performing the jewish archive out of the shadows...harlequin in the ghetto thursday 2 june - sunday...

Performing the Jewish Archive

Out of the ShadowsRediscovering Jewish music and theatre

FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

Leeds & York - June 2016

03. Welcome

04. Gideon Klein: Portrait of a Composer Wednesday 1 June, 7:30pm - Holy Trinity Church, Leeds

06. Harlequin in the Ghetto Thursday 2 June - Sunday 5 June, 7:30pm - The Black Box, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York

08. Make Once More My Heart Thy Home: The Choral Music of Hans Gál Sunday 5 June, 3:00pm - Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds Friday 10 June, 7:30pm - National Centre for Early Music, York

11. The Nash Ensemble: Music in the Terezín Ghetto Wednesday 8 June, 7:15pm - Howard Assembly Room, Leeds

14. Mother Rachel and her Children: A Rediscovered Oratorio Thursday 9 June, 7:30pm - Left Bank Leeds

16. Fractured Lives: Music of the Holocaust Tuesday 14 June, 7:30pm - Holy Trinity Church, Leeds Wednesday 15 June, 1:00pm - All Saints Pavement, York

18. New Budapest Orpheum Society Thursday 16 June, 7:30pm - National Centre for Early Music, York Saturday 18 June, 7:30pm - Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds

22. Fate and Fairytales: The Music of Wilhelm Grosz and Zikmund Schul Friday 17 June, 1:05pm - Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds

26. Die Weise Von Liebe und Tod Des Cornets Christoph Rilke Friday 17 June, 6:00pm - Holy Trinity Church, Leeds

27. Looking Forward Through the Past: New Operas from the Jewish Archive Thursday 23 June, 8:00pm - Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds

29. Art Exhibition: Children’s Drawings from the Terezín Ghetto Wednesday 1 June - Monday 20 June - Holy Trinity Church, Leeds

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CONTENTS


Society from Chicago, to piano-cello duo Noreen and Philip Silver from Maine USA, distinguished pianist (and popular face in Leeds!) Ian Buckle, and renowned British harpist Eleanor Hudson. Alongside these groups we feature more local and familiar performers: the Cassia String Quartet, the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, soprano Kate Rotheroe, flautist Rhian Hughes, Leeds University Union Music Society Chamber Choir, and students from the Royal Northern College of Music and the universities of Leeds, York, and York St John.

The Performing the Jewish Archive project (www.ptja.leeds.ac.uk), under whose auspices this festival is produced, seeks to inject new life into recently rediscovered musical and theatrical works by Jewish artists, many of which were thought to have been lost or have languished in obscurity until recently.

At the heart of the project are five international performance festivals. Spanning the globe, these festivals kicked off with great success in Madison Wisconsin (May 2016), before coming to Leeds and York (April and June 2016), and will continue in the Czech Republic (September 2016), Sydney, Australia (August 2017), and Cape Town, South Africa (September 2017). ‘Out of the Shadows’ in Leeds and York promises to be a memorable and poignant month of events that celebrate the lives and achievements of Jewish artists in times of migration, exile, internment, and often worse. We hope you can join us for as many events as possible.

Dr Stephen MuirUniversity of LeedsPrincipal Investigator,Performing the Jewish Archive


WELCOMEIt is my distinct honour to welcome you to ‘Out of the Shadows: Rediscovering Jewish Music and Theatre’. The festival takes place across 23 days in the cities of Leeds and York, with a preview performance in April of The Smoke of Home at Clifford’s Tower in York, to make a total of eight venues, twenty performances, and eight world premieres!

We are grateful for the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), whose award of a large grant titled Performing the Jewish Archive (www.ptja.leeds.ac.uk) has enabled this festival to take place. We also warmly acknowledge the support of York Festival of Ideas, the Royal Northern College of Music, Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Makor Leeds, the International Musicological Society, and DARE, the unique partnership between Opera North/Howard Assembly Room and the University of Leeds.

‘Out of the Shadows’ features cabaret, chamber music and songs from the Terezín ghetto, choral music by émigré composers, a powerful choral tableau of Jewish suffering and redemption from the Helsinki Jewish archives, a programme of newly-composed opera scenes drawing upon the latest archival discoveries, and much more.

We are extremely proud to present world premieres of recently discovered pieces by 12-year-old prodigy Josima Feldschuh, and are delighted that members of her family will be present for those performances. We will also welcome the descendants of composer Wilhelm Grosz to hear some of his songs for the first time, and are deeply honoured by the participation of a number of Holocaust survivors.

A stellar collection of performers brings all this music and theatre to you, from The Nash Ensemble of London - perhaps the finest chamber ensemble in Europe - and the Grammy-nominated New Budapest Orpheum


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Characters Gideon Klein (1919-1945)

Eliška (Lisa) Kleinová (1912-1999): one of Gideon’s two sisters. Lisa was the only surviving member of the family. She studied piano at the Prague Conservatory, and became a highly respected piano pedagogue.

Ilona Kleinová (1889-1944): Gideon’s mother.

Alice Herz-Sommer (1903-2014): pianist; knew Gideon before and during Terezín.

Erik Saudek (1904-1963): writer and close family friend.

Františka (Francka) Edelsteinová (1917-1944): Gideon’s girlfriend in Prague; medical student.

Hana Žantovská (1921-2004): Czech writer and translator, close family friend.

Irma Semecká (1916-?): Gideon’s girlfriend in Terezín.

Jan Fischer (1921-2011): actor; knew Gideon in Terezín.

Jan Hanuš (1915-2004): composer; knew Gideon in Prague.

Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986): Nobel Prize-winning Czechoslovak writer, poet and journalist.

Michael Beckerman: Musicologist with special interest in Gideon Klein; currently Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music, New York University.Otto Grünfeld (1924-2014): heard Gideon perform in Terezín.

Pavel Štěpán (1925-1998): pianist, knew Gideon in Prague; grandson of eminent piano pedagogue Vilém Kurz.

Petr Mayer (dates unknown): journalist; childhood friend of Gideon.

Ruth Elias (1922-2008): Terezín survivor.

Ruth Bondy (b.1923): Writer, translator and historian; Terezín survivor.

Steve Greenberg: USA-based rabbi; currently Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Diversity Project at CLAL – the National Jewish Centre for Learning and Leadership

Zdenka Fantlova (b.1922): Actress; knew Gideon in Terezín. Author of The Tin Ring; was on Gideon’s transport from Terezín to Auschwitz.

Zuzana Růžičková (b.1927): harpsichordist; took music theory lessons from Gideon in Terezín.

Wednesday 1 June, 7:30pmHoly Trinity Church, Leeds

GIDEON KLEIN: PORTRAIT OF A COMPOSER

Written and devised by David FliggTranslations by Hana Trojanová

Additional translations by Leeds Interpreting and Translation Services LtdMark France (director)

Lisa Peschel (dramaturge)Cassia String Quartet: Amy Welch, Tory Clarke, Laurie Dempsey, Joshua Lynch

With students from the Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York: Rachel Astall, Emma Whitworth, Angel Lloyd, Rory Oliver

Pre-concert chat: actress and playwright Vanessa Rosenthal hosts an audience with Terezín survivor Zdenka Fantlova, who knew Gideon Klein, and whose book The Tin Ring

chronicles her experiences in Terezín.

The MusicGideon Klein (1919-1945) - String Trio Gideon Klein - Duo for violin and cello

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) - String Quartet in G major K387 (movements 1 & 4)Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) - String Trio No. 1 (1st movement)

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) - String Quartet No.1, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ (1st movement)


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Programme NotesIn a photo album hidden away in the archives of the Jewish Museum Prague, there’s a black and white studio-photograph of Gideon Klein, showing him as a beautiful and chubby baby, perhaps six months old, looking delightfully happy and healthy. Move ahead to Gideon’s childhood, and in the same archive, there are fragments of unfinished, and juvenilia, compositions. Later, writing to the 18-year-old Gideon when he was on holiday in Italy, his mother ends her letter by saying that she hopes the “situation” won’t get any worse, as UK Prime Minister Chamberlain tries to broker a settlement between the Czechoslovak government and the Germans in the Sudetenland. That same archive is the repository of the final word we have of Gideon Klein, a smuggled-out letter from a slave-labour camp, written shortly before his murder. Geographically much closer to home, a Liverpool synagogue possesses a Torah scroll which the young Gideon might have read from for his Bar Mitzvah ceremony.

It’s easy to forget that archival documents can reveal a life story, and it’s all too convenient to fall into the trap of viewing archives exclusively as repositories for objective, hard-nosed academic research. One of the major challenges of my research into Gideon Klein, whose biography I am writing, is finding a balance between musicology, Holocaust/Jewish studies, genealogy, and memorialisation. With the dramatised account of Gideon’s life that will be performed this evening, you the audience will be able to judge for yourselves whether I’ve succeeded or not in using the archive responsibly and sensitively.

Parts of the script for tonight’s production have been compiled from personal interviews I undertook with people who remember him. Some of the source material is from personal testimony in private ownership which has been given to me, but which is not yet in the public domain. Other sources are from archival collections and other literature. A handful of actors take the parts of Gideon, his sister Lisa, friends and acquaintances. Four musicians perform his music as well as the music of composers who influenced him, and slides provide a second level of visual story-line. All of this to use diverse sources - co-texts - to illuminate the narrative.

Whilst Gideon Klein is remembered as one of a number of musicians who were imprisoned in, and who galvanised, the cultural environment of the Terezín (Theresienstadt) prison camp, a relatively small part of the script deals with his internment. In an attempt to win him back first and foremost as a Prague-based musician, rather than a Holocaust victim, I place a great deal of emphasis on his musical activities in that achingly beautiful city.

