Literature of the Holocaust maintained by Al Filreis |
`Songs of Remembrance' stir with words By Catherine Peterson, Boston Globe, 05/21/96 CAMBRIDGE - In choosing to set 10 poems of the Holocaust, Ruth Lomon started off with texts that go straight to the solar plexus. Lomon, a Bunting Institute fellow at Radcliffe College, observes in a short introductory note to her cycle "Songs of Remembrance" that "by breaking through the loss of identity and anonymity imposed by the death camps, the poet makes the subtle interconnection of the historical event and the personal reality of the Holocaust." Throughout the premiere of ``Songs of Remembrance'' at Harvard Sunday, this listener was moved more by the words themselves than the combined effect of the music and the poetry. The individual voices of the poets - from children who perished in camps to Miriam Merzbacher-Blumenthal and Berthe Wizenberg Fleischer, who were present at the premiere - were so clear and distinct that Lomon's music, although very well-crafted, seemed rather anonymous.
The cycle calls for four singers (although only one song employs two voices together), oboe and English horn, flute and piano in different configurations. The writing lets the words come through clearly and puts the alternatingly haunting and piercing sounds of both the oboe and English horn to good use.
The two songs set to poems by Primo Levi (in excellent English translations by Ruth Feldman) were effective. ``The Survivor'' depicts the guilt of one who made it through the death camp horrors. Baritone Donald Boothman let the text speak unfettered by any fussiness; the vocal line was accented by a mournful English horn solo along with a cluster-sprinkled piano part. Even more compelling was ``Gedale's Song,'' which has a strength and grit not fully realized in the performance it received from Boothman.
Mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal delivered an impassioned performance of the final song, ``Love Poem'' by Charlotte Delbo, spilling out the tumult of emotions in a wife's memories of her lost husband. Soprano Roberta Anderson and tenor Frank Kelley gave more monochromatic readings of their songs. Patricia Morehead was moving in her prominent oboe and English horn solos; flutist Patricia Sampson was fine.
The standout performance of the evening came from pianist Donald Berman, who applied an unending variety of colors to the keyboard parts, while making any technical difficulties seem of no consequence.
While there is much to admire in ``Songs of Remembrance,'' it's the words rather than the music that remain to haunt one.
[This story ran on page 79 of the Boston Globe on 05/21/96.]
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