueta Somarriba, Piano
Jordan Enzinger, Cello
String Trio, Op. 10 (1928)
Józef Koffler (1896-1944)
Jihyang Seo, Violin
Yenhsuan Lee, Viola
Jordan Enzinger, Cello
“Farshpreyt zikh, vekhter,” khor fun di vekhter fun di druidn, num. 4 der kantate Walpurgis nakht (“Verteilt euch, wack’re Männer” from Die erste Walpurgisnacht)
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Text by J.W. Goethe
Yiddish translation by Moyshe Broderzon (1890-1956)
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir
Paul Conrad, Accompanist
Setting of the folk song “Her nor, sheyn meydele”
Izrael Fajwiszys (1887-1943)
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir
Paul Conrad, Accompanist
About the Program
In 1638 King Władysław IV, the ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was entertained during a banquet given in his honor in Lwów by an orchestra consisting of Jewish musicians—“musicorum Synagoga symphoniaci de tribu Juda”—dressed in Turkish attire. The chronicler commented that the king, who was overall favorably disposed toward the Jews, reacted with delight, and enjoyed himself well into the night while listening to the music and dancing.
Buried in Polish archives, such stories repeatedly remind us that regardless of legal restrictions and fierce competition between Jewish and gentile musicians, there were many opportunities for interaction between them. Court orchestras of Polish aristocrats were known to hire Jewish musicians when they were short of performers. Likewise, Jewish and gentile village bands borrowed each other’s musicians for weddings and other festivities.
Opportunities for interaction and collaboration became even more frequent after the advent of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment). As early as the first decades of the 19th century, Jewish benefactors and audiences began supporting art music and Jewish musicians, who performed alongside gentiles on concert and operatic stages in Polish cities. This sort of musical engagement aligned well with several goals stated by the maskilim (advocates of the Haskalah) in Polish lands. Aesthetics were a central feature of their broader project of modernization, which they understood, in part, as “civilizing” the Jewish masses in order to regenerate Jewish culture. They were particularly interested in music’s ability to foster cultural integration and encourage positive moral impulses. The same circles of patrons also supported the cultivation of new musical practices within the liturgy of the so-called “progressive” synagogues, Jewish houses of worship that sought to reform Jewish religious practice, albeit in a less radical manner than that of American Reform synagogues. The Jewish choral tradition thus e stablished found new outlets at the start of the 20th century, with the rise of Jewish choral societies, many of them associated with Folkist, Socialist, and Zionist groups. All along, the broader Jewish audiences demonstrated a growing appetite for popular musical entertainment. At first, in the later 19th century, such music was associated with garden orchestras and operetta; and later, during the interwar period, with cabaret and the movies.
The goal of today’s concert is to present the breadth of music created in Polish cities during the 19th and early 20th centuries by Jewish composers whose careers were rooted in these diverse musical worlds. The program is framed by choral music: we open with compositions written expressly for progressive synagogues in Polish cities and close with musical arrangements prepared specifically for the use of Jewish choral societies. In between these bookends, we will hear various highbrow and popular styles of solo and chamber music that were cultivated by Jewish performers and composers and enjoyed by Jewish and gentile audiences.
With the establishment of two progressive congregations in Warsaw during the first quarter of the 19th century came changes to music heard during services. Following models established by Solomon Sulzer in Vienna, these congregations hired talented cantors who were charged with replacing the older tradition of a hazzan (prayer leader) accompanied by meshorerim (vocal accompanists) with a modern choir, alternating with and complementing the hazzan. In fact, Leon Sternberger—a student of Sulzer, who served in Warsaw during the 1840s—later became the cantor of the New York congregation Ansche Chesed in 1849 and is credited with having ushered in a new era in American synagogue music.
When Jacob Leopold Weiss (1825–1889) arrived in Warsaw in 1860, he was not only expected to perform the duties of chief cantor but was also given the authority to find and train the finest singers for the synagogue choir. Weiss, who later served a Wilno congregation, also composed choral music for his synagogues. “Boże zmiłuj się nad nami” is a setting of Psalm 67, “God be merciful unto us,” in the Polish translation by the celebrated poet Franciszek Karpiński (1741–1825). Cantor Weiss, like his counterparts in Reform synagogues abroad, adopted a choral style that emulated Protestant choral traditions.