The venues and contexts for the 2016 performances will no doubt impact on how the script is realised and received. The premiere took place last month on Yom Ha’Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) at the Hillel Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin, the actors being Jewish students and staff at the university there. This evening’s performance will be prefaced by a pre-concert event where Zdenka Fantlova will recall her encounter with Gideon when she herself was

imprisoned in Terezín. In Prague in September, we’ll be performing at the Prague Conservatory where Gideon was a student. There, in a city which still has a number of Terezín survivors, the performance will, I’m sure, be especially meaningful.

The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, has said: “The best way of curing a victim is to help him cease to think of himself as a victim.” I can only hope that Gideon Klein: Portrait of a Composer can in some way help to ensure that the memory and legacy of this wonderful musician is not demeaned by his victimisation, but ennobled by his prodigious creativity.

Dr David Fligg (Project Consultant, Performing the Jewish Archive)

The Cassia QuartetThe Cassia String Quartet, formed in 2010, was born out of a passion for the string quartet repertoire. Recipients of the 2013 Musiciens Entre Guerre et Paix Award from the International Académie Ravel, they were also recently awarded the Musicales prize from the RNCM. They were finalists in the Trinity Laban Intercollegiate Competition and winners of the 2013 Nossek String Quartet Prize. The current resident string quartet with the Arts@Trinity programme in Leeds, the Cassia have given concerts as part of the Salisbury International Arts Festival, Lake District Summer Music, RNCM Chamber Music and Grassington festivals, as well as the Leeds International Concert Series.

Currently studying with Oliver Wille and Robin Ireland at Birmingham Conservatoire, they were previously mentored by Peter Cropper (Lindsay Quartet). Over the years they have also received coaching from the Endellion, Brodsky, Kuss, Henschel and Alban Berg Quartets, as well as Pavel Fischer, Christoph Richter and Susie Mészáros. They have performed in masterclasses with the Škampa Quartet, James Boyd, Levon Chilingirian and with Richard Ireland in conjunction with ChamberStudio. The quartet commissioned and premiered a quartet by the composer Aaron Parker and were honoured to play in the Wigmore Hall as part of the Simon Bainbridge Study Day. Other collaborations include working and performing alongside clarinettist Nicholas Cox, pianist Sally Halsey and the Ely Sinfonia. In addition to regular concerts across England, the Cassia enjoy taking on more mainstream projects and have collaborated with Joe Duddell to perform with the likes of Daughter, members of New Order, Chas Smash (Madness), Tim Burgess (The Charlatans) and Mancunian poet Mike Garry. As an ensemble the Cassia have led workshops as the resident string quartet for the South West Youth Orchestra and for the Lycée Maurice Ravel School (Saint Jean de Luz). They are also keen to support local projects, recently hosting an event to promote the restoration of Manchester’s Christ Church clock tower.

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Thursday 2 June, 6:00pm Holbeck Cinema, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York

RENEWING A LEGACY:THE JEWISH CULTURAL LEAGUE IN NAZI GERMANY

Pre-performance talk by Dr Rebecca RovitSponsored by Performing the Jewish Archive and the

University of York’s Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past

The Jewish Cultural League (Jüdischer Kulturbund) was established in 1933 after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. During the eight years of its existence, until it was ordered closed by the Gestapo in September 1941, it hired over 2000 artists, musicians, and actors who were no longer allowed to practice their professions in ‘Aryan’ institutions. In her talk Dr Rovit, author of The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin (2012), will explore the challenges of documenting and representing this difficult history.

Dr Rebecca Rovit Dr Rebecca Rovit is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Kansas. In her research she explores the cultural heritage of the Holocaust (1933-1945), including art produced by prisoner-artists in situ and the role of the performing arts under duress within Nazi Germany, and in ghetto and camp settings. Her micro-history, The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin, published in fall 2012 by Iowa University Press, was designated by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2013. Her numerous publications appear in such journals as American Theatre, PAJ, TDR, Theatre Survey, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and The Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is currently a Visiting Senior Associate at Oxford’s Pembroke College, and during the academic year 2016-17 she will be a Fulbright-IFK Senior Fellow in Cultural Studies in Vienna, Austria.

Thursday 2 June - Sunday 5 June, 7:30pmThe Black Box, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York

HARLEQUIN IN THE GHETTOFrom the University of York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television:

Directors: Mark France, Alan SikesDramaturge: Lisa Peschel

Script creators and performers: Audun Kruger Abrahamsen, Adam Bruce, Amilee Jobin, Ruby Sevink-Johnston, Kayleigh McCallion, Roberta Petraccone, Estela Williams Muyaes

Costume Designers: Ruby Sevink-Johnston, Roberta PetracconeLighting: Sean Byrne

Stage Manager: Nina HardingFrom York St John University’s Komedie Klub:

Simon Bedwell, Laura Castle, Beth Curtis, Georgie Fishkin, Tom Gardner, Sam Gray, Megan Hardcastle, Charlie Johnston, Alex Kaniewski, James Knight, Jack Lay-Flurrie, Bobbie Parrish,

David Richmond, Geneva Rust-Orta, Paige Slater, Imogen Sutherland

In the World War Two Jewish ghetto at Terezín, a young prisoner named Zdeněk Jelínek wrote a play in the commedia dell’arte style about a question of urgent interest to them all: would Harlequin, the lovable clown, escape the clutches of the Capitano? Jelínek perished in the Holocaust and his script, titled Comedy about a Trap, was thought lost until recently, when Dr Lisa Peschel located a copy saved by a survivor and preserved in the archives of a Czech theatre company. Now two groups of students, one at York St John University and the other at the University of York, have developed new, devised performances inspired by the preserved script. The performances will explore the political commitment of the young author, the environment of the ghetto, and a question for our own day: what are we to make of a comedy written during the Holocaust?


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Programme NotesIn November 1941 the Nazis established a Jewish ghetto in the historic fortress town of Terezín (in German, Theresienstadt), located 40 miles northwest of Prague. Terezín’s main function was as a transit camp: a place where the Jews of Central Europe (mainly the assimilated, Czech- and German-speaking Jewish communities in Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany) could be gathered before they were sent to death camps and slave labour camps further to the east. In order for Terezín to function smoothly as a transit camp, the Nazis maintained living conditions at a much less brutal level than in most other ghettos and camps, so that news that might escape the ghetto would not incite the Jews to resist the transports to Terezín. They also lied about the destination of the transports leaving Terezín. Most transports went to Auschwitz, but the prisoners were told that they were being sent to a labour camp, or to establish a new ghetto.

In these unusual conditions a stunningly active cultural life sprung up, initiated by the prisoners themselves. The first cabaret-type performances began in the barracks shortly after the ghetto was established in November 1941. The Jewish Council of Elders requested permission for such performances from the Nazi commandant, and permission was granted. Slowly, cultural activities proliferated - music, theatre, lectures. In the summer of 1944, Terezín itself became a stage. The Nazis had decided to let representatives of the Red Cross visit the ghetto, to try to convince them that news of concentration camps and gas chambers was only anti-German propaganda. They forced the prisoners to renovate a carefully prepared path through the ghetto for this visit, which took place in June of 1944. The cultural life did play a role in this propaganda stunt: the visitors stopped briefly at a concert and at a performance of the children’s opera Brundibár. But the vast majority of the performances were organized by the prisoners, for the prisoners.

According to documents preserved in the Terezín Memorial, the play Comedy about a Trap, by 22-year old Czech-Jewish prisoner Zdeněk Jelínek, was performed in December 1942. Inspired by his own belief in the ideals of Communism and by a play from the interwar period, The Fateful Game of Love (Lásky hra osudná) written in the commedia dell’arte style by renowned Czech playwrights Karel and Josef Čapek, he wrote a work of Communist agit-prop featuring traditional characters such as Capitano the braggart military officer and Pantalone the miser and adding a character from Czech folk tales, the imp Rarach, in the role of the Communist agitator. As survivor František Myška, who played the role of Pantalone in the ghetto, recalled, “it was, in a word, a play about how the SS and big capital would finally get it on the head.”

Both of Jelínek’s dreams were fulfilled: the Nazis were defeated and, in 1948, the Communists came to power in Czechoslovakia. He, however, did not live to see them. He was deported from Terezín to Auschwitz in October of 1944 and most likely murdered immediately upon arrival.

Dr Lisa Peschel(Co-Investigator, Performing the Jewish Archive)


Mark France is a director, teacher and researcher currently based at the University of York, where he has recently completed a PhD on Gregory Doran and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Directing credits include: The Revenger’s Tragedy (Well-fangled); Othello, Henry VI and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (York Shakespeare Project); Dead Man’s Shoes, Murder in the Cathedral, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and A Life in the Theatre (Mooted); Wealth, Anton’s Shorts, and A Yorkshire Tragedy (Icabod). He has assisted at Hull Truck, Harrogate Theatre, the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Theatre in the Mill in Bradford, and works widely as a workshop facilitator and youth theatre practitioner.

Dr David Richmond is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Senior Teaching Fellow at York St John University. He has worked as a performer, designer, deviser, director and writer for Clanjamfrie (Scotland), Collectif Organum (France), Theatre of Public Works (England), was a founding member of Pants Performance Association, and for the past 25 years has been collaborating with Jules Dorey Richmond. In his module Artist as Witness, students travel to Poland for a five-day study visit that includes an eight-hour day at Auschwitz and Birkenau, then spend a 14-week semester reflecting on the cultural, political and aesthetic repercussions of the event and creating a performance which reflects the times we live in.

Dr Alan Sikes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at Louisiana State University where he teaches theatre history and dramatic theory. He researches the role of theatre in the formation and contestation of class and gender identities; his monograph on this topic, Representation and Identity from Versailles to the Present: The Performing Subject, is published by Palgrave Press. He also has articles in the anthologies Querying Difference in Theatre History, Theatre Historiography: Critical Questions, and Public Theatres and Theatre Publics, as well as several theatre and performance journals.

Audience Filming NoticeAudiences at this event will be filmed. By attending this event, you consent to being filmed and the footage being used for a research study conducted by the University of York, including analysis by third party data analysis services. This footage will remain confidential, and your image will not be published or identified. If you do not wish to be filmed, the research team will seat you in an area of the auditorium which has no camera coverage. Please refer to notices at the event for further information.

