April 15, 2023 | Rachmaninoff Concert Hall (Philharmonia-2)
Soloists: Anastasia Belukova, soprano
Kirill Soldatov, trumpet
Conductor – Vladimir Spivakov
Fisher. Eine Deutsch-Jiddische Kantate
Shostakovich – Barshai. Chamber Symphony, Op. 110а
Schwartz. «Yellow Stars» – concerto for orchestra
Vladimir Spivakov dedicates the new program of the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia to the memory of the victims of fascism, war and the Holocaust and to the 100th anniversary of composer Isaac Schwartz. The People's Artist of Russia Schwartz is widely known for his work in the Soviet cinema. Some of his top film scores include the music to the films “White Sun of the Desert”, “The Karamazov Brothers”, “The Stationmaster”, “The Captivating Star of Happiness” and many others. However, his legacy encompasses outstanding works not related to the cinema. Among them, there is his concerto for orchestra “Yellow Stars” (“Purimspiel in a Ghetto”).
The idea of the work was born after Schwartz had read the memoirs of a prisoner of the Kaunas Ghetto, that described a merry Purim celebration (a Jewish holiday to commemorate the salvation of the Jewish people from annihilation in the Achaemenid Empire as recounted in the Book of Esther), which turned into a festivity “under the noose” in the death camp. The first edition of the Concerto was dedicated to the memory of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who had saved ten thousands of Jews during the Second World War, while the final second edition is dedicated to Vladimir Spivakov. In 2004 Spivakov and the NPR recorded the Yellow Stars Concerto for Capriccio, while in 2015 they played it in Prague at the World Holocaust Forum. On the front page of the score presented to Vladimir Spivakov, the composer wrote: “Dear Vladimir Teodorovich, words fail me to express my admiration. You are simply a genius! Words are redundant here! With love and devotion, I. Schwartz”.
The program under the baton of Vladimir Spivakov will also feature Dmitry Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony “In memory of victims of fascism and war” (Quartet no. 8 in Rudolf Barshay's orchestration) and the German-Jewish Cantata by Ivan Fischer (first performance in Moscow).
Ivan Fischer is a well-known Hungarian conductor and composer of Jewish origin, director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. His German-Jewish Cantata “Die Stimmen der Geister” (Voices of the Soul”) is based on texts from Jewish folk poetry, as well as verses by Goethe, Rilke and Sutzkever. In writing it, Fischer was motivated by the talks of his relatives about war crimes.
'What have the Germans done to us? And why do we admire German culture? Why do we put Goethe's poem in our graveyard? There is something paradoxical about this. I wanted to express this duality, this complicated feeling in one composition.' Ivan Fischer says about his Cantata. 'This composition is a collage of different styles which collide, clashing with each other. For me German culture is Baroque, so I put poems by Goethe and Rilke in a slightly Baroque style. It clashes with the episodes in Yiddish, the first of which is in the style of folk songs, while the poem by Avrom Sutzkever is nearer to the 1920-s, to what the Nazi called “Entartete Musik” (Degenerate Art). So if you hear the work in whole, sharing my paradoxical feeling, there should be a final harmonious unity: the clashing sides find a harmony with each other.'