Forbidden Music with New Century Chamber Orchestra

Last Saturday at Herbst Theater, the New Century Chamber Orchestra offered a program of "Forbidden Music," consisting of pieces by Jewish composers who had been banned and/or murdered by the Nazi regime. The concert began with the String Symphony #13 by Felix Mendelssohn, which he wrote at age 14. Music Director Daniel Hope introduced the work, and the subsequent String Symphony #10 after intermission, with the claim that Mendelssohn was even more of an accomplished musical prodigy than Mozart. The two short symphonies were charming and well-played but reminded me that as much as I love Mozart, his juvenalia is not very interesting and neither is Mendelssohn's.

This was followed by Hans Krasa's Tanec, a short, spiky dance piece for string trio that had been expanded for a larger ensemble. Hope explained that the Jewish Czech composer wrote the work while in the "showcase" concentration camp of Theresienstadt before being sent to his death at age 45 in Auschwitz the following year.

This was followed by Shostakovich's 1967 Chamber Symphony, an expansion of his 1960 String Quartet #8. Hope mentioned that Shostakovich was not Jewish, but that he was honorary in this company because he used lots of Jewish themes in his music, and though the Nazis didn't persecute him, Stalin and his regime certainly made life hell.

It's an amazing work, five distinct movements that run together without pause, beginning with a mournful sