Violins of Hope: The Album

from the Amazon.com Web page for the album being discussed

Readers may recall that, this past February, this site reported on two performances presented as part of the Violins of Hope project. That name refers to a priceless collection of recovered and meticulously restored instruments from the Holocaust era. The restorations were realized through the efforts of Amnon Weinstein and his son Avshalom, both Israeli luthiers. The restored instruments have been exhibited in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Many of the instruments were played by prisoner-musicians in the ghettos and labor/death camps. Of the 86 instruments that have been restored to date, 50 were brought to the Bay Area, many of which were featured in a well-organized exhibit on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. The exhibit was often open at times when Herbst Theatre audiences were waiting to enter.

The first of the two performances that I covered was entitled Along the Trade Route and was presented without charge in the Koret Auditorium of the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. It was hosted by klezmer expert Cookie Segelstein, joined by three other violinists specializing in different cultures. I seem to recall Segelstein observing that the instruments in the collection were better in display cases than in the hands of skilled violinists; but none of the players on the program (including Segelstein herself) seemed to be wrestling with his/her respective instrument.

The second performance took place in Davies Symphony Hall as part of the series of chamber music recitals presented by members of the San Francisco Symphony. Cellist Barbara Bogatin served as host, and all of the selections were string trios. The other performers were violinist Raushan Akhmedyarova and violist Adam Smyla, and all three of the instruments had been restored under the auspices of Violins of Hope.

Both of these offerings had much to offer the attentive listener, not only Segelstein’s historically-informed approach to klezmer but also the Davies offerings of two of the composers held in the Theresienstadt transfer camp, Gideon Klein and Hans Krása. I offer this as context, because, only weeks after I had covered these events, Albany Records released a Violins of Hope album featuring violinist Niv Ashkenazi. This happened to be when the exhibit had moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where most of the performance events have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the context of the performances I had experienced, I found myself for the most part disappointed with this recording. The selections of both composers and compositions amounted to what my Yiddish-speaking ancestors would have called a mish-mosh (the “authorized spelling” according to Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish). Ernest Bloch’s “Nigun” was there, pulled out of context as it usually is when selected for an encore; and it was followed immediately by John Williams’ theme for the movie Schindler’s List. The two Holocaust victims on the album are Robert Dauber (Theresienstadt-Dachau) and Szymon Laks (Auschwitz). Paul Ben-Haim got out of Europe before being captured by the Nazis and subsequently went on to become the grand old man of contemporary music in the newly-formed State of Israel. The inclusion of Lucien Garban’s arrangement of Maurice Ravel’s “Kaddish” song probably serves as the ironic gesture of the album, while the arrangement of music from Sharon Farber’s “Bestemming” cello concerto (including narration by Tony Campisi) ran the gamut from insipid to tedious.