HOLOCAUST VIOLINS EVOKE MOVING PREMIERE
BURLINGAME, CA—Historic violins spoke to us in song and left many in tears.
A world premiere inspired by violins rescued from the Holocaust is as eloquent as it is disheartening. For the “Violins of Hope” instruments retrieved from the Nazis’ sites of their death-camp terror 75 years ago, librettist Gene Sheer and composer Jake Heggie have created a deeply moving song cycle with vivid imagery, in which the voices speaking to us were more from the surviving violins themselves than of the decimated society. Their songs, accompanied by players using those very historic instruments, lead us into that macabre wartime world where, in many cases, eloquence as a practicing musician was the only way for prisoners to avoid execution. Violins were literally life-savers.
Today, the new Heggie-Sheer “Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope” suggests somber remembrance. The impact of the seven songs with those violins was intense, and eloquent, and devastating. And assuredly timeless.
The astute libretto brought out violins speaking in words (as well as musical notes), “cry(ing) again like Isaac in Abraham’s arms.” Another violin’s song observes, “Listen! These are not simply notes you hear. But the voices—the stardust—of eternity.” Also comes the bleak sum-up, “The past is a clock without any hands.”
Along the way comes the ultimate irony: occupation officers inclined to escapism requesting a prisoner to “Play something romantic…from before all this” in the spacious meeting room, which happens also to be the gas chamber.
Heggie’s style may be harmonious as in 19th-century, but totally modern in voicing grim issues of the recent past. Heggie’s passionate 42-minute opus caresses the voice with affection, leaving it to the ultra-expressive mezzo tragedienne Sasha Cooke to transmit the text and imagery with courage, fixed gaze and unshakable voice. Daniel Hope played the solo violin part memorably too, with some quotes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, plus a lengthy threnody between two of the songs, backed by a string quartet, with all the instruments on loan from the “Violins of Hope” collection.
The violins were there. But where was the hope?? The songs offer only the merest glimmer of that upbeat future. Even the closing “Liberation” recalls merely the repression, not the chance to forge a future. The cycle fairly cries out for a concluding resounding and illuminating message.
The instruments heard at the Jan. 18 premiere before the Kohl Mansion’s sellout crowd were put through added challenges with a foursome from the S.F. Opera playing quartets of Schubert and Mendelssohn. Beautifully restored in Israel by the luthiers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, they are playing myriad Bay Area concerts for eight weeks before returning home.
The opening concerts for Heggie and the violins were presented within the “Music at Kohl Mansion” chamber series before two sellout audiences that may never encounter any music quite as profoundly moving as this “Intonations” premiere. The performances were recorded for future release. In addition, the Cabrillo Music Festival has commissioned adding an orchestration to this new opus.
Is all this dwelling on death and terror merely a very distant world away, like the Andromeda Galaxy? Hardly. I discussed this event with a Polish-born Berkeley man I’d known for many years, Prof. Marcin Majda. He revealed that his own grand-father (having no Jewish connection or heritage) lost his life in a World War Two death camp, arrested on suspicion that one of his sons might have been active in the Resistance. Yes, it all seems very very far away till it smacks you hard, right in the face.
World premiere of Heggie-Sheer “Intonations” song cycle with mezzo Sasha Cooke and violinist Daniel Hope, plus string quartet selections, using the “Violins of Hope” collection. Jan. 18-19, Kohl Mansion, Burlingame. For Kohl info, call (650) 762-1130, or go online: www.musicatkohl.org. For all Bay Area “Violins of Hope” concerts: www.violinsofhopesfba.org.
