The Scarsdale Inquirer – Hometown newspaper of Scarsdale, New York 10583

By DEBRA BANERJEE

Scarsdale Inquirer/Jim MacLean

Cantor Gerald Cohen

As the Jewish community commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, Shaarei Tikvah will host a performance of Cantor Gerald Cohen’s composition “Playing for our lives” by the acclaimed Cassatt String Quartet at the synagogue on Sunday, April 22, at 3 p.m. The piece, commissioned by the Cassatt, is a contemporary memorial and tribute to the musical life of the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt (Terezin).

The Cassatt had planned a program of music by the composers who were interned at Terezin. The camp, near Prague, was a place of transit where prisoners were kept until they were sent to death camps. As part of its propaganda to show the outside world how well inmates were treated, the Nazis allowed music and cultural programs for the prisoners, a large number of whom were prominent figures in the arts. In that terrible place, music flourished with opera and orchestra, jazz and choral performances.

“Playing for our lives” had its premiere in New York City in February.

The Cassatt, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006, is comprised of Muneko Otani, violin; Jennifer Leshnower, violin; Sarah Adams, viola; and Nicole Johnson, cello. The quartet had performed other works by Cohen in the past and asked him to “write a contemporary reflection of the camps and the music by the composers who were there,” Cohen told the Inquirer. “I was very excited about the idea. It was interesting to figure out how best to do it in purely musical terms. To write something reflective of the tragedy and the hopefulness and beauty that went on because of the musicians. What I decided to do was to use several representative pieces that were part of the camp. I wove the different music in together.”

The piece is 24 minutes long and is written in three movements. Each movement has the name of one of the pieces that is central to it.

“It is very much constructed as in a sense without words, telling the story of what happened there, going through different emotions, turning into a peaceful elegy to those who died there,” Cohen said.

One of the movements is from a Yiddish folk song “Beryozkele” (little birch tree), a poignant song that was arranged at Terezin by the composer Viktor Ullmann. Cohen used the melody, not Ullmann’s arrangement. Folk songs, Cohen said, were important parts of the lives of the children at Terezin, who sang them in choirs.

The second element is a lullaby from Hans Krasa’s opera “Brundibar,” which was one of the most important musical experiences of Terezin — an opera performed entirely by children as the singers. The opera was so popular it was performed more than 50 times, Cohen said. Krasa was a well-known Czech composer. The uplifting “Brundibar” told the story about kids looking for milk money because their mother is sick and triumphing over the evil Brundibar.

The third movement is excerpts from Verdi’s Requiem, a piece that was performed at Terezin under the conductor Rafael Schachter. Singing the requiem was deeply and ironically meaningful as the singers faced their own deaths, and the powerful segment Dies Irae — Day of Wrath — was sung in an act of defiance against the Nazis.

“The irony of Jewish prisoners singing a Catholic piece to the Nazis on the day of wrath — a strange significance,” Cohen told the Inquirer.

Cohen wrote about his composition: “In my quartet, these various feelings and musical elements are woven together to create a memorial to the musical and emotional life of the camp. ‘Beryozkele’ and its tender lament dominate the early part of the piece; the middle section is a set of variations on the lullaby from ‘Brundibar,’ as the music attempts to bring the joy of that piece to the fore; and the final section is dominated by elements of the requiem, with its passion, anger, and also quiet mourning.”

The title “Playing for our lives” is from a quote by one of the camp’s teenage musicians, Paul Rabinowitsch, a trumpet player in “Brundibar,” who felt under threat to perform perfectly — “playing for my life” — for fear that one wrong note would get him sent to a death camp.

“Making art was keeping their souls alive, gave them hope,” Cohen said.

The Cassatt became interested in creating a program of music from Terezin after one of its violinists heard a talk by a survivor of Terezin who as a child played a role in “Brundibar.”

For Cohen, there is a “deeply personal connection” too. His parents, “weren’t strictly survivors. They were refugees from Europe. My father left Poland in 1935. My mother left Germany in 1938 after Kristallnacht. There were strong personal connections for me in writing this piece.”

The program of Yom HaShoah at Shaarei Tikvah will also include two Holocaust survivors, congregation members Jack and Ina Polak, who will speak about their experiences in the concentration camps.

Cohen has another connection with the Polaks. He is writing his next opera based on their story “Steal a Pencil For Me.”

It has been “a thrill” to work with the Cassatt String Quartet, “a leading quartet in the county,” Cohen said.

Unlike working on an opera with a librettist, writing a piece like “Playing for our lives” without words “has more emotional power than words could have. When you don’t have words you can let your imagination run freer. One of the most exciting things that music does, it reaches us at our emotions in different ways than words do. That’s what I love to do in creating my music.”

Other pieces on the April 22 program include Victor Ullmann’s “String Quartet #3” and selections from Leos Janacek’s “Intimate Letters.” The suggested donation is $20 at the door. For more information, call 472-2013 Ext. 302 or email naomi@shaareitikvah.org. Shaarei Tikvah is located at 46 Fox Meadow Road.

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