The Violins of Hope Cross-Cultural Concert

Amnon Weinstein working on restoring one of the Violins of Hope (courtesy of Amnon Weinstein)

Yesterday evening saw the first Violins of Hope concert to take place in San Francisco. This is the extended project presented by Music at Kohl Mansion that is now about half a month into its two-month run. The title refers to a priceless collection of recovered and meticulously restored violins from the Holocaust era. Some of these instruments found their way to the Nazi death camps, where they were played by their prisoner/owners.

The violins themselves are being displayed at a variety of venues. Here in San Francisco the most extensive exhibit is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, and it is often open at times when Herbst Theatre audiences are waiting to enter. However, there are also performances at which a few of these instruments are being played.

Yesterday’s performance took place in the Koret Auditorium of the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The concert was entitled Along the Trade Route, and it surveyed violin music from four distinctively different cultures. In order of appearance, those cultures and their respective violinists were Middle Eastern (Emmanuel During), Celtic (Darcy Noonan), Americana (Suzy Thompson), and klezmer (Cookie Segelstein). Each violinist had an accompanist. Noonan and Thompson were accompanied, respectively, by guitarists Richard Mandel and Eric Thompson. During was accompanied on the qanun by Phaedon Sinis. (Readers may recall the qanun concerts presented by Ali Paris for the Old First Concerts series.) Segelstein was accompanied by her husband Joshua Horowitz on accordion. (The two of them perform with bassist Stuart Brotman as the Veretski Pass trio.)

Segelstein moderated the entire program. She has a rich background in ethnomusicology that provided just the right amount of context for each of the four sets of the program. For my part, however, the compare-and-contrast approach to the different cultural genres was far more absorbing than the fact that instruments from the Violins of Hope collection were being performed. Each performance had its own distinctive personality; but each of those personalities was, itself, a synthesis of individuality and influence. Thus, when the Thompsons took on a sample of music from the black community of New Orleans, they suggested that the group might have been providing entertainment for a Jewish wedding.

As was announced this past December, more “formal” concert experiences will be taking place later this month; but last night’s survey was as much a celebration of the diversity of violin music as it was a platform for the Violins of Hope instruments.