{"id":2984,"date":"2016-04-17T16:39:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T14:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moked.it\/international\/?p=2984"},"modified":"2016-04-17T16:41:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T14:41:45","slug":"culture-songs-for-eternity-with-ute-lemper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2016\/04\/17\/culture-songs-for-eternity-with-ute-lemper\/","title":{"rendered":"CULTURE Songs for Eternity in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lotoro\"<\/a>By Jon Sobel*<\/strong><\/p>\n

For three decades, Italian musician Francesco Lotoro has traveled the world collecting manuscripts of music written in concentration camps and the Jewish ghettoes during World War II by victims and survivors of the Holocaust. He has transcribed and recorded some 5,000 of the 17,000 works he has already unearthed.<\/p>\n

But thousands more remain hidden, likely to be lost forever as the remaining survivors die of old age over the next not-so-many years. Last Musik, a new foundation set up to support Lotoro\u2019s ongoing efforts, held a fundraising concert and dinner Wednesday night at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, featuring renowned chanteuse Ute Lemper accompanied by a small pantheon of musicians associated in one way or another with the project: noted Israeli violinist Daniel Hoffman, bandone\u00f3n player Victor Villena, well-known klezmer revivalist and all-around virtuoso clarinetist David Krakauer, and Lotoro himself on piano.<\/p>\n

Lemper is a consummate master of the kind of staged concert that we denote today, rather inadequately if you ask me, by the word \u201ccabaret\u201d (which derives from the German \u201ckabarett\u201d shows of the late 18th century through the Weimar period). To have crafted so lovingly and carefully a concert completely unrelated to her current album and separate from the performances with which she\u2019s promoting it (see my recent exclusive interview with the singer) would be an impressive accomplishment with any material. Yet these songs made it not just a concert, but something of a happening, complete with gasps and sobs from the audience.<\/p>\n

It was, as Lemper put it, \u201ca difficult journey, but a necessary journey.\u201d If she wrote those words, as I imagine, in days past while preparing the concert, she wouldn\u2019t have known how perfectly accurate they\u2019d be: On the same day she spoke them to a packed house at the Center for Jewish History, French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was fined 30,000 euros for calling the Nazi gas chambers a \u201cdetail\u201d of World War II, thereby running afoul of French laws against Holocaust denial. Plus \u00e7a change, I\u2019m tempted to say.<\/p>\n

As we rapidly turn into a world devoid of living survivors of the Shoah, it becomes ever more important that projects like Lotoro\u2019s and events like \u201cSongs for Eternity\u201d continue to keep that history alive as an urgent lesson for new generations.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, this moving concert was far more than a lesson. It was an exquisite work of art, including many sad songs but others of comfort, grace, even defiant celebration. It also included several clips from Alexandre Valenti\u2019s upcoming documentary film The Maestro, about Lotoro\u2019s quest. One clip featured the composer of \u201cStiler stiler\u201d (\u201cQuiet, quiet\u201d), now known as the well-known Israeli pianist Alexander Tamir, but then an 11-year-old composer named Alek Volkoviski. Lemper and the band presented it in a suitably hushed and somber mode: \u201cAll the roads lead to Ponar now. \/ There are no roads back \/ And our father too has vanished.\u201d But unexpectedly, the arrangement gathered energy and concluded in a clap-along accelerando.<\/p>\n

Lotoro contributed a beautifully sensitive piano part to \u201cA Yiddish Kind,\u201d by survivor Hanah Haytin, about children whose parents tried to get them out of the ghettoes and into hiding.<\/p>\n

Poet and songwriter Ilse Herlinger Weber, by contrast, died with her children in 1944 in the gas chamber (that \u201cdetail\u201d of Le Pen\u2019s). The story goes that another prisoner advised Weber to go in singing with the children, so they\u2019d inhale more gas and die more quickly. In Lemper\u2019s interpretation, Weber\u2019s song \u201cIch wandre durch Theresienstadt,\u201d written at Theresienstadt awaiting transfer to Auschwitz, was a gentle, gorgeous lullaby.<\/p>\n

\u201cDer Tango fun Oschwietschim\u201d (\u201cThe Auschwitz Tango\u201d), a Polish tango often sung in the concentration camps, has words written by anonymous prisoners. \u201cSing, oh girl, another little song \/ About days and nights in the camp behind the wires. \/ Our slave tango\u2026\u201d Lemper and the band performed it with force and passion.<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t the only dance music on the program. \u201cMein Zawoe\u201d (\u201cMy Will\u201d), with music by Johanna Spector, another survivor, progressed as a sad folk ballad but concluded as a blistering polka led fiercely by Hoffman\u2019s fiddle.<\/p>\n

Influences went beyond Europe, too, in the bluesy, stately, and absolutely charming \u201cAuf der Heide,\u201d written by the popular cabaret entertainer Willy Rosen, who wrote a great deal while interned at the Nazi transit camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands before perishing at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

The program ended with the wistful, anonymously written \u201cOn A Heym.\u201d \u201cWhen will this walking stop\u2026When will this war end \/ Because I cannot walk any further. \/ They chase us, they hurt us, they torture us \/ Life passes without any hope.\u201d Still, the very existence of such a song, not to mention the all-out commitment with which Lemper sang it, bespeaks the survival of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cA difficult journey, but a necessary journey.\u201d Donations to Last Musik are accepted online through the Center for Jewish History, which is also reachable by phone at 212-294-8301.<\/p>\n

*BC, April 8, 2016<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jon Sobel* For three decades, Italian musician Francesco Lotoro has traveled the world collecting manuscripts of music written in concentration camps and the Jewish ghettoes during World War II by victims and survivors of the Holocaust. He has transcribed and recorded some 5,000 of the 17,000 works he has already unearthed. But thousands more… leggi <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4296,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9316],"tags":[],"position":[],"class_list":["post-2984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nCULTURE Songs for Eternity in New York City - Pagine Ebraiche International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2016\/04\/17\/culture-songs-for-eternity-with-ute-lemper\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CULTURE Songs for Eternity in New York City - Pagine Ebraiche International\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Jon Sobel* For three decades, Italian musician Francesco Lotoro has traveled the world collecting manuscripts of music written in concentration camps and the Jewish ghettoes during World War II by victims and survivors of the Holocaust. 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