Post-Performance EventsSpectators are invited to stay after the performance for a question-and-answer session with the artists. The Thursday and Sunday performances will be followed by a wine reception.

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Sunday 5 June, 3:00pm | Friday 10 June, 7:30pmClothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds | National Centre for Early Music, York

MAKE ONCE MORE MY HEART THY HOME: THE CHORAL MUSIC OF HANS GÁL

Clothworkers Consort of LeedsDirector: Bryan White

Pre-concert talk - 2:15pm (Leeds), 6:45pm (York): Eva Fox-Gál, daughter of Hans Gál, discusses her father’s love of choral music in conversation with

Dr Stephen Muir (in Leeds) and Professor Adam Gorb (in York).

Programme

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)Selig sind die Toten [Blessed are the dead], SWV391 (1648)

Johannes Brahms (1833-97)‘Schaffe in mir Gott’ [Create in me, God], from Zwei Motetten [Two motets], op.29, no.2 (1864)

Robert Schumann (1810-56)‘Gute Nacht’ [Good night], from Vier Gesänge [Four songs], op.59, no.4 (1846)

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)‘Die Harmonie in der Ehe’ [Harmony in marriage], from Aus des Ramlers Lyrischer Blumenlese [From Ramler’s Lyrical Harvest of Flowers], Hob.XXVc:2 (1796)

Hans Gál (1890-1987)‘Stilleben’ [Still Life], from Epigramme [Epigrams], op.27, no.1 (1926)

Hans GálMotette [Motet], op.19 (1924)

INTERVAL

Hans GálFour Madrigals for mixed voices, op.51 (1939)

i. ‘Youth and Cupid’ii. ‘True Love’iii. ‘A Cradle Song’iv. ‘Foolish Love’

Hans GálFour Partsongs for mixed voices, op.posth. (1939)

i. ‘To spring’ ii. ‘Madrigal’iii. ‘Hymn to Diana’ iv. ‘Invocation’


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Programme NotesHans Gál (1890-1987) was one of a generation of Austrian Jewish composers forced to flee when the Nazis invaded the country. No stranger to composing for the voice, he produced four operas, several solo songs, and some 27 works for choir, alongside a large amount of orchestral and instrumental music.

From an early stage, Gál immersed himself in the Austro-German classical tradition stemming from Bach, Schütz, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and similar composers. Dismissed by the Nazis from the directorship of the Mainz Conservatory in 1933, Gál and his family fled first to Austria, and finally in 1938 to London, moving to Edinburgh shortly after. After a period of internment as an ‘enemy alien’ on the Isle of Man during the Summer of 1940, Gál gradually became a regular Edinburgh musical figure, helping to establish the International Festival in 1947.

This programme celebrates Gál’s love of choral music (he founded the Vienna Madrigal Society in 1927), placing some of his own works amidst the music he most admired, music that had a profound influence upon him. Motette, op.19 was composed at a time of considerable success in 1920s Vienna. Drawing upon the revered tradition of motet writing, and his beloved Schütz’s music in particular, Gál fashioned a distinctive style of choral writing, exploiting the full range of available chromatic colourings whilst remaining essentially within the tonal idiom. As he wrote in an essay on ‘Vocal Chamber Music’ (1928):

‘A new vocal music is there to be created, music which, though born of the spirit of our time and using the newly acquired expressive possibilities, leads back to the long-buried sources of genuine vocal music, chamber music in the true sense of the word. […]’

But like another of his favourite composers, Haydn, Gál was also not averse to musical humour. Just as Haydn drew upon ironic and often irreverent texts in some of his part-songs, Gál also exploited the delightful witticisms of ‘Stilleben’ [Still life] by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (originally ‘Haushaltung’ [Housekeeping] from Kleinigkeiten [Little things], 1779). In this instance, perhaps Gál’s musical illustration of drunkenness and bickering is rather more cutting than Haydn’s portrayal of marital bliss in ‘Die Harmonie in der Ehe’. Gál’s settings of Lessing (there are five in total) were extremely popular at their premiere in the 1927 Krefeld Music Festival, eliciting such comments as ‘Irresistible humour!’ (Allgemeine Zeitung, Chemnitz) and ‘Lessing’s witty satire has found a congenial setting here, whose irony sparkles in all facets’ (Allgemeine Musikzeitung, Berlin).

Gál returned to choral music after settling in Edinburgh, often looking to the English madrigalists for inspiration. Yet, as seen in the Four Madrigals to Elizabethan Poems, op.51 and the posthumously published Four Partsongs for mixed voices, whilst hinting in places at contemporaries such as Michael Tippett, Gál’s musical language is tinged with the hues of his most admired compositional models, composers like Schumann and Brahms, producing richly coloured yet ultimately transparently clear settings of classic texts by the likes of Shakespeare, Blake, Shelley, Jonson and Queen Elizabeth I.

Dr Stephen Muir(Principal Investigator, Performing the Jewish Archive)

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Clothworkers Consort of Leeds

The Clothworkers Consort of Leeds (CCL) was formed in 2001 (originally as Leeds University Liturgical Choir) as a chamber choir which included the performance of sacred choral music in liturgical settings as one of its important aims. Since that time, it has developed into one of the finest choral ensembles in the north of England.

The choir performs at services and gives concerts; it has also collaborated with professional ensembles including Fretwork, QuintEssential Sackbut and Cornett Ensemble, Skipton Building Society Camerata and Leeds Baroque Orchestra. The choir has performed in prestigious venues throughout the UK (St. Paul’s London, York Minster, Bath Abbey, Shrewsbury Abbey, Bristol, Chichester, Durham, Ely, Leeds, Lichfield, Lincoln, Salisbury, Truro, Wakefield, Wells, and Worcester Cathedrals, the Howard Assembly Room), and has participated in the Beverly Early Music Festival and the Pennine Spring Music Festival. It has toured abroad to Prague, Czech Republic (2005), Rhineland, Germany (2007) Mantua, Italy (2009), Krakow, Poland (2005 & 2011) and Budapest, Hungary (2013).

The choir has recorded three CDs: Songs of Praise: Music from the West Riding (2004), Vox Dei (2006), and No Man is an Island (2008). In 2009 the choir staged performances of Dido and Aeneas at Temple Newsam House and joined with Rambert Dance Company and London Musici for performances of Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light at The Grand Theatre in Leeds. The choir appeared on Corinne Bailey Rae’s second album, The Sea (2010), and recorded the title music (by Stephen Kilpatrick) for Michelle Lipton’s play Amazing Grace, broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour in 2010.

In 2013 CCL celebrated the Britten centenary with performances of A Hymn to St Cecilia and A Boy was Born. In 2014 it performed for the second time at the International Medieval Congress, and in 2015 it joined the Skipton Building Society Camerata for the first modern performance of Philip Hayes’s The Judgment of Hermes (1783).

Bryan White

Bryan White took his undergraduate degree at Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX), where he studied choral conducting with Lloyd Pfautsch and Barbara Brinson. He completed a PhD at the University of Wales, Bangor and is now Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds. He is a member of the Purcell Society, and his research focuses on English music of the Restoration period. Bryan has performed as a baritone soloist in the United States and in Great Britain, and at Leeds he is a member of the Leeds Baroque Choir. He works regularly with the University of Leeds School of Music Chorus with which he has prepared works including Tippett’s Child of our Time, Elgar’s Caractacus, Parry’s The Lotus-Eaters and Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgis Nacht.

He has worked as chorus master in the revivals of several neglected operas including productions of Louis Spohr’s Pietro von Abano and Salieri’s Les Danaïdes. In March 2015 he directed the School of Music Chorus in James Macmillan’s Cantos Sagrdos and Gerald Finzi’s Lo, the full final sacrifice at Leeds Town Hall. Other recent notable performances include two with the School of Music Chorus: a cappella music by Finnish composers including Sibelius, Rautavaara and Mäntyjärvi and William Mathias’ Ceremony After a Fire Raid for choir, percussion and piano, paired with Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G.

Clothworkers Consort of Leedsdirected by Bryan White

Sopranos: Lisa Beare, Venetia Bridges, Libby Clark, Hannah Peace, Philippa Ridgway, Nicki Sapiro

Altos: Esther Colman, Catherine Haworth, Anna King, Milette Riis, Rachel Wallace

Tenors: Stephen Muir, Chris Pelly, Martin Wallace, Frank Wong

Basses: Daniel Barnett, Duncan Boutwood, Simon Pratt, Fred Savage, Robert Upton

Wednesday 8 June, 7:15pmHoward Assembly Room, Leeds

THE NASH ENSEMBLE: MUSIC IN THE TEREZÍN GHETTO

The Nash Ensemble: Ian Brown (piano) Philippa Davies (flute) Richard Hosford (clarinet) Laura Samuel (violin) Michael Gurevich (violin) James Boyd (viola) Adrian Brendel (cello)

Amelia Freedman CBE – Artistic Director

Pre-concert talk - 6:15pm: ‘Creativity in Adversity’ Dr David Fligg reflects on the curious story of how and why music flourished in the Terezín ghetto.

