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United States Various – ‘The World at War: Recovered Voices’: Kristina Bachrach (soprano), Anna Laurenzo (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Meglioranza (baritone), Stanichka Dimitrova (violin), Nathaniel LaNasa (piano). Brooklyn Art Song Society, First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY, 6.1.2023. (RP)
Hans Krása – 5 Lieder Op.4
Viktor Ullmann – Liederbuch des Hafis Op.30
Pavel Haas – 4 Lieder nach Chinesischer Poesie
Gideon Klein – Ukolebavka
Erwin Schulhoff – 3 Stimmungsbilder Op.12
Ilse Weber – Kinderlieder (arr. Jorell Williams, BASS Commission, world premiere)
Viktor Ullmann – 6 Sonnets de Louise Labé Op.34
The Brooklyn Art Song Society opened its collection ‘The World at War’ with two live shows that includes works that replicate the affect of World War I on the thousands and thousands of males who served in it. Their phrases and music are usually not forgotten and are, in lots of circumstances, celebrated. The crimson poppies that grew over the graves of fallen troopers in Flanders Field, of which Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae wrote, are identified the world over as an expression of loss and grief.
In the fourth live performance of the collection, ‘Recovered Voices’, BASS programmed music by women and men who had been by no means given the chance to battle in World War II. All had been Jews, fatally caught up within the Nazi’s futile try to eradicate all traces of them and their artwork. It was an effort doomed to failure, but it surely extinguished voices that held untold promise.
The composers Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann and Hans Krása had been transported to Theresienstadt, as was Ilse Weber, who wrote youngsters’s fiction along with being a songwriter. Theresienstadt was the Nazi’s mannequin focus camp, the place musical actions had been inspired for propaganda functions. In probably the most determined of circumstances, these outstanding individuals nonetheless composed and carried out. Some had been remarkably prolific.
Haas, Krása and Ullman had been all murdered within the fuel chambers at Auschwitz in 1944, as was Weber. When her husband was deported to Auschwitz, she and their son selected to accompany him. (The elder son had escaped to Sweden through the Kindertransport.) Weber is claimed to have sung to her son and the opposite youngsters as she walked with them into the fuel chambers.
Klein was despatched to Fürstengrube, a coal mine within the neighborhood of Auschwitz, and presumably died there in January 1945. Schulhoff, nonetheless, along with being Jewish, was a Soviet citizen and was transported to Wülzburg, a focus camp in Bavaria, the place he died of tuberculosis in August 1942.
In ‘Recovered Voices’, soprano Kristina Bachrach, mezzo-soprano Anna Laurenzo, baritone Thomas Meglioranza, violinist Stanichka Dimitrova and pianist Nathaniel LaNasa not solely gave distinctive performances, but in addition exhibited a deep private reference to the music. There was an urgency to their performances that spoke to the current. A 12 months in the past, conflict in Europe was all however unthinkable. Today, it’s a actuality with the resultant slaughter and atrocities.
In the primary half of this system, Meglioranza employed his elegant voice, immaculate diction and sensitivity to textual content in songs by Krása, Ullman and Haas. He proved a grasp of the myriad of musical kinds within the songs. Memorable moments included his philosophical strategy to Krása’s 5 Lieder, particularly in ‘Vice Versa’; and assuming the guise of a latter-day Don Quixote as he triumphantly proclaimed that he was ‘Lord of the World’ in ‘Lob des Weines’ from Ullmann’s Liederbuch des Hafis.
Haas put as a lot drama into the piano because the voice in his 4 Lieder nach Chinesischer Poesie. LaNasa was an equal accomplice to Meglioranza in expressing the complicated moods and depicting the photographs captured within the songs. LaNasa’s musicality and approach not solely anchored this music, however was current in each within the recital.
Laurenzo opened the second half of the recital with Klein’s setting of an Emanuel Harusi lullaby, ‘Ukolebavka’. Her heat, wealthy mezzo-soprano captured the poignancy and realism of a kid whose lot is to toil alongside his father within the fields.
Laurenzo and LaNasa had been joined by violinist Stanichka Dimitrova in Schulhoff’s 3 Stimmungsbilder. The composer, whose promise had been noticed and inspired by Dvořák when he was a toddler, had a number of strikes towards him within the eyes of the Nazis. He was not solely a Soviet citizen and a communist, he was additionally labelled an avant-garde Jewish composer.
His Stimmungsbilder date from 1913, when he was below the affect of the French Impressionists. Although Schulhoff was a pianist, he took a particular curiosity within the violin. The instrument performs an necessary function in establishing ambiance and conveying emotion within the three songs, which Dimitrova conveyed by her taking part in. Laurenzo’s cries of anguish and ache within the last music, ‘Weisst du’, had been resolved wordlessly within the sound of the violin.
Alongside BASS’s mission to advertise the efficiency and appreciation of artwork music, is its dedication to encouraging the composition of recent works within the style. Jorell Williams, who as a baritone has carried out in recital with BASS, can also be a composer. For this live performance he was commissioned to rearrange three of the songs that Weber wrote and sang to the adults and kids held at Theresienstadt.
The three songs set by Williams in Kinderlieder describe an individual wandering by Theresienstadt, a mom’s ideas of her faraway youngster and a young lullaby. Sadness, typically wistful whereas profound and overwhelming at others, prevails all through the songs. Violin and piano had been as integral because the voice in expressing emotion. The phrases are particularly transferring, nonetheless. and soprano Kristina Bachrach expressed their which means with the simplicity and sweetness they demanded.
To shut the recital, Bachrach sang Ullmann’s 6 Sonnets de Louise Labé, which had been composed in 1941 earlier than he was transferred to Theresienstadt. Labé was born in Lyon in 1520, the daughter of a wealthy household, and he or she defied conference by writing about want and eroticism. The six sonnets describe the torment, sensuality and ecstasy of being in love, which Bachrach expressed in a variety of vocal colours that had been as engrossing as they had been spectacular.
The last phrases that she sang, had been of bliss – a lady who goals of resting her head on a good-looking chest, misplaced in kisses. How astounding that Ullmann may write such music when hope was all however gone. But then, artwork all the time transcends actuality.
Rick Perdian
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