Similar choral writing is found in Abraham Ber Birnbaum’s setting of the beloved poem “Lecho dodi” by the mystic Salomon Alkabetz (ca. 1505–1584), sung during the weekly ritual of the kabbalat Shabbat, “the welcoming of the Sabbath” (today’s performance uses the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew). Abraham Ber Birnbaum (1865–1922)—not to be confused with Eduard Birnbaum, the famous cantor of Königsberg, who amassed the collection now at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati—trained in Łódź, and, starting in 1893, became the chief cantor of the progressive congregation in Częstochowa, a position he held for 20 years. During his tenure, he spearheaded countless initiatives, including the establishment of a cantorial school at Częstochowa’s stately New Synagogue and the founding of two choral societies—the Jewish “Hazomir” and the nondenominational “Lira.”
By the end of the 19th century, the amateur choral movement took root, with organizations such as “Lira,” “Hazomir” and “Szir” sprouting in small towns and big cities. In Łódź, “Hazomir” and the affiliated symphonic orchestra performed an ambitious repertory of oratorios by Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and other monumental works, including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem. Among “Hazomir’s” conductors were Józef Rumszyński (yes, the legendary Rumshinsky, who in 1904 settled in New York and became a celebrated composer for Yiddish theater) and Zavel Zilberts (1881–1949), who after emigrating, established several prominent choral groups in New York, and whose “Rochel’s keiver” (Rachel’s Tomb) is also presented today.
The setting of the well-known folk song “Her nor, sheyn meydele” is by Izrael Fajwiszys (1887–1943), whose illustrious conducting career took him from Brody to both Kraków and Lwów, where he conducted synagogue and amateur choirs. He settled in 1922 in Łódź, directing both the “Hazomir” and “Szir” choirs and teaching choruses in Jewish high schools. Even in the last years before he perished in the Nazi camp in Poniatowa, Fajwiszys conducted the children’s choir “Dror” in the Warsaw Ghetto. Fajwiszys’s arrangement of “Her nor, sheyn mey-dele” and the Yiddish rendition of the chorus from Die erste Walpurgisnacht by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–1847) come from a rare copy of a two-vol-ume collection published in Wilno on the eve of World War II. Billed as the repertory of a chorus led by Jakub Gersztajn (who perished in the Wilno Ghetto in 1943), and assembled by him, the collection demonstrates trends typical of Wilno’s artistic circles: the interest in Jewish folk culture and the penchant for performing mainstream musical compositions in Yiddish translation (there, one could even hear Verdi’s and Puccini’s operas in Yiddish).
The extraordinary participation in the international concert arena of Polish Jewish virtuosos—the likes of Edward Woff, Karol Tausig, Ignacy Friedman, Maurycy Rosenthal, Wanda Landowska, Felicja Blumental, Artur Rubinstein, and Mieczysław Horszowski, to mention just some of the pianists flourishing between the early 19th and late 20th centuries—is represented here by music of Paula Szalit (1886–1920), a brilliant pianist from Drohobycz, who died in Lwów before reaching the age of 35. Szalit was only 14 years old when she composed the Intermezzo—a little gem of extraordinary beauty.
At the turn of the 20th century, new aesthetic and artistic tendencies gained a foothold in major cultural centers of the Western world, and Polish Jewish artists— writers, poets, painters, sculptors, architects, and composers—enthusiastically engaged with modernism in the local and international arenas, side-by-side their gentile counterparts. These modernist movements were characterized by diverse and complex ways of imagining the encounters between the past and the future, tradition and innovation, form and contents.
The mazurkas by Henryk Cylkow (1866–1945) and Paweł Anhalt (1910–?), Jewish musicians active in Kraków during the interwar period, show remarkable affinity with the new stylistic trends initiated by Karol Szymanowski, the doyen of the Polish musical scene during this period, who imbued the traditional genre of the mazurka with new expressive harmonic contents. Indeed, what catches our attention is the expanded harmonic language of these pieces, which firmly places them in the new modernist milieu.
For Aleksander Tansman (1897–1986), a composer who grew up in Łódź, Paris became home (with the exception of war years, when he sought refuge in Los Angeles). Thus, Tansman’s musical language became aligned with the aesthetics of neoclassicism favored by the Parisian musical circles. His Five Pieces for Violin and Piano are characterized by adventurous melodic and harmonic idiom but are cast in forms and genres hailing back to the Baroque instrumental partita. In listening to the piece, one cannot help but be swayed by the exquisite lyricism and daring virtuosity of Tansman’s music.
