The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

A sign of confidence

2022-05-27T13:30:42.553Z


A sign of confidence Created: 05/27/2022, 15:22 By: Susanne Greiner Guy Mintus on the grand piano and the youth chamber orchestra of the music school Landsberg under Birgit Abe played Gerswin's "Rhapsody in Blue" - in outstanding quality. © Greiner Landsberg – Remembrance work is not called that for nothing: remembering is often difficult, burdened with hatred and despair. The Liberation Conce


A sign of confidence

Created: 05/27/2022, 15:22

By: Susanne Greiner

Guy Mintus on the grand piano and the youth chamber orchestra of the music school Landsberg under Birgit Abe played Gerswin's "Rhapsody in Blue" - in outstanding quality.

© Greiner

Landsberg – Remembrance work is not called that for nothing: remembering is often difficult, burdened with hatred and despair.

The Liberation Concert on Friday showed that it can also be thrilling and hopeful without leaving the ground of seriousness: the youth chamber orchestra of the music school and pianist Guy Mintus as well as other soloists played Jewish songs and works by classical composers - some of them were also at the Listen to the concert of the DP Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein in Landsberg in 1948.

Finally, the Bavarian Philharmonic presented a world premiere: "Never be silent again!", Jo Barnikel's adaptation of the Wolf Durmashkin composition "Lomir Shvaygn".

The Landsberger Stadttheater was an important venue for the DP orchestra: it also played one of its last concerts there – in 1948, under conductor Leonard Bernstein.

In the same year Israel was founded - where some of the musicians found a new home.


"These were concerts by self-determined people," says Mayor Doris Baumgartl at the welcome address.

This can also be seen in the fact that the orchestra gave itself its own name: "Jewish Orchestra in Bavaria." Their music is now being brought together again in the "Liberation Concert Bavaria" project.

Baumgartl says that she is extremely grateful that the spark of the project, which is to be implemented throughout Bavaria, was ignited with the project week "Here we are Landsberg!" in Lechstadt.

Thanks to the initiator Karla Schönebeck, contemporary witness Bob Hilliard and everyone involved, a “sign of confidence” shines from Landsberg throughout the world.


“There should be no concealing and forgetting,” states MdL Alex Dorow.

Which is why the state parliament has also joined the project and will show the associated exhibition “Liberation Concert” in the Bavarian seat of government in autumn.

The fact that the universal language of music, played "by a youth and a master orchestra", is at work here transports the past into the future.

And show "the great and beautiful of humanity" through culture.


From the past


Not only music, but also words at this concert: People from the audience bring contemporary witnesses to life: David Grasnick speaks for Bob Hilliard about his experience of the first liberation concert in 1945 in St. Ottilien.

How the German soldiers smoked, "flirted with the nurses as if it were none of their business".

And how audience and musicians were so moved after the first song, "I want aheim" (I want a home), that the concert had to be interrupted.

Axel Flörke becomes the voice of the DP musician Micha Hofmekler, who reports on the forced concerts of the musicians imprisoned in the Kaufering I concentration camp in front of their tormentors.

And about the concerts of the "liberated" DP orchestra - to which the musicians often had to be driven by ambulance.


Mirja Baier takes over the words of Henia Durmashkin, singer of the DP Orchestra.

And tells of the legendary Bernstein concerts in 1948, where Bernstein himself played Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue".

She also makes the leap to the present: to Durmashkin's "Lomir Shvaygn", its first gospel version in 2018, the version of the Bavarian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mark Mast in 2019 - and the third version by Jo Barnikel, which premiered in the Stadttheater on that day.


Back to the universal language: to music.

It begins with Leni Wasser, who presents a composition by the Czech opera singer Karl Berman on the piano: “Tyfus v kz Kauffering;

Auschwitz – Death Factory”: ominous, dissonant.

The Israeli singer Naama Nachum, accompanied by her husband Guy Mintus on the piano, will then present three Jewish songs that convey both the deepest melancholy and joie de vivre: the ghetto song "Ich willl aheim";

A Walk to Caesaria, also known as Eli Eli, is a 1940s Hebrew poem written by Hungarian-Jewish resistance fighter Hannah Scenes and set to music by David Zehavi.

And finally "La vita è bella" by Nicola Piovani - known from the film of the same name by Roberto Benigni.

And here comes the lyric, "Smile no matter what they tell you.

Don't listen to their words.

Because life is beautiful the way it is.”


The director of the municipal music school, Birgit Abe, presents the skills of her youth chamber orchestra with works that also arouse emotions ranging from sky-high rejoicing to deathly sadness: George Bizet's "L'Arlesienne" with a rigid march rhythm that dissolves into the melody.

Then Sibelius's Impromptu No. 5, in whose melancholy a waltz creeps.

And with Brahms "Hit", the "Hungarian Dance".


also read

Thousands of ceramic fans flocked to Dießen

Dießen invites you to the ceramics festival at Ammersee

Mark Mast conducted the Bavarian Philharmonic with Jo Barnikels (right on the piano) "Never be silent again!" © Greiner

The last two pieces elicit standing ovations from the audience: Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", in which pianist Mintus, accompanied by the youth chamber orchestra, brings out his extremely easy playing and his gifted improvisations, including oriental sprinklings.

And finally Jo Barnikel's "Never be silent again!" - the world premiere.

The piece begins with a march rhythm.

"I see it as the opposite of the content of the song, the 'Don't be silent anymore,'" says Barnikel: first the threat, then freedom.

Of course, Barnikel also quotes Durmashkin's composition, combining everything with the use of percussion and a solo cello to form a whole – garnished by an eight-part choir.

Its chorus: "Never be silent again, don't forget.

It is time."


In his speech in Sien, the chairman of the “Bavarian Alliance of Values” Foundation, Max Schmidt, described the “Liberation Concert” project as one of the best projects of the Alliance of Values ​​founded in 2010.

Rightly so.

And it all started in Landsberg.

Here we are.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-05-27

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-04T22:10:53.713Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.