SILENCED VOICES
LOVE & REMEMBRANCE
Valentine Concert
Sun, Feb. 12, 5 pm
Brookline: St. Paul’s Church
If Music be the food of love, play on!
I have never been able to resist programming a Valentine concert inspired by the myriad facets of love. Some may believe that poetry is love’s greatest vehicle for this high holy day in our calendars, but I would argue that music, which transcends language, is love’s medium par excellence.
Yes, Shakespeare, playing on: making music resiliently, indelibly, eternally, even as an act of resistance to death, is what today’s program affirms. We celebrate the enduring voices of composers who faced horrendous challenges during a dark period in time, but who continued to write beautiful music. Several of today’s composers were forced to flee their homelands and leave their legacies behind. Shostakovich struggled to reconcile his artistic integrity with the demands of the Soviet regime. Mendelssohn’s music was belittled by the anti-Semites of his day and was eventually banned by the Nazis.
For all these composers and the music they wrote, the phrase “undying love”comes to mind. Kindness and humanity are eternal; they are conserved; they do not die or succumb to the reigns of tyrants.
On this concert we present a pastiche of beautiful works by composers whose voices were silenced at the hands of totalitarianism. Many composers were forced to flee their homelands and leave their legacies behind in order to escape prosecution and discrimination under the Nazi regime. Others were stripped of their art when their music was banned and removed from the repertoire of German orchestras by the Third Reich and Nazi-occupied Europe.
This special concert, for strings, piano, voice, and flute, celebrates those many voices, with pieces informing each other and resonating artistically. There is no need to put this music in a memorializing context in order to appreciate it, but the works may engender deep thought in sound, aesthetics, and history. With the beautiful mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan, who sang Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder for you two years ago.
