From three worlds

During the concert of well-known instrumentalists — Radosław Pujanek, Wojciech Fudala and Michał Rot — deeply moving Jewish music created before and after the Holocaust will sound. The works of Ernest Bloch and Mieczysław Wajnberg will be accompanied by a recent composition by Krzesimir Dębski inspired by this style.

Swiss-born Ernest Bloch was one of the first artists who set out to develop a style of Jewish music on the model of other nations fighting for their independence. His 1923 Baal Shem is three sound illustrations of the religious practices of Hasidism, a mystical Judaic movement born in eighteenth-century Poland. The first two parts of the cycle correspond to moments of meditation and ecstatic prayer, and the third deals with the joyful autumn holiday Simchat Torah.

On the other hand, the Piano Trio of Mieczysław Weinberg (“a composer from three worlds”, as Danut Gwizdalanka described the Polish Jew operating in the USSR) dates from the year 1945 marked by destruction. After fleeing Poland, the artist managed to settle in Moscow thanks to the help of Dmitry Shostakovich. Neither when writing the work, nor later did the author find out what fate befell his family. In this heart-rending work, it is hard not to hear an inexpressible commentary on the horrors of a war conflagration. Similar associations arise with both the dramatic Toccate and the elegiac Poem. In 1953, Stalin, as part of a “conspiracy of Kremlin doctors” for anti-Semitic reasons, decided to place Weinberg in the Lubyanka prison. However, thanks to the intervention of Shostakovich and the unexpected death of the dictator, the composer avoided the fate of the Siberian exile. Dedicated to a colleague or even a friend, the moving V Violin Sonata was created not long after. This elaborate work seems cooler emotionally than the trio, however, it is a paradox. Music created in totalitarian states often, through irony or double coding, expresses extreme emotions, such as despair, under the guise of calm and control.

The youngest of the compositions presented this evening, since they were created already in the 21st century, will be a concert piece by Dębski, entitled Dos lid far jidisze fidl (“Song for Jewish Violin”). We will hear it in a violin-piano arrangement. It is inspired by the art left over from lost neighbors and brothers.