In contrast to Tansman, Józef Koffler (1896–1944) looked to Vienna for inspiration. Born in Stryj, Koffler was associated for most of his life with Lwów musical institutions. During his studies in Vienna, he became acquainted with the dodecaphonic (12-tone) technique, characteristic of compositions by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Upon his return to Lwów, Koffler became the first Polish composer to embrace this technique consistently. His works, exemplified in today’s concert by the string trio, tend toward the more lyrical idiom of Berg (as opposed to the more abstract works of Webern). Listening to the expressive power and compositional craft of Koffler’s avant-gardist work, one realizes what an extraordinary loss for Polish music was his brutal death at the hands of the Nazis and the destruction of nearly half of his compositions.
No concert that intends to demonstrate the range of music contributed by Polish Jews would be complete without a sampling of Polish popular music from the interwar period. These contributions—by Jewish lyricists, composers, bandleaders, instrumentalists, and singers—were staggering. Even the founder of Syrena Record, the phonograph record company that was responsible for the distribution of many of these songs, was Jewish. It is difficult to find a tango, a foxtrot, a cabaret song, or a film score from that period that did not have a Jewish contributor in some role. Young working-class Jews from large cities were among the most enthusiastic consumers of this music, so much so that some of the songs were performed and recorded in Yiddish, or even Hebrew, for export to Palestine. Andrzej Włast (1895–1943?), the lyricist of the tango “Szkoda twoich łez, dziewczyno” (It’s No Use Crying, Girl), who was born in Łódź as Gustaw Baumritter, is credited with over 2,000 texts, fruits of his collaborations with theaters, cabarets, and composers. Artur Gold (1897–1943), a composer of many hits of the era, was also the leader of a popular jazz band. Both Włast and Gold were murdered by the Nazis.
We tend to imagine musical activities in Poland as taking place in segregated Jewish and gentile realms. With this concert, we hope to dispel these notions. Beyond the tragic loss of individual musicians during the Holocaust, the destruction of Polish Jewry resulted in the erasure of the historical memory about the role of Jewish music and musicians in the musical history of Poland. Our hope is to give these artists back their musical voice.
Notes by Halina Goldberg
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir
Patrick Gardner, Director
Paul Conrad, Accompanist
| Soprano | Alto |
|---|---|
| Alexis Bethea-Awokoya Gabriella Camiolo Hannah Carr* Gabriella Florio Deirdre Hansalik Megan Lako Genesis Marte Lynn Messina Maya Mitterhoff Hannah Orr Nicolette Policastro Alison Rydwin Alessia Santoro Felicia Zangari |
Brooke Barkdull Amanda Batista Kelly Brecker Shreya Choudhury Rebekah Daly Jennifer Dinan Arielle Fuhrman Linda Garcia Glynnis Gourhan Rachel Horner Lyndsey Larsen Kathleen Lonski Reid Masters* Shobhana Sridhar Riti Suresh |
| Tenor | Bass |
|---|---|
| Alex Ashman Nathan Bishop Jonathan Blanco Kyle Casem Nicolás de la Cruz Joseph Dodrv Stephen Dodrv Vincent Giampino Joshua Gonzalez Peter Gillett Joshua LeRose Brian McCann Nicholas Nicassio* Paul Salierno Matthew Zabiegala* |
Jason Allen Jonathon Dawson Larrej Drayton Joseph Ferguson Kyle Gelatka Jeffrey Greiner Joseph Haverlock Steven Haverlock Taylor Hine Omar Marcial Lucas Marin Carl Muhler Nicolas Noa Michael Tatoris Sean Ullmer |
*Denotes teaching assistant
About the Artists
Paul Conrad holds a bachelor of music in piano performance from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, where he studied with Paul Hoffmann. He collaborates with the Berkshire Choral Festival and NJ Region Choirs. Conrad is an avid ballet pianist, playing regularly for the Mason Gross Dance Department and at the Cecchetti International Summer School in Michigan. He serves as organist at Middlebush Reformed Church in Franklin, New Jersey, and as accompanist for the Highland Park Community Chorus. He rejoins his “brothers (and sisters)- in-song” at Rutgers as accompanist for both the Rutgers University Glee Club and Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir. He is pursuing his master’s degree in collaborative piano at Mason Gross.