ProgrammeBedřich Smetana (1824-84), arr. David Matthews*Overture to The Bartered Bride (1866/rev.1870)

Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944)String Quartet No 3 (Terezín, 1943)

Allegro moderato - Presto - Largo - Allegro vivace e ritmico

Hans Krása (1899-1944) Passacaglia & Fugue; Tanec [Dance] for string trio (Terezín, 1944)

Passacaglia: Sehr ruhigFugue: Allegro molto

INTERVAL

Egon Ledeč (1889-1944)Gavotte for string quartet

Gideon Klein (1919-45) String Trio (Terezín, 1944)

AllegroVariations on a Moravian Folksong: LentoMolto vivace

Hans Krása (1899-1944), arr. David Matthews*Instrumental Suite from the children’s opera Brundibár (1938) for piano, flute, clarinet, and string quartet

Allegro energicoMarcia giocosoValse: Lento cantabileAllegro vivaceSerenadaLentoModerato tranquilloAllegro moderato all Marcia

* commissioned by the Nash Ensemble


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Programme NotesAmong the first arrivals of young Jewish men tasked with converting the Bohemian garrison town of Terezín (Theresienstadt in German) into a Nazi transit ghetto was Gideon Klein, one of the composers featured in this evening’s performance. Klein, along with composers such as Hans Krása, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Zikmund Schul, continued writing and performing music in the ghetto despite appalling conditions, sustaining a cultural and social life that allowed the detainees, to a certain degree at any rate, to preserve their dignity.

Among the most popular and significant works performed in Terezín was Smetana’s seminal folk tale of Bohemian village life and love, Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride). An emblem of Czech national identity and optimism, the opera received around 35 performances from November 1842 under the baton of conductor Raphael Schächter. The rousing overture is performed this evening in David Matthews’ arrangement commissioned in 2010 by The Nash Ensemble.

Born in Moravian Silesia, Viktor Ullmann grew up in Vienna, studying with Arnold Schoenberg, before moving to Prague in 1919 to assist Alexander Zemlinsky at the New German Opera. Ullmann’s first two string quartets (1923 and 1936) enjoyed some success, the second receiving a London performance in 1938, but they are now lost. Along with the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, three piano sonatas, and a number of songs, the third quartet was composed in Terezín. It proceeds along broadly classical lines, though the four movements flow without break to create a single-movement work of balance and concision.

Ullmann’s near contemporary Hans Krása was born into a prosperous family in Prague, and like Ullmann worked and studied with Zemlinsky at Prague’s New German Theatre. Whilst his early works were characterised by a complex cosmopolitan style, he later adopted a more distinctly melodic, Czech style; as he put it himself in 1938, ‘I am sufficiently daring, as a modern composer, to write melodic music.’

Krása titled his first string trio Tanec (Dance), but it seems a dance not of joy but of menace. The sound-world of trains

is evoked right from the opening cello ostinato, and the piece moves through nostalgia, veiled threat, and outright violence, the main violin dance theme finally descending into frenzy at the conclusion.

Written the same year, Krása’s final completed work, Passacaglia and Fugue, draws on the dance theme of Tanec, alongside a passacaglia theme that is initially austerely beautiful, but increasingly disturbed. In both movements the composer deconstructs two revered musical structures, and both the Fugue and the Passacaglia degenerate ultimately into violence and structural failure. Towards the end, the Tanec theme is again heard from the violin and viola, before the work plunges to a terrifying conclusion.

Less well-known than the other composers in this evening’s concert is Czech violinist and composer Egon Ledeč. A graduate of the Prague Conservatory, Ledeč joined the Czech Philharmonic in 1908. He eventually became the orchestra’s associate concertmaster in 1926, a post he held until the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He was an active performer in Terezín, forming the ghetto’s first chamber ensemble and later the Ledeč Quartet. He continued to compose in the ghetto; sadly, the Gavotte for String Quartet is his only surviving work from Terezín.

Krása’s famous children’s opera, Brundibár (Bumblebee), was first performed in concert in a Prague Jewish Orphanage in early 1942, by which time the composer was already in Terezín. Krása re-orchestrated it for thirteen instruments in the ghetto, where it was performed 55 times. The opera tells of two children, Aninka and Pepicvek, searching for milk for their sick mother. Lacking money, and persecuted by the organ-grinder Brundibár, they are assisted by a sparrow, a cat and a dog (piccolo, legato violin and clarinet in Krása’s score). A lullaby and victory march ensue when the children finally achieve their goal. Czech composer Petr Pokorný (1932-2008) devised this suite in 1995 (an orchestral concert overture, Hommage à Brundibár, followed in 1999); The Nash Ensemble commissioned British composer David Matthews (b.1943) to create this small ensemble version in 2010-11.

Simon Broughton, Dr Stephen Muir

Colour-coded plan of the Terezín Ghetto, 1944

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Ian Brown (piano) Philippa Davies (flute)

Richard Hosford (clarinet) Laura Samuel (violin)

Nash Ensemble“The Nash are chamber music royalty.”The Sunday Times

The Nash Ensemble, Resident Chamber Ensemble at Wigmore Hall since 2010, is acclaimed for its adventurous programming and virtuoso performances. It presents works from Haydn to the avant-garde, and is a major contributor towards the recognition and promotion of contemporary composers: by the end of the 2016/17 season the group will have premiered over 300 new works, of which 198 have been specially commissioned.

An impressive collection of recordings illustrates the same varied and colourful combination of classical masterpieces, little-known neglected gems and important contemporary works. Recent releases include a CD of Hollywood composers for Hyperion and Harrison Birtwistle’s The Moth Requiem for Signum Classics. Future releases include an NMC CD recorded live at the 50th Anniversary ‘Nash Inventions’ concert in March 2015, and a Max Bruch chamber music CD for Hyperion.

The Ensemble’s 2016/17 season at Wigmore Hall, entitled Vienna and its Empire, combines the music of Vienna from the ‘Viennese Classical school’ of Haydn and Mozart to Mahler and the ‘second Viennese school’ of Schoenberg and his pupils, with music from Hungary and the Czech Lands including works by Dvorak, Janacek, Bartók, Dohnanyi and Liszt. The Nash Inventions concert in March 2017 will include premiè res by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Simon Holt and Colin Matthews, as well as recent premiè res by Julian Anderson and Huw Watkins. There will also be collaborations with students at the Royal Academy of Music and the Wigmore Learning department.

Recent highlights have included concerts in Turkey, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, as well as a residency at the Great Lakes Festival, USA. The Ensemble broadcasts regularly for the BBC including Radio 3 and appearances at the BBC Proms.

The Nash Ensemble has won numerous accolades including The Edinburgh Festival Critics award ‘for general artistic excellence’ and two Royal Philharmonic Society awards in the chamber music category “for the breadth of its taste and its immaculate performance of a wide range of music.”


Michael Gurevich (violin) James Boyd (viola)

Adrian Brendel (cello)

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The Nash Ensemble

Thursday 9 June, 7:30pmLeft Bank Leeds

MOTHER RACHEL AND HER CHILDREN: A REDISCOVERED ORATORIO

Text by Jac Weinstein (1883-1976)

English translations: Simo Muir, adapted by Scott Hurley

Introductory remarks: Simo MuirTalk-back following the performance with Helen Finch


Leeds University Union Music Society Chamber Choir, Conductor: Milette Tseilon-Riis

United Hebrew Congregation Choir, Leeds, Conductor: Phil Cammerman

Shofar: Jonathan Lewis

Cantor: Chazan Albert Chait

Violin: Lauren Hinds

Director: Sophie Paterson

Musical Consultant: Stephen Muir

Sound Designer: Mark Rogers

Paintings: Ivan Bukovský

Cast:Narrator: Amy WardRachel: Kayleigh McCallionChild: Estela Williams MuyaesElderly Woman: Estela Williams MuyaesMother: Kayleigh McCallion

Choral music included in the oratorio:

Louis Lewandowski (1821-1894) Eykho from the Book of Lamentations

Louis Lewandowski, Jac Weinstein (1883-1976) Eli Tsioyn

Louis Lewandowski, arr. Stephen MuirKol nidrey

arr. Samuel RubinsteinFun Shpanyen

arr. Simon Parmet (1897-1969)Unter dem kinds vigele

Simon Parmet, Jacob K. Sandler (1860-1931) Eyli, Eyli

Moshe Stern, arr. Raymond Goldstein Eyl mole rakhamin

Ernst Gold, arr. Simon Parmet Exodus

Louis Lewandowski, arr. Simon Parmet Haleluyo (Psalm 150)

Samuel Cohen, arr. Samuel Rubinstein, N.H. Imber Hatikvo

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Leeds University Union Chamber ChoirSopranos: Emily Higgins, Clara Coslett, Niamh Quinlivan, Verity Hawley, Hannah Peace Altos: Joanna Sneller, Olivia Little, Mared Williams, Anna King, Bill Fox-RobertsTenors: Alex Parker, Joslan Scherewode, Nitish Shah, Peter LawBasses: Connor Marston, Ben Palmer, John Lyon

Milette Tseilon-Riis is currently studying for a PhD in Maths, having studied for an MMath at Leeds with a year abroad in Copenhagen. Although she originally learnt Suzuki piano, she has developed a love for choral singing over the past six years. She has sung in a wide variety of choirs, including The Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, LUUMS Chamber Choir, and various church choirs in Oxford, Leeds and Copenhagen. She also formed a female barbershop quartet. She has attended a choral conducting course in Sarteano, Italy, and a women’s conducting workshop organized by Morley College. In her free time she enjoys drawing, dancing, and playing board games.


Programme NotesMother Rachel and Her Children (Muter Rokhl un ire kinder) is a long-lost commemorative oratorio (choral tableau) from Finland written originally in Yiddish in 1948 by Helsinki-born Jac Weinstein (1883-1976). The piece takes the viewer on a journey of scenes from the two thousand years of suffering of the Jewish people that culminates in the death camps of the Third Reich. Yet, the journey ends in messianic panoramas for a glorious future and an exhortation by the narrator to ‘Go forward and don’t look back!’

Weinstein’s Mother Rachel is structured around biblical texts about the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the image of Mother Rachel weeping for an end to her children’s suffering and exile following the destruction.

The music of the oratorio ranges from classic Jewish cantorial repertoire to Yiddish folksongs. A central piece in the oratorio called Eyli, Eyli (My God, my God) and many of the choir arrangements are by Helsinki-born composer and conductor Simon Parmet (1897-1969), who is known for working with Berthold Brecht in 1940 on music for his wartime drama Mother Courage and Her Children.

