Those Unheard Are Sweeter | Renana Gutman, piano

According to Keats, “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” Confined to the Polish Ghetto as a child, killed in Auschwitz at 25, escaped to Palestine in 1933: these are the unheard composers of the Jewish diaspora, brought together in pianist Renana Gutman’s faculty recital debut. Josima Feldschuh, Gideon Klein, Paul Ben-Haim, with the influences of Berg, Ravel, and Debussy, map a musical landscape of resistance, persistence, and infinite hope.

PROGRAM:

Alban Berg (1885-1935)

Sonata op.1 (ca. 1909)

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Prelude op.28, no.4 in E minor

Josima Feldschuh (1929-1943)

(1940, Warsaw Ghetto)

Mazurka no.4, op.8 in E minor

Sabbathiada no.2, op.15 in C minor

Nocturne op.16 in G minor

Gideon Klein (1919-1945)

Sonata no.1 (1943, Theresienstadt Ghetto)

-Intermission –

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

“The Little Shepherd” from Children’s Corner (1908)

“La Soirée dans Grenade” (1903)

Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942, d. Wülzburg concentration camp)

“Suite dansante en Jazz” (1931)

1. Stomp

2. Strait

3. Waltz

4. Tango

5. Slow

6. Fox – Trot

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

“Oiseaux tristes” (“sad birds” from Miroirs, 1905)

Paul Ben-Haim (originally Paul Frankenburger, 1897-1984)

5 pieces op.34 (1943)

1. Pastorale

2. Intermezzo

3. Capriccio Agitato

4. Canzonetta

5. Toccata