The Likht Ensemble<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe members of the Likht Ensemble, (which means \u201clight\u201d in Yiddish), include co-curators Jaclyn Grossman and Nate Ben-Horin, and creative directors, Ilan Waldman and Madison Matthews. Soprano Grossman performs the music, while pianist Ben-Horin functions as accompanist, arranger, and composer of original music. Waldman and Matthews are responsible for design and filming the 20-minute concert.<\/p>\n
Grossman is currently an artist with the Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Residency Program at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Glenn Gould School in Toronto. Ben-Horin is resident artist and principal pianist with Opera Columbus in Ohio.<\/p>\n
While Grossman and Ben-Horin are following their own career paths, they nonetheless have dedicated a good part of their time to finding this lost music by Holocaust composers and disseminating it to the world. For the co-curators, uncovering this music is both a mission and a passion.<\/p>\n
In the case of the Kovno\/Vilna program, this recital (with subtitles) is the first public recording of these songs on this side of the Atlantic. Apparently, there is a CD in Europe of some of this music, but Grossman and Ben-Horin couldn\u2019t find it. There also was a recital in Berkeley, CA, but no recording was made.<\/p>\nScore by Edwin Geist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nEdwin Geist (1902-1942) \u2014 The Centrepiece of the Recital<\/strong><\/h3>\nGrossman and Ben-Horin were put on to Geist by Bret Werb, staff musicologist at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. As Ben-Horin says, the composer had a Hollywood-worthy life story, although details are sketchy.<\/p>\n
Geist was half German, half Jewish, and did have a post at the Berlin Conservatory at one point. When the Nazis came to power, he was banned from composing, so he moved to Kovno, Lithuania, where he married Jewish pianist Lyda Bagriansky. When the Jews of Kovno were rounded up, the Geists were put into the newly created Kovno ghetto.<\/p>\n
The composer and his wife attempted an escape but were caught and brought back. Geist was shot and Bagriansky poisoned herself. After her death, violinist Vladas Varcikas saved Geist\u2019s music by breaking into the couple\u2019s sealed apartment and stealing his manuscripts (which are posted on the US museum\u2019s website).<\/p>\n
Apparently there is a biography of Geist in German. Says Ben-Horin, \u201cWe need someone who reads German to do a book report for us, so we can find out more about him.<\/p>\n
Geist\u2019s Music<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe showpiece of the recital is Geist\u2019s Three Lithuanian Songs<\/em>. Was the poetry by the composer? No one knows.<\/p>\nGeist\u2019s art songs are hard to categorize, say the co-curators. He was definitely influenced by the post-romantic Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, but also by French impressionistic harmony and colouring post-Debussy, although definitely Germanic by weight.<\/p>\n
His music is described as meaty, dramatic, and filled with exciting colours and imagery, playful yet dark, dissonant but with tonal moments, shifting major and minor chords, some up and down harmony, with a jagged piano line. Or as Ben-Horin says, \u201cThe music has extreme crunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Needless to day, the three art songs, with German text, are very dark. \u201cDynamics of Spring\u201d talks about rising above a great storm to find the sun. \u201cHeavier Evening\u201d describes starlight as hardened as tar. \u201cSea Ballad\u201d describes a shepherd waiting for the body of a drowned king\u2019s daughter to appear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a dramatic soprano,\u201d says Grossman. \u201cGeist is perfect for me because I\u2019m used to performing Wagner, Strauss and Berg. He is a stylistic fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Ben-Horin adds, \u201cGeist is hard core classical music, as opposed to the Yiddish songs on the program. With its pounding rhythms and high drama, it\u2019s like crazy Stravinsky.\u201d<\/p>\nScore by Percy Haid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOther Holocaust Music in the Recital<\/strong><\/h3>\nKnowing that not everyone is a diehard Second School Viennese fan, to lighten the mood, so to speak, the co-curators have included additional Yiddish songs, arranged by Ben-Horin, all with connections to Lithuania, or as he wryly says, \u201cPulling Geist\u2019s punches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two they discovered on the Yad Vashem website. (Yad Vashem is the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.)<\/p>\n
\u201cSing and Dance in Circles\u201d is by an unknown composer from the Kovno ghetto. After the war, someone made an archival recording of the song in Kovno. While it could be regarded in the style of a nursery rhyme, the heavy lyrics talk about making your life happy despite the dark omen (the Nazi guard) at your door. \u201cIt\u2019s very Jewish to find joy in darkness,\u201d says Grossman.<\/p>\n
The other Yad Vashem song is \u201cSpring\u201d written in the Vilna ghetto. The poet, Schmerke Kaczerginski, survived the war and made an archival a cappella recording. The composer, Abraham Brudno, did not. He died in 1943 or 1944 in the Klooga concentration camp. The lyrics beg spring to give the poet back his happiness after the death of his beloved wife. It is in Jewish tango style.<\/p>\n
Percy Haid (1913-1977) survived the war and settled in Chicago where he became a writer of pop songs, best known for \u201cI Remember When\u201d, a hit for singer Eddie Fisher in 1952. His song \u201cA Dream\u201d, also in the Jewish tango tradition, is about a lost love. The song was first sketched in the Kovno ghetto, but completed in the Dachau concentration camp.<\/p>\n
The Inclusion of \u201cOyfn Pripetchik\u201d (\u201cOn the Hearth\u201d)<\/h3>\n \u201cOyfn Pripetchik\u201d, in a new arrangement by Ben-Horin, is one of the most beloved of Jewish folksongs, composed by Mark Washawsky (1848-1907) who was born in Odessa. The lyrics describe a rabbi teaching little children the alphabet. One verse contains the words: \u201cWhen you grow older children, you will understand by yourself how many tears lie in these letters.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Grossman and Ben-Horin, the song represents the history of the Jewish people, and was probably sung to the children in the ghetto. Its vale of tears, its lament for anti-Semitism through the ages, seemed to be a perfect introduction for a concert of Holocaust composers.<\/p>\n
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