NY Times Review of Erwin Schulhoff Retrospective
The pianist Mimi Stern-Wolfe and the saxophonist Marty Ehrlich at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Credit: John Halpern
The composer, writer and Kafka confidant Max Brod once described Prague as 100 percent Czech, 100 percent German and 100 percent Jewish. That kind of bad math makes for a good joke. But when you think of how that cultural symbiosis would be pried apart and destroyed under Nazi occupation and persecution, the statement takes on a tragic hue.
A case in point is the Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), who was the subject of an illuminating retrospective on Wednesday at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Schulhoff, who was Jewish and who took on Soviet citizenship early in the war, was deported to a concentration camp in Bavaria, where he succumbed to tuberculosis. For a first-time listener (like me) who has principally associated his name with the grim circumstances of his death, the vitality of his music — fun, sexy and energized by bracing infusions of jazz and Eastern European folk traditions — can come as a shock.
A case in point is the Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), who was the subject of an illuminating retrospective on Wednesday at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Schulhoff, who was Jewish and who took on Soviet citizenship early in the war, was deported to a concentration camp in Bavaria, where he succumbed to tuberculosis. For a first-time listener (like me) who has principally associated his name with the grim circumstances of his death, the vitality of his music — fun, sexy and energized by bracing infusions of jazz and Eastern European folk traditions — can come as a shock.
Musica Judaica
Musica Judaica (Volume 20)
Included in this volume are articles on Cantor Abraham Baer and the Gothenburg Synagogue (his influential Baal T'fillah is on the cover); a very important inventory of Shoah songbooks; memorial tributes to singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman, Yiddish archivist Chana Mlotek, and past ASJM president, composer Jack Gottlieb. Also there are two interesting articles about doing field research as a participant as well as an observer.
Musica Judaica is Included as a part of membership dues in the American Society for Jewish Music for 2014-15.
Included in this volume are articles on Cantor Abraham Baer and the Gothenburg Synagogue (his influential Baal T'fillah is on the cover); a very important inventory of Shoah songbooks; memorial tributes to singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman, Yiddish archivist Chana Mlotek, and past ASJM president, composer Jack Gottlieb. Also there are two interesting articles about doing field research as a participant as well as an observer.
Musica Judaica is Included as a part of membership dues in the American Society for Jewish Music for 2014-15.
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Site last updated July 13, 2016
Site last updated July 13, 2016