David Dalle
Thursday November 9th, 2017 with David Dalle
Rescued Treasure with The Semer Ensemble, led by master musician Alan Bern, with Lorin Sklamberg, playing lovingly resurrected Jewish repertoire from 1930's Berlin. They are performing this in Ottawa tonight.
The Semer Ensemble, led by master musician Alan Bern with hand-picked musicians including such luminaries as Paul Brody and Lorin Sklamberg, was created to perform once-lost repertoire from the Berlin Jewish community in the 1930's. They are in Ottawa tonight to perform this rich music. Music that was recorded on the Semer label in 1930's Berlin, founded by Hirsch Lewin in 1932. I quote the album notes extensively:
"The spectrum of artists and styles captured on the Semer label reflects the huge variety of Berlin's musical life of the era - from cabaret to Russian folk songs, Yiddish theater hits to operatic arias, popular and art songs about love and war, the beginnings of modern Israeli music, cantorial music.
For six years, Hirsch Lewin makes recordings at a feverish pace, documenting for future generations a world on the edge of annihilation. On November 9, 1938 (during Kristallnacht), SA hordes attack his store - the Hebräische Buchhandlung (Hebrew Bookstore), demolishing everything, including 4,500 recordings and 250 metal plates. The memory of the Semer label falls into oblivion for the next 60 years.
Discographer Rainer E. Lotz, searching the world for the original Semer recordings, is able to recover almost the entire catalogue. in 2012, the Berlin Jewish Museum commissions New Jewish Music luminary Alan Bern to form an ensemble to create and perform new interpretations of this now-rescued musical treasure"
We hear this music today, exactly 79 years after it was destroyed during the infamous Kristallnacht, (https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201) from a 2015 concert recording in Berlin. And we will see the Semer Ensemble perform it in Ottawa tonight:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/semer-ensemble-ottawa-tickets-38132080078
A very special concert, do not miss it!
| We will bookend the selections from the Semer Ensemble with two pieces from Brave Old World's 1994 album "Beyond the Pale", the beautiful and ambivalent pieces "Berlin Overture" and "Berlin 1990" betrays the mixed emotions Alan Bern, as a Jew living and working in Germany, has as a Jew living and working in Germany especially after the reuinification of East and West Germany. |
| Berlin Overture Brave Old World - Beyond the Pale - Rounder |
| Scholem Baith Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Simchu Bi Jeruschalajm/E'ise Pele Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Kaddisch (Der Judische Soldat) Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Das Kind Liegt In Wigele Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Czardas Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Achenu Kol Bes Isroel Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Jad Anuga Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Im Gasthof Zur Goldenen Schnecke Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Vorbei Semer Ensemble - Rescued Treasure - Piranha |
| Berlin 1990 Brave Old World - Beyond the Pale - Rounder |
| We turn to more music by another Jew whose life faced upheaval during WWII. Mieczyslaw Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1919 and he started his career as a composer and pianist in the late 30's. He miraculously found his way to the Soviet Union after both the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland which started WWII. I do not know how he survived, considering in 1939 the Soviets were extremely aggressive in their invasion of Poland and were murdering thousands of Polish intellectuals. His parents and younger sister remained behind in Poland and were murdered in the Holocaust.
By extreme luck, Weinberg found safety and was able to continue his career as a mucisian and composer in the Soviet Union, befriending Shostakovich who urged him to move to Moscow in 1943 where he lived the rest of his life until 1996. Weinberg became one of the greatest Soviet composers, often considered one of the three great Soviets alongside Prokofiev and Shostakovich. He was profoundly inspired by Shostakovich and composed even more symphonies (22) and string quartets (17) then his older mentor (15 of each by Shostakovich). Though 13 years younger than Shostakovich, he started composing string quartets earlier than Shostakovich, and had a bit of a friendly rival over them with Shostakovich. The influence was likely not all one-sided either, his tremendous, expansive, symphonic 6 movement 6th String Quartet which we hear today, composed in 1946, seems likely to have influenced Shostakovich in his own expansive 4th and 5th quartets a few years later. The 6th quartet is a radical, dramatic work with slight echoes of Jewish themes. It was banned in the 1948 in the same musical progrom that denounced Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Weinberg himself was later targeted by Stalin and arrested in the dictator's last paranoid and murderous anti-Semitic outburst (potentially avoiding a 2nd Holocaust only by Stalin's death) and only released after Stalin died. Sadly this masterpiece was never officially rehabilitated and only received its world premiere performance in 2007 by the Danel Quartet, whom recorded all 17 quartets and whom we hear perform it today. |
| String Quartet no. 6 Op. 35 Mieczyslaw Weinberg/Quatuor Danel - String Quartets vol. 3 - CPO |
| Bulgars/The Kiss Itzhak Perlman with the Klezmatics - Live In The Fiddler's House - EMI |
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