Weinstein’s Mother Rachel is a rare piece of early Holocaust remembrance from a country that was de facto allied with Nazi Germany (1941-1944), but whose indigenous Jewish community remained intact and took part in the war efforts against the Soviet Union with other Finnish citizens. The piece surfaced in 2005 when Dr Simo Muir was doing an inventory of material found in a cellar in Helsinki.

Mother Rachel is performed against a backdrop of paintings created by Czech visual artist, Ivan Bukovský, the son of a survivor of the Theresienstadt (Terezín) Ghetto. Born in Prague in 1949, Bukovský is the winner of multiple European prizes, and his works can be found in public and private collections in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Russia, Italy, South Korea, the United States, and Israel. http://www.ivanbukovsky.cz/

Dr Simo Muir(Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Performing the Jewish Archive)

Ivan Bukovský: Still Life with a DollLeft Bank Leeds

Ivan Bukovský: Fall

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Programme NotesA concert of music emphasising renewal and (re)discovery, with four composers who were caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust. The composers to be presented are Josima Feldschuh, James Simon, Paul Ben-Haim and Hans Gál, artists of differing backgrounds and denouements whose common linkage was their victimisation during the Holocaust.

The poignant story of Josima Feldschuh is one of potential not permitted to develop. A prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, she composed a small number of promising solo piano works before going into hiding, and dying of tuberculosis at the age of 12. Now just being rediscovered, the richly Romantic music of Berlin-born James Simon is far removed from any connection with twentieth century developments. Simon was to eventually perish in Auschwitz.

In contrast Paul Ben-Haim is one of a number of émigré composers. He managed to flee Germany, and became one of Israel’s leading composers, with a music which blends Western and the Middle Eastern idioms. Austrian-born Hans Gál found sanctuary in the UK, his considerable body of music is now enjoying a welcome return to the concert repertoire.

Phillip Silver

Tuesday 14 June, 7:30pm | Wednesday 15 June, 1:00pmHoly Trinity Church, Leeds | All Saints Pavement, York

FRACTURED LIVES: MUSIC OF THE HOLOCAUSTNoreen Silver (cello) Phillip Silver (piano)


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Josima Feldschuh

Programme

Josima Feldschuh:Mazurek, no.VI, op.10Sabbathiada, no.1, op.14Sabbathiada, no.2, op.15Sonata, op.17

James Simon:Arioso für Violoncell allein*Sonata in D Major for cello and piano, op.9

i. Allegroii. Allegretto grazioso quasi Minuettoiii. Poco Adagio (attacca)iv. Allegro ma non troppo

Paul Ben-Haim:Three Songs Without Words

i. Arioso (Molto moderato)ii. Ballade (Allegretto)iii. Sephardic Melody (Largamente rubato e molto appassionato)

Hans Gál:Suite for cello and piano, op.6

i. Präludium (Lento, un poco rubato)ii. Burleske (Vivace, ma non troppo presto)*iii. Arie (Andante sostenuto)*iv. Capriccio (Allegro un poco sostenuto)

*Tuesday 14 June performance only

Phillip Silver Philip Silver is an internationally acclaimed solo and collaborative artist. The Frankfurter Rundschau described his playing as “virtuosic,” Haaretz commented upon his “...superb technical ability that enthralled the audience with melody, lyricism and poetry,” while the Boston Globe called him “an international collaborative pianist of the first rank,” and the Jerusalem Post described him as “a superb accompanist whose work is marked by sensitivity, felicity of style and an inborn musicianship which unerringly directs him to the most appropriate musical gesture.” A recent performance reviewed on nytheatreguide.com noted that “Silver’s playing soared past the chandeliers to impossible heights of human excellence.”

Phillip has performed in many of the world’s leading concert halls including the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall in London, the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, Scotland, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Germany, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and the Henry Crown Theater in Jerusalem.

Over the course of his career he has performed with many distinguished artists including Denes Zsigmondy, Jian Wang, Elmar Oliveira, Albert Markov and Alexander Markov. Phillip has also been a member of the Van Leer Chamber Players in Jerusalem, the Rachmaninov Trio in the UK, and the Silver Duo, a long established ensemble with his wife, cellist Noreen Silver.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Phillip studied with Katja Andy and Leonard Shure at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he earned the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Music cum laude. He also earned the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Washington for hisresearch into the music of Ignaz Moscheles.

Along with a significant number of performances, recordings and broadcasts for national radio in the United States, Britain, Israel, Europe and Scandinavia, Phillip recorded several Compact Discs for the Koch/Schwann label. These include a recital of German Romantic Lieder with the Israeli soprano Cilla Grossmeyer, and a recording of 20th century Russian piano trios as a member of the UK based Rachmaninov Trio. A world premiere recording of music by an Italian-Jewish victim of the Nazis, Leone Sinigaglia, was released on the Toccata Classics label in Spring 2010. Participants included cellist, Noreen Silver and violinist, SolomiaSoroka.

Phillip’s most recent recording, a CD of music by the German-Jewish composer Bernhard Sekles was released on the Toccata Classics label in London. Maria Nockin reviewing this recording in Fanfare magazine commented upon the “brilliantly played fireworks from the pianist” while Steve Arloff writing in MusicWeb International described it as “a really valuable discovery” marked by “flawless playing.”... “thoroughly deserving to be heard by every chamber music lover.”

For over a decade Phillip Silver has, in addition to his international performing career, carried out research on music and musicians caught up in the Holocaust. He has presented his research in the form of commercial recordings, lectures and recitals on both national and international stages including venues in Israel, Germany, the Czech Republic, the United States and the United Kingdom. Phillip also promotes the music of Israeli composers and, through performances and lectures, actively works to bring this music before a wider international public. As a member of the Jerusalem based Van Leer Trio, Phillip was a recipient of a prestigious award for best performance of an original Israeli chamber composition.

Phillip Silver has been on the faculties of Glasgow University, Strathclyde University, and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland. He is currently a Professor of Music at the School of Performing Arts at the University of Maine.

Noreen SilverNoreen Silver was born and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. As a teenager she was a member of the prestigious National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Cello studies followed at London’s Royal College of Music and Boston’s New England Conservatory, as well as inspirational work with world renowned cellists Pierre Fournier, Jacqueline du Pré, and William Pleeth. Further study, with Laurence Lesser, followed at Boston’s New England Conservatory as the recipient of a Rotary International Fellowship.

Noreen’s professional experience includes several years in Seattle’s Northwest Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Opera, Boston Opera, London’s BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. She is now principal cellist of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra (USA), and has appeared as soloist with the orchestra on several occasions.

In 1999 Noreen joined the University of Maine adjunct faculty, teaching cello and chamber music. In a recent project spanning three years, she performed the six Suites for Solo Cello by JS Bach, at the School of Performing Arts. She is an avid chamber music player, and a dedicated teacher.

Most of Noreen’s career has been centered around the Silver Duowith pianist husband Phillip Silver. Together they have performed in Israel, Germany, USA and UK, and have broadcast on national radio stations in many European countries. Noreen has been described as “an extraordinarily soulful player” who “demonstrates an uncommon depth of feeling and imagination.” (The Glasgow Herald).

Along with Phillip, Noreen Silver has appeared in performances at the Rafael Schachter Summer Institute, in Washington DC (2014), and Prague (2015). Next season she will be featured as cello soloist with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in Haydn’s C major Concerto.


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Thursday 16 June, 7:30pm | Saturday 18 June, 7:30pmNational Centre for Early Music, York | Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds

NEW BUDAPEST ORPHEUM SOCIETYThe New Budapest Orpheum Society draws upon a wide range of repertoires, many forgotten, others preserved in European archives, all poignantly bearing witness to the great tradition of Jewish cabaret. This evening they perform works from their own extensive repertoire, plus works recently rediscovered by Performing the Jewish Archive researchers, including Czech and German-language songs from the Terezín ghetto, Yiddish-language songs written by cabaret artist Jac Weinstein in wartime Helsinki, and art-song settings of Yiddish folk songs composed by Wilhelm Grosz in interwar Germany.

Programme NotesThe songs from Dr Simo Muir’s research came to light in 2005 when he was creating an inventory of a forgotten archive in a Helsinki cellar. Two, by Helsinki-born Jac Weinstein, are from a Yiddish-language musical sketch about Jewish life on the home front, A comedy of us Jews (A komedye vegn undz yidelekh, 1940). Piste-kuplet, sung to the melody of a Russian cabaret song, satirises the suffering of Jewish clothing merchants during wartime rationing. The sketch includes an adaptation of the American song Oh Joseph, Joseph that became extremely popular in Finland in 1939. In Weinstein’s comedy it is sung by the main protagonist, clothing merchant Joseph Kleiderman and his jealous wife Khane, who accuses him of flirting with customers. The third song, Dark is the Night, also in Yiddish by Weinstein, comes from a Jewish soldier’s point of view. During World War II, Finnish Jews fought in the Finnish army, meaning that from 1941 to 1944 they became brothers-in-arms with Nazi German soldiers against the Soviet Union. The melody of the song is from a Soviet film and became popular in Finland after the armistice with the Soviet Union in autumn 1944. The song was most likely part of a play or a cabaret evening.

The songs from Dr Lisa Peschel’s research were originally performed in the World War II Jewish ghetto known in Czech as Terezín and in German as Theresienstadt, about 40 miles northwest of Prague, site of a thriving cultural life. The first and last songs are from a Czech-language revue called Prince Bettliegend, roughly translated as ‘the Prince who could not get out of bed,’ which satirised life in the ghetto. Most of the Terezín lyrics, written by prisoner František Kovanic, are set to jaunty tunes from the interwar period composed by Jaroslav Ježek, legendary composer for Prague’s Liberated Theatre. The first song, My Suitcase and Me is uncharacteristically melancholy, but the third, the Final Song, rings with the hope that, if the prisoners can hold out just a bit longer, surely the war will end soon. The second song, The Cow, is set to the melody of a well-known Viennese cabaret number with music by A. M. Wernau, but with Terezín-specific lyrics by German-speaking cabaret artist Hans Hofer. He traces the entire food supply chain of Terezín to provide a darkly humorous look at corruption both inside and outside the ghetto.

