TUESDAY 29 MARCH 2011 | 8PM
Location: Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, 129 W 67th St
Tickets: $25; $15 for seniors
To order, call Naomi at 212-294-6140

Israeli-American violinist Yuval Waldman will be giving a solo recital of “Music Forgotten and Remembered” at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall on Tuesday March 29, 2011, at 8 PM. The program presents rarely performed gems composed by Eastern European Jews, many of whom perished during World War II or were silenced by Soviet repression.

Born in the Ukraine to Holocaust survivors and the Artistic Director of Music Bridges International, Waldman was able to rediscover these pieces by searching music libraries and obscure music collections in Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and Israel. They represent a wide spectrum of stylistic influences on Jewish composers: impressionistic, neoclassical, folk, and klezmer. These pieces fill an unexplored gap in early twentieth-century Jewish music repertory that fully deserves to be heard today.

“Music Forgotten and Remembered” presents the first New York performance of five of these rediscovered works:

“Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes” (1952) was composed by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, an outstanding Russian-Jewish composer and close friend of Shostakovich, whose intervention with authorities probably kept Weinberg alive. The piece is a brilliant fantasy on Moldavian and Jewish themes.

“Lullaby,” an arrangement of a traditional Hebrew song, was composed in the Terezin concentration camp in 1943 by Gideon Klein, a young Czech-Jewish composer. Shortly after he wrote the piece, Klein was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.

“Colloque Sentimentale,” an impressionistic prelude on the poem of the same name by Paul Verlaine, was written in 1920 by Czech Jaromir Weinberger, who escaped the Nazis by emigrating to the United States, where he ended up on the music faculty at Ithaca College.

“Variations on ‘Hatikvah'” is a virtuoso violin solo written in the early 1900s by then famous, now forgotten Ukrainian klezmer violinist and composer Yehiel Goizman.

“Entrata” from Concerto da Camera (1945) is a seldom-heard master work by the Russian emigre and avant-garde composer Arthur Lourie.

Rounding out the program are two French violin masterpieces: “Sonata in A Major” for violin and piano by Cesar Franck, written for the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye, and Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane”. Mr. Waldman dedicates the performance of these pieces to his mentors Josef Gingold, who was a student of Eugene Ysaye, and Zino Francescatti, the foremost representative of violin French romantic school, who performed the “Tzigane” with Maurice Ravel.

Waldman will be assisted by Ukrainian-Israeli pianist Inesa Sinkevych, a prize winner in the Arthur Rubinstein International Competition.

A limited number of tickets has been made available to YIVO. All proceeds from their sale will benefit the YIVO Institute.
Tickets: $25; $15 for seniors
To order, call Naomi at 212-294-6140
Location: Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center,
129 West 67th Street
For more information about Yuval Waldman, visit his website, www.yuvalwaldman.com