With a versatile background in solo, chamber, and orchestral music, Jordan Enzinger is a freelance performing and teaching cellist in the New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia areas. He regularly performs with ensembles such as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Symphony, and Princeton Symphony, in venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kimmel Center. As a pedagogue, Enzinger serves as collegiate cello faculty at Seton Hall University; guest lectures for collegiate music classes at Rutgers; serves as cello faculty at the Mason Gross Extension Division and the Princeton String Academy; and serves as chamber music faculty at the Rutgers Young Artist Program and the American String Teachers Association Chamber Music Institute. He is a registered cello instructor for the Suzuki Association of the Americas and maintains his private cello studio in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He holds a D.M.A. in cello from the Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Patrick Gardner’s performances have been acclaimed by audiences, critics, and composers, including Tarik O’Regan, William Bolcom, John Harbison, Lou Harrison, Lukas Foss, and Jennifer Higdon. The performance last year of major works by Lou Harrison, which he curated and conducted at Trinity Church Wall Street, was named in The New York Times list of “Best Classical Performances of 2017.” Director of the Riverside Choral Society of New York City, Gardner is also director of choral activities at Rutgers University, conducting the Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir and the Rutgers Glee Club and supervising doctoral students in choral conducting. He has conducted more than 100 major choral orchestral masterworks, from the Bach B-minor Mass at Carnegie Hall to the Missa Solemnis and the Verdi and Brahms Requiems at Lincoln Center. He has presented master classes for advanced choral conducting students and professional conductors in Taiwan, Italy, and the Netherlands. Gardner has served as a member of the grants panel of the National Endowment for the Arts and has recorded for the Naxos, Albany, Ethereal, and Folkways labels.
Yenhsuan Lee is a second-year M.M. student in viola at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, studying under Daniel Panner and Yura Lee. A graduate of Cleveland Institute of Music, Lee has attended the American Conservatory summer music festival in Fontainebleau, France, and has participated in master classes and lessons under Benjamin Zander, James Buswell, Jean Sulem, Peter Salaff, Yehudi Wyner, and Pierre-Henri Xuereb, among many others.
Erin Schwab is a second-year M.M. candidate in voice at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, in the studio of Judith Nicosia. She holds a B.M. from Rutgers, along with an award for Outstanding Achievement in Music (2014). Further studies include the Chautauqua Institution Voice Program (2015) and the Castleton Artists’ Training Seminar (2012–2014). Operatic roles include Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro), Die Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte), Venus (Venus and Adonis), Soeur Constance (Les Dialogues des Carmélites), La Princesse (L’enfant et les sortilèges), Alexandra (Regina), Ginevra (Ariodante), Nanetta (Falstaff), Lucia (The Rape of Lucretia), Noémie (Cendrillon), and Lucy Lockit (The Beggar’s Opera). Upcoming engagements include the role of Nanetta (Falstaff) at the Crested Butte Music Festival. Schwab is also an accomplished chorister and concert soloist.
Jihyang Seo is a D.M.A. candidate in violin performance at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. She has studied with Soovin Kim, Philip Setzer, and Jennifer Frautschi at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and she is a student of Carmit Zori. She has served as concertmaster and principal second violin of the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra.
Spanish pianist Enriqueta Somarriba has been praised by the New York Concert Review for her “aplomb” and her “natural, individual interpretation.” Her repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the 21st century, with focus on contemporary, Spanish, and Latin American music. She has appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cervantes Institute, Liederkranz Concert Hall, and internationally renowned venues in Italy, Belgium, France, and Spain. She has recorded for RNE (Spanish National Radio), 98.7 WFMT Chicago, 89.1 WWFM radio, and MSR Classics. Somarriba studied with Solomon Mikowsky at Manhattan School of Music, and she is a D.M.A. candidate at Rutgers University, where she serves as lecturer.
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir, with approximately 60 members, is the most advanced choir at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. Its mission: to educate professional musicians through performance. The Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir performs a significant repertory of major choral orchestral masterworks, Baroque music accompanied by period instruments, and important works of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir was approached by the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music to record several CDs of important 20th-century works, including Miriam Gideon’s Sacred Service, which was released as part of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music’s comprehensive multiyear recording series on Naxos American Classics series. They also have a Naxos release of Samuel Adler’s Five Sephardic Songs.
About the Symposium
Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities is offered in conjunction with the Fifth Annual Polish Jewish Studies Workshop, taking place at the Rutgers University Inn and Conference Center, March 5–6. The workshop focuses on Jewish cultural production, but also on cultural collaborations and tensions between Christians and Jews in the years of Poland’s partitions and independence (1772–1939) in urban centers other than Warsaw—especially Wilno, Lwów, Kraków, and Łódź. The symposium is organized by Natalia Aleksiun (Touro College), Halina Goldberg (Indiana University), and Nancy Sinkoff (Rutgers University). The workshop’s website is: www.sas.rutgers.edu/cms/ces/polish-jewish-workshop