The songs from Dr Joseph Toltz’s research are from an incomplete song cycle Ostjüdische Volkslieder, held in the private family archive of Wilhelm Grosz. The cycle may be the first art-song settings of Yiddish folk songs by a German-language composer. To the west, Maurice Ravel had already finished a commission of Hebrew and Yiddish settings in 1914 (Deux mélodies Hébraïques); in the east, the St Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music transformed folk songs into art-song, even full orchestral settings. What inspired a native-born Viennese to explore Yiddish in art-song format? Grosz was at the height of personal popularity and renown in 1926. His early works were acclaimed by the critic Julius Korngold, winning prizes and premieres by the Vienna Philharmonic. By 1923 he was emboldened to integrate jazz rhythms, idioms and harmonies into concert repertoire. Taking the melodies from Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann’s 1920 collection from a mostly Eastern Galician folk tradition (reflected in the pronunciation guide), Grosz no doubt saw potential in the simple, often amusing Yiddish lider for grotesque, jazzy, cabaret-style piano settings. However, we have no evidence that these were performed - perhaps rising Antisemitism was enough for him to quietly stow them away in a drawer, for some time in the future.

Dr Simo Muir, Dr Lisa Peschel, Dr Joseph Toltz(Performing the Jewish Archive)


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I - OVERTUREDie koschere mischpoche! [The Kosher Family], Viennese Broadside

II - FOOTLIGHTS BETWEEN THE YIDDISH STAGE AND SCREENIkh zing [I Sing], Abraham Ellstein and Molly Picon (from the film, Mamele, 1938)

Dos pintele Yid [The Quintessential Jew], Arnold Perlmutter, Herman Wohl, and Louis Gilrod

Erlekh zayn [Be Virtuous], Boris Thomashefsky and Philip Laskowsy (from Bar Mitzvah, 1935)

III - CABARET STORIES FROM CHICAGO, TEREZÍN, AND VIENNAWir Ladies aus Amerika [We Ladies from America] (from Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago [The Duchess of Chicago], 1928)

Theresienstadt Potpourri - Aus der Familie der Sträusse [From the Strauss Family], Leo Strauss; piano concept Ilya Levinson

Tomorrow, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Margaret Kennedy (from The Constant Nymph, 1943)

IV - FROM THE CELLARS OF HELSINKI - SOJOURNERS IN STRUGGLEThree songs from the research of Dr Simo Muir:

Yosef, Yosef [Joseph, Joseph], Nellie Casman and Samuel Steinberg; Lyrics by Jac Weinstein

Piste Couplet [Couplet of the Ration Card], Lyrics by Jac Weinstein, as sung to “Rivotshka”

Tif iz di Nakht [Dark Is the Night], Nikita Bogoslovski; Lyrics by Jac Weinstein

V - THERESIENSTADT/TEREZÍN - WITNESS TO THE ENDThree songs from the research of Dr Lisa Peschel, Lyrics by František Kovanic and Hans Hofer:

Kufr a já [The Suitcase and Me] (from Prinz Bettliegend), František Kovanic and Jaroslav Ježek

Die Kuh [The Cow] (from Von was leben die Leut’ [What People Live from]), Hans Hofer and A. M. Werau

The Final Song from Prinz Bettliegend, František Kovanic and Jaroslav Ježek

INTERVAL

VI - YIDDISH SONG BETWEEN EAST AND WESTFour songs from the research of Dr Joseph Toltz:

Melodies from Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann’s Die schönsten Lieder der Ostjuden (1920), arranged by Wilhelm Grosz:

Unzer Rebenyu [Our Rebbe]

Gevalzhe Brider [Goodness Me, Brothers]

Zitsen zitsen ziben Vayber [Seven Wives Are Sitting Down]

Ikh bin a Bal-egole [I Am a Wagoner]

VII - HOLLYWOOD ELEGYFive Elegies from the Hollywooder Liederbuch [Hollywood Songbook] (1942-43), Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht:

Unter den grünen Pfefferbäumen [Under the Green Pepper Trees]

Die Stadt ist nach den Engeln genannt [The City Is Named after the Angels]

Jeden Morgen, mein Brot zu verdienen [In Order to Earn My Daily Bread Each Morning]

Diese Stadt hat mich belehrt [This City Taught Me]

In den Hügeln wird Gold gefunden [Gold Is Found in the Hills]

L’automne californien [Autumn in California], Hanns Eisler and Berthold Viertel (from the Hollywood Songbook)

VIII - HERMANN LEOPOLDI - PRAGUE, NEW YORK CITY, THE WORLD BEYONDDie Novaks aus Prague [The Novaks from Prague], Hermann Leopoldi and Kurt Robitschek

Composers’ Revolution in Heaven, Hermann Leopoldi and Robert Gilbert

I bin a stiller Zecher . . . ! [I’m a Quiet Boozer . . . !], Hermann Leopoldi; Salpeter (Karl Pollach); Berndt-Hofer

IX - LIGHT AND DARKNESSThree Songs by Friedrich Holländer from Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948):

Black MarketIllusionsThe Ruins of Berlin

SOME FOR LAUGHS, SOME FOR TEARS:JEWISH CABARET FROM EUROPE AND BEYONDThursday 16 June | National Centre for Early Music, York

Pre-concert talk - 6.45pm: ‘From archive to stage: a Cabaret revival’. New Budapest Orpheum Society’s Philip Bohlman and Ilya Levinson join ‘Out of the Shadows’ researchers Lisa Peschel, Simo Muir and Joseph Toltz.

Programme

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I - OVERTUREDie koschere mischpoche! [The Kosher Family], Viennese Broadside

II - FIN-DE-SIÈCLE BERLINGigerlette, Arnold Schoenberg and Otto Julius BirnbaumMahnung, Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Hochstetter

III - FOOTLIGHTS BETWEEN THE YIDDISH STAGE AND SCREENIkh zing [I Sing], Abraham Ellstein and Molly Picon (from the film, Mamele, 1938)

Dos pintele Yid [The Quintessential Jew], Arnold Perlmutter, Herman Wohl, and Louis Gilrod

Erlekh zayn [Be Virtuous], Boris Thomashefsky and Philip Laskowsy (from Bar Mitzvah, 1935)

IV - CABARET STORIES FROM CHICAGO, TEREZÍN, AND VIENNAWir Ladies aus Amerika [We Ladies from America], (from Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago [The Duchess of Chicago], 1928)

Theresienstadt Potpourri - Aus der Familie der Sträusse [From the Strauss Family], Leo Strauss; piano concept Ilya Levinson

Tomorrow, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Margaret Kennedy (from The Constant Nymph, 1943)

V - FROM THE CELLARS OF HELSINKI - SOJOURNERS IN STRUGGLEThree songs from the research of Dr Simo Muir:

Yosef, Yosef [Joseph, Joseph], Nellie Casman and Samuel Steinberg; Lyrics by Jac Weinstein

Piste Couplet [Couplet of the Ration Card], Lyrics by Jac Weinstein, as sung to “Rivotshka”

Tif iz di Nakht [Dark Is the Night], Nikita Bogoslovski; Lyrics by Jac Weinstein

INTERVAL

VI - THERESIENSTADT/TEREZÍN - WITNESS TO THE ENDThree songs from the research of Dr Lisa Peschel, Lyrics by František Kovanic and Hans Hofer:

Kufr a já [The Suitcase and Me] (from Prinz Bettliegend), František Kovanic and Jaroslav Ježek

Die Kuh [The Cow] (from Von was leben die Leut’ [What People Live from], Hans Hofer and A. M. Werau

The Final Song from Prinz Bettliegend, František Kovanic and Jaroslav Ježek

VII - YIDDISH SONG BETWEEN EAST AND WESTFour songs from the research of Dr Joseph Toltz:

Melodies from Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann’s Die schönsten Lieder der Ostjuden (1920), arranged by Wilhelm Grosz:

Unzer Rebenyu [Our Rebbe]

Gevalzhe Brider [Goodness Me, Brothers]

Zitsen zitsen ziben Vayber [Seven Wives Are Sitting Down]

Ikh bin a Bal-egole [I Am a Wagoner]

VIII - LIGHT AND DARKNESSThree Songs by Friedrich Holländer from Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948):

Black MarketIllusionsThe Ruins of Berlin

IX - HERMANN LEOPOLDI - PRAGUE, NEW YORK CITY, THE WORLD BEYONDDie Novaks aus Prague [The Novaks from Prague], Hermann Leopoldi and Kurt Robitschek

Composers’ Revolution in Heaven, Hermann Leopoldi and Robert Gilbert

I bin a stiller Zecher . . . ! [I’m a Quiet Boozer . . . !], Hermann Leopoldi; Salpeter (Karl Pollach); Berndt-Hofer

FROM HELSINKI TO THERESIENSTADT:JEWISH CABARET SONGS FROM EUROPE AND BEYONDSaturday 18 June | Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds

Pre-concert talk - 6.45pm: ‘From archive to stage: a Cabaret revival’. New Budapest Orpheum Society’s Philip Bohlman and Ilya Levinson join ‘Out of the Shadows’ researchers Lisa Peschel, Simo Muir and Joseph Toltz.

