Tribute: July 2008 Archives

On Sunday, November 9, the 70^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and 75 years since Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in association with Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music, will launch "Music in Exile-Émigré Composers of the 1930s," a five-day series of concerts, talks, and a music-theater piece celebrating the music of Jewish composers forced to flee the Third Reich and German composers who resisted the Nazi regime.

The series takes place in the Museum's Edmond J. Safra Hall located at 36 Battery Place and includes premieres by five different composers and a lecture/talk about "Entartete Musik" by Gottfried Wagner, the great-grandson of composer Richard Wagner and the founder of the Post-Holocaust Dialogue Group, which seeks to reconcile victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Featured are the ARC Ensemble (Artists of the Royal Conservatory), who have dedicated themselves to the performance of both the traditional chamber music canon and the rediscovery of repertoire that, through political changes or shifts in musical fashion has been ignored or marginalized, including music written before and during the Holocaust. Simon Wynberg, artistic director of the ARC Ensemble, is curator of the series, and Stephen Vann is the artistic producer. Other artists include violinist Daniel Phillips, co-founder of the Orion String Quartet and professor of violin at Queens College; Canadian bass Robert Pomakov, and baritone Chris Pedro Trakas. Marc Neikrug conducts his music-theater work Through Roses, featuring veteran actor Saul Rubinek.

Pre-concert talks by such authorities as Michael Beckerman, professor of music and historical musicology at New York University, and Bret Werb, musicologist of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will complement several presentations.

Information and tickets for "Music in Exile-Émigré Composers of the 1930s" are available by calling the Museum of Jewish Heritage at 646.437.4202 or by visiting the Museum's Web site at www.mjhnyc.org

Pianist Charles Rosen, the 81-year-old classical music legend and Musical America’s 2008 Instrumentalist of the Year, will perform four works by Elliott Carter in Tanglewood’s “Elliott Carter Centenary Celebration” all in Seiji Ozawa Hall. On Sunday, July 20, at 10 a.m. he will play Carter’s Double Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord with Ursula Oppens in a concert conducted by Oliver Knussen. The following day on Monday, July 21, he will perform Carter’s Piano Sonata in the Prelude Concert at 5 p.m. And on Thursday, July 24, he will play 90+ and will join cellist Fred Sherry in Carter’s Elegy in the 5 p.m. Prelude Concert.

For tickets and information, call SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200 or visit the Tanglewood Web site at www.tanglewood.org

Charles Rosen and Elliott Carter have been lifelong friends. It’s been said that there is no other pianist who understands Carter's music better, and in fact, Charles Rosen was one of four pianists who commissioned Night Fantasies from Elliott Carter (Ursula Oppens, Gilbert Kalish, and the late Paul Jacobs were the others), Charles Rosen, at 81 years of age, is one of the most widely respected pianists of our time, internationally acclaimed for his performances and recordings of a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach to works by today’s most important composers. His combination of musical sensitivity and powerful intelligence produces interpretations of exceptional understanding and impact, as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted when it wrote: “Rosen’s piano playing is riveting in the way it combines formal clarity and musical insight with an uncommon gestural and speech-like expressiveness.”