Philomusica Quartet Opens Season With ‘Hope and Remembrance’

Philomusica Quartet.

“Hope and Remembrance,” a performance described as both a concert and an act of memory, opens the Philomusica Quartet’s season Monday, Oct. 27.

Playing instruments brought to Wisconsin through the Violins of Hope residency presented by the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, Jeanyi Kim (violin), Alexander Mandl (violin), Nathan Hackett (viola) and Adrien Zitoun (cello) will present three string quartets woven with historical memory, cultural identity and transcendent artistry.

Violins of Hope is a collection of string instruments, many originally owned by Jews and played during the Holocaust. A father and son, both violin makers, assembled the collection and restored the instruments to concert quality. The instruments travel to communities around the world for brief residencies. During their time in Wisconsin, the violins, violas and cellos are being featured in exhibits, performances and educational programs organized by more than 60 partners across the state.

Philomusica’s program opens with a performance of the String Quartet No. 3 by Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), a composer, conductor and pianist who studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg. The work is considered the instrumental masterpiece among more than 20 pieces that Ullmann wrote while a prisoner at Theresienstadt, a Nazi transit camp in Czechoslovakia. Conductor Kenneth Woods describes the quartet’s four movements, played without pause, as “an exemplary balance of rigor and passion, a compelling formal logic and a wealth of beautiful melodic writing.”

While imprisoned at Theresienstadt, Ullmann reflected upon the struggle of composing “where everything of an artistic nature is the very antithesis of one’s environment.” However, he concluded that creative endeavor was possible because “our desire for culture was matched by our desire for life.” In October 1944, Ullmann was deported to Auschwitz and died in its gas chambers.

Sholom Secunda (1894-1974) immigrated from Russia to the United States as a teenager. He gained fame as one of the most prolific and celebrated composers of songs for the American Yiddish musical theater.

Secunda, who studied composition and orchestration with Ernest Bloch, also wrote classical works, including the Quartet in C Minor on Jewish Melodies. The four movements of the quartet incorporate musical references to the traditions of eastern European Ashkenazi Jewry, explains Neil W. Levin of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music. “There are specific identifiable tunes with established liturgical functions, ubiquitous motifs from synagogue song in general and from biblical cantillation, and hints throughout at typical Ashkenazi patterns and modalities.”  The piece includes echoes of Secunda’s writing for the stage, Levin says: “…typical harmonic language and clichés, original melodic fragments with popular hints, and chromatic cascades employed as ‘fills.'”

The final work on the program is Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A Minor, written when Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was only 18. The use of his song “Ist es wahr? (Is it True?)” throughout the work “gives the quartet its emotional and structural cohesion,” explains Mandl.

Philomusica will perform “Hope and Remembrance” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, at Schwan Concert Hall at Wisconsin Lutheran College, 8800 W. Blue Mound Rd., where the quartet is in residence. Tickets are available online or at the box office.

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