Programme

The New Budapest Orpheum SocietyThe New Budapest Orpheum Society is an Ensemble-in-Residence in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago. The self-styled Jewish cabaret was founded in 1998, and its eight members perform locally in Chicago synagogues, universities, and cultural institutions, and the ensemble tours widely, performing at Symphony Space and the Café Sabarsky in New York City, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, as well as internationally in venues such as the Jewish Museum of Berlin and the European Center for Jewish Music in Hanover, Germany. The ensemble will tour the United Kingdom in the early summer. Its programs celebrate modern Jewish life and twentieth-century Jewish popular and political music, as well as commemorating the tragedies and triumphs of twentieth-century Jewish history. In 2011, Artistic Director, Phil Bohlman, and the NBOS were the recipients of the Noah Greenwood Award for Historical Performance from the American Musicological Society, and in 2016 they received a Grammy Award Nomination for “Best Classical Compendium.” The ensemble has released four CDs: Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (Cedille Records 2002), Jewish Cabaret in Exile (Cedille Records 2009), Moments musicaux of Jewish Music (University of Chicago Press 2008), and As Dreams Fall Apart: The Golden Age of Jewish Stage and Film Music, 1925–1955 (Cedille Records 2014).

The EnsembleMezzo-soprano Julia Bentley enjoys a broad range of genres, ranging from operatic roles of Mozart and Rossini to the dusky back rooms of cabaret in her appearances with the New Budapest Orpheum Society. She has appeared as a soloist for such conductors as Raymond Leppard, Robert Shaw and Pierre Boulez, and has premiered more than 200 pieces, thanks to her passion for newly composed works. A regular guest with Chicago’s ensembles, she is also on the faculty of several Chicago universities as a voice teacher, chamber music specialist, and lecturer in Art Song. Her CD of early songs by Alban Berg, Wo der Goldregen steht, has just appeared on Centaur.

Philip V. Bohlman, artistic director, is the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities and Music at the University of Chicago and Honorarprofessor of the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Germany. He has received the British Academy’s Derek Allen Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, and the Jaap Kunst and Bruno Nettl prizes from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Among his forthcoming books are Revival and Reconciliation (2013), Wie könnten wir des Herrn Lied singen in fremdem Lande? (LIT Verlag, 2016), Song Loves the Masses (University of California Press, 2016), and the edited volume (with Goffredo Plastino), Jazz Worlds / World Jazz (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Frank Caruso is one of the leading accordionists in the Midwest, performing across a wide range of styles and repertories. He joins the New Budapest Orpheum Society for its 2016 performances in Los Angeles and the United Kingdom.

Stewart Figa, baritone, has served as cantor at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest since 1998, and has been a cantor in the Chicago area since 1990. He also comes to the New Budapest Orpheum Society from a tradition of Yiddish theatre, beginning in New York City in the 1980s. He has had the privilege of working with some of the legendary greats of the Yiddish stage, including Leon Liebgold, Seymour Rexite, Reizel Boyzk, and Max Perlman. He has performed programmes of Yiddish song throughout Chicagoland.

Danny Howard, percussion, is the newest member of the New Budapest Orpheum Society. With strong roots in the UK, he has built an international career that stretches across the repertoires and genres, no less than across the English Channel and the Atlantic. Having studied in Cuba and Brazil, Danny has specialized in Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian folkloric music for over a decade and now runs his own Latin band. His first passion, nonetheless, was classical music. The New Budapesters could not be more thrilled that he’s recently put down his diverse musical roots in Chicago.

Iordanka Kissiova, violinist, is active as an orchestral and chamber musician throughout the Chicago area and the state of Illinois. A native of Bulgaria, she studied in Sophia at the Bulgarian National Academy of Music before immigrating to the United States in 1993. She performed widely in Europe, among others with the “Sophia” women’s orchestra. A string teacher with Quinlan and Fabish, she has played regularly in regional orchestras throughout the Midwest, among them Ars Viva. She has recorded for the Bulgarian Radio Orchestra and the New Budapest Orpheum Society.

Ilya Levinson, music director, arranger, and pianist, holds degrees in composition from the Moscow Conservatory and the University of Chicago (PhD 1997). His works for chamber music and orchestra have recently enjoyed performances in France, Germany, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His Klezmer Rhapsody is recorded by the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band on the Shanachie label. Composer-in-residence with American Music Festivals, he is Associate Professor of Music at Columbia College Chicago.

Mark Sonksen, bassist, joined the New Budapest Orpheum Society in 2008 and has been a stalwart member of its tours in Europe and its performances of stage and film music from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Mark is equally adept playing jazz and tango, having performed at clubs and festivals in the USA, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Argentina. As a composer greatly influenced by Argentine and Uruguayan tango and folk music, he has recorded six CDs of original compositions and arrangements, most recently Vicisitudes (2014). He is the co-leader and co-founder of the Chicago-based tango orchestra Ensemble Tangata.


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Friday 17 June, 1:05pmClothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds

FATE AND FAIRYTALES: THE MUSIC OF WILHELM GROSZ AND ZIKMUND SCHUL

Kate Rotheroe (soprano) Rhian Hughes (flute) Eleanor Hudson (harp) Ian Buckle (piano)Cassia String Quartet: Amy Welch, Tory Clarke, Laurie Dempsey, Joshua Lynch

12:30pm: Pre-concert talk - Performing the Jewish Archive researcher Joseph Toltz (Sydney Conservatorium of Music) explores the lives and music of Wilhelm Grosz and Zikmund Schul.

‘Fate and Fairytales’When faced with threat of safety, where does one look for safe haven? Depending on life experiences, one may choose a neighbouring country whose democracy and stability is the envy of many, while another might choose further afield, sensing that imminent danger may extend beyond national borders. Language facility, age, parental obligations, career prospects, family status, financial means - all these factors contribute to momentous decisions. In 1933/34, Prague seemed a safe, flourishing, vibrant democratic city for Zigmunt Schul and Gideon Klein, whereas London was a safer distance away for the older Wilhelm Grosz. The music presented today demonstrates unending optimism in two composers as they explore profoundly personal subjects, through the allegory of fate and fairytale: one, the unconditional love for a young daughter; the other, a lifelong fascination with religious musical heritage and tradition.

ProgrammeVilém Zrzavý (1895-1942), arr. Zigmund Schul (1916-1944) V’li Yerushalayim [Return in mercy to Jerusalem], op.posth., for string quartet & voice (1942)Text: blessing no.14 from the weekday Shmoneh Esreh prayer

Zigmunt Schul ‘Schicksal’ [Fate], from Dunkle Klänge [Sombre tones], op.15, for flute, viola, cello and voice (1942)Text: unknown source

Zigmunt Schul Zaddik [Righteous man], op.posth., for string quartet (1942)

David Grünfeld (1915-1963), arr. Zigmunt Schul: Uv’tseil Knofecho [In the shadow of your wings], op.posth., for string quartet (1942)

Zigmunt Schul Chassidische Tänze [Hassidic dances], op.posth., for cello & viola (1941-2)

i. Allegro moderato

ii. Allegretto

Gideon Klein (1919-1945) Short movement for harp, (1935; world premiere)


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Fairies by Hilda Miller

Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939)Kleine Sonate, op.16, for piano solo (1922)

i. Sehr rhythmisch [Very rhythmic]

ii. So schnell als möglich; Trio [As fast as possible; Trio]

iii. Sehr ruhig und einfach, wie ein Lied [Very peaceful and simple, like a song]

iv. Sehr lustig. Variationen über ‘Liebe läßt sich nicht verbegen’ (Liebeslieder, Op. 10)

[Very humorous. Variations on ‘Love cannot be hidden’ (Love Songs, Op. 10)]

Wilhelm Grosz Vom Morgen bis zum Abend: Kleine Lieder Kindern vorzusingen [From morning to evening: Little songs for children], op. 43, for piano and voice (1937)Text: Wolfgang Tischendorf and Emil Stahl (eds), Mein erstes Reimbuch (Berlin: Grunewald, Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927)

i. Steht auf, ihr Kinderlein! [Get up, little children!]

ii. Die bösen Beinchen [Those naughty leg]

iii. Fünf Englein kommen gesungen [Five angels came a-singing]

iv. Guten Tag, Herr Montag [Good day, Mr Monday]

v. Morgen fruh um sechs [Tomorrow morning around six]

vi. Wenn mein Kind nicht essen will [When my child will not eat]

vii. Gutenacht Liedchen [A little goodnight song]

Wilhelm Grosz Neue Kinderlieder [New children’s songs], op.43A, for piano and voice (1937)Text: i-iii: Wolfgang Tischendorf and Emil Stahl (eds), Mein erstes Reimbuch (Berlin: Grunewald, Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927). iv: Gustav Falke und Jakob Loewenberg (eds), Steht auf, ihr lieben Kinderlein: Gedichte aus älterer und neurer Zeit für Schule und Haus (Köln am Rhein: Schaffstein, 1906)

i. Sonne [The sun] Achim von Arnim (1781-1831) Des Knaben Wunderhorn

ii. Vom Riesen Timpetu [The giant Timpetu] Alwin Freudenberg (1873-1930)

iii. Vom Christ Kind [The Christ child] Anna Ritter (1865-1921)

iv. Schlummerliedchen (Wenn das Kind seine Puppe zu Bett bringt) [Little slumber song (When the child brings his doll to bed)] Richard Leander (1830-89)

Wilhelm GroszFairy Tales, Cantata for soprano, string quartet, flute and harp, op.39 (1936)Text: Rose Fyleman, The Fairy Flute (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1921)

Präludium - Allegretto (quasi pastorale)

i. If you meet a fairy

Interlude I - Vivacissimo

ii. Fairy lore

Interlude II - Tempo di Valse

iii. Every fairy has a star

Interlude III - Andantino

iv. Fairy flute

Interlude IV - Allegro con spirit

v. Fairy lullaby for a mortal

Postludium - Poco allegro


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Programme NotesZikmund (Siegmund) Schul was born on 11 January 1916 in Chemnitz, in Saxony. In 1928 the family moved to Kassel, where Siegmund was an active member of the local Jewish youth club, the audience for his first short compositions. Following the election of the Nazi Government in 1933, Siegmund emigrated to Prague to continue his education; his parents followed in 1934. In 1935 he began tuition under the microtonalist composer, Alois Hába; around the same time he met Dr Salomon Lieben, a prominent member of the Orthodox Jewish community, and a scion of an old Prague family. For six years the young composer worked intensively with Lieben on transcriptions and microtonal analyses of synagogue chants from the Lieben-Jeiteles shtibl (private prayer room), music that was at least 160 years old. In 1941 Schul was sent to Terezín, where he befriended Viktor Ullmann, who acted as his mentor. He continued to write music in the ghetto (all the arrangements and original compositions that we hear today), but became increasingly sick and withdrawn, and died of tuberculosis in June 1944.

Among numerous sketches and unfinished pieces by Prague-based composer and pianist Gideon Klein, are the Four Small Harp Pieces dating from 1935 when the composer was 15. They were written for Klein’s friend, the harpist Marie Grünfeld. Only the first piece is in fair copy, and today’s performance is its world premiere. Klein was transported to Terezín in 1941, and was later murdered in an Auschwitz sub-camp.

The music of Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939) traversed many genres, integrating jazz and cabaret into his serious concert music. Born in Vienna, Grosz moved to Berlin in 1927, taking up a post as artistic manager of Ultraphon recording company. In 1933 he escaped back to Vienna with his wife, stepson and 3-year-old daughter, before moving to London and finally New York. Grosz’s concert material has remained largely untouched - ignored post-war, when avant-garde atonality was at the forefront of concert music, only briefly explored in Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series. Other than the small piano sonata, op.16 (1922), which demonstrates Grosz’s facility with late-Romantic harmonic and melodic development, the works presented today reflect Grosz’s interest in writing for children, inspired by the birth of his daughter Eva in 1930.

Dr Joseph Toltz(Co-Investigator, Performing the Jewish Archive)


Kate RotheroeManx-born soprano Kate Rotheroe has just returned from Belgium where she sang Belinda for the Entente Cordiale, Academie voor Musik, woord en dans Mortsel. She is currently studying in Antwerp with Catrin Wyn-Davies. Kate graduated from the University of Leeds with MMus Performance distinction in 2012. When in Leeds Kate, studies with Paul Nilon, Susan Lees and Rosemary Walton.

Kate has recently participated in a masterclass with Katherine Broderick and Joseph Middleton, sung the soprano solo in Haydn’s Theresienmesse with Leeds Haydn Players and the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, sung in concert with Faye Newton and Pellingmans’ Saraband, and performed in the University of Leeds International Concert Series, Scarborough lunchtime concerts and Wakefield Cathedral’s lunchtime concert series.

Kate appears regularly on the opera stage; recent roles include: Mother (Amahl and the Night Visitors, Northern Opera Group) Venus and Honour (King Arthur with Peter Holman and Leeds Baroque), Patience (Patience, Leeds G&S) and Mabel (The Pirates of Penzance, Leeds G&S), Pousette (Manon, Leeds Youth Opera), Angelica (The Poisoned Kiss, Leeds Youth Opera) Noémie (Cendrillon, Leeds Opera Society), Dido (Dido and Aeneas, with Ian Caddy, Elizabeth Kenny and Keith Davis at the University of Southampton.

Later this month Kate will sing Second Lady in Die Zauberflöte with the Berlin Opera Academy. She has also been offered a place for further study at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Cassia Quartet(See page 5 for Cassia Quartet biography)

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Rhian HughesRhian is an outgoing student of the University of Leeds, having just completed her final year of study in music. Whilst at university, Rhian has enjoyed playing the flute in the music society ensembles, as well as being a part of the Stage Musicals Society as the Assistant Musical Director for their production of High School Musical. During her third year, she undertook an industry placement at WildKat PR where she worked on a number of national and international campaigns for classical music artists such as Silent Opera and the Bamberg Symphony. Outside university Rhian has taken part in a number of projects with Youth Music Theatre UK as a musician and an actor, as well as being part of Youth Music Voices, a national choir created to celebrate the Cultural Olympiad. When not doing music, Rhian is a keen photographer, particularly of concerts and theatre.

Ian BuckleIan Buckle enjoys a varied freelance career working as soloist, accompanist, chamber musician, orchestral pianist, teacher and ABRSM examiner. As concerto soloist, Ian has appeared with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic, Opera North, Sinfonia Viva and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Committed to contemporary music, he has been the pianist in Ensemble 10/10 since the group’s inception, and his piano duo with Richard Casey specialises in music from the last and current centuries. He frequently collaborates with former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion performing recitals of piano music and poetry, recent programmes including Shropshire and Other Lads, a celebration of A. E. Housman; Anthem for Doomed Youth, a commemoration of World War One; and Philip Larkin’s England. He is a member of both the piano-and-wind ensemble Zephyr and the Elysnan Horn Trio, formed when the group were students at the Royal Northern College of Music. He regularly plays piano in both the RLPO and the John Wilson Orchestra, and teaches at the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool. Current CD releases include transcriptions for cello and piano with Jonathan Aasgaard, a recital of new works for clarinet and piano with former BBC Young Musician winner Mark Simpson, a disc of English music with clarinettist Nicholas Cox and a CD with Andrew Long of music for violin and piano by Edward German. Recordings in the pipeline include the songs of Stephen Wilkinson and Gershwin’s New York Rhapsody with the John Wilson Orchestra. Ian holds a season ticket at Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, and is an enthusiast of French cinema and nice restaurants.

Eleanor HudsonEleanor Hudson was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, and began to learn the piano at the age of four, wanting to play the harp from the age of six. She finally got her first harp at the age of thirteen, studying with Mair Jones from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, then going on to Chethams School of Music, Manchester under Jean Bell from the Halle Orchestra, with whom she continued her studies at the Royal Northern College of Music. During her time there Eleanor won the Guinness scholarship for harp and was awarded the highest mark ever for harp performance.

She then went on to gain a distinction in harp performance from the Royal College of Music and started to work regularly for Scottish Chamber Orchestra including a number of concerto appearances, as well as guest principal harp for the Halle, Philharmonia, Opera North, BBC Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras. She has also been lucky enough to work with Bill Bailey, Tony Bennett, Elvis Costello, the Moody Blues and the Ronnie Hazlehurst Orchestra. Eleanor then went to Spain to join the Malaga Symphony Orchestra for a year before returning to England to take up the post of Principal Harpist with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. During her fifteen years here she performed numerous concertos, was part of the original 10/10 contemporary ensemble and also became very committed to the Phil’s education programme. Eleanor has recently left the RLPO to return to freelancing and having retrained as an SEN music teacher runs music projects in schools, as well as taking on the role of Harp Tutor at Chethams School of Music. She is currently a lead musician working with the RLPO /Mersey Care NHS project participating in music workshops in mental health, visiting many secure settings such as Ashworth Hospital.

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Friday 17 June, 6:00pmHoly Trinity Church, Leeds

DIE WEISE VON LIEBE UND TOD DES CORNETS CHRISTOPH RILKE

[THE CHRONICLE OF LOVE AND DEATH OF THE FLAG-BEARER CHRISTOPH RILKE]

Christine Wilkie Bohlman (piano) Philip Bohlman (recitation)

Music by Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) Text by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Programme NotesThe poem The Chronicle of the Love and Death of the Flag-Bearer, Christoph Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, set to music by Viktor Ullmann in the Terezín ghetto, is of great interest to the researchers on the project Performing the Jewish Archive.

Rilke’s poem, first published in 1912, was tremendously popular in the early twentieth century and clearly influenced the artists of Terezín. In addition to the original German-language version of the poem that Ullmann set to music, we also find the poem, or traces of it, in two Czech-language works from the ghetto.

One is a play called The Smoke of Home, written by two young Czech-Jewish prisoners named Zdeněk Eliáš and Jiří Stein. According to Zdeněk’s brother, Luděk Eliáš, Zdeněk was inspired to write the play after he heard a young director in Terezín, Gustav Schorsch, recite a Czech-language translation of Rilke’s poem. Although the plot of the play is original, the influence is clear: its prologue closely follows the language of the introduction to the poem, and the character of Christian, like Rilke’s main character Christoph, is a young flag-bearer.

The other Czech-language work is a full translation of the poem - perhaps it was this same translation that Zdeněk Eliáš heard Gustav Schorsch recite - that may have been prepared by his fellow prisoner, Zdeněk Jelínek (see program notes for Harlequin in the Ghetto for more information on this young author). In Dr Eva Šormová’s excellent Czech-language book, Theatre in Terezín (1973), she briefly mentions Zdeněk Jelínek as the translator of two works that were staged or at least prepared for staging in the ghetto. One of those works was Rilke’s poem, but the manuscript was considered lost. However, in the archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague, I came across a translation of the poem into Czech that is clearly marked up for recitation by a choir and solo voices, and the final page contains notes which appear to be in the handwriting of none other than Zdeněk Jelínek.

This work, however, does not appear on any of the preserved lists of poems and plays that were performed in the ghetto. Perhaps, like Ullmann’s work, it was prepared in the autumn of 1944, just before mass transports from Terezín to Auschwitz decimated the artistic community of the ghetto.

Lisa Peschel(Co-Investigator, Performing the Jewish Archive)

Philip BohlmanLudwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History at the University of Chicago, has special interests in Jewish music, music of the Middle East and South Asia, music and religion, and music at the encounter with racism and empire. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is artistic director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society. Among his most recent and forthcoming books are Jewish Music and Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2008), Hanns Eisler - In der Musik ist es anders (with Andrea F. Bohlman, Hentrich & Hentrich, 2012), Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism (University of California Press, 2016), and Wie sängen wir Seinen Gesang auf dem Boden der Fremde! Jüdische Musik zwischen Aschkenas und Moderne (LIT Verlag, 2016).

Christine Wilkie BohlmanChristine Wilkie Bohlman is a lecturer in piano and chamber music in the College at the University of Chicago. A student of Carroll Chilton, Kenneth Drake, and Menahem Pressler, she is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she studied also at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University. She specialises in the performance of chamber music from the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. She is the co-recip

performing the jewish archive out of the shadows...harlequin in the ghetto thursday 2 june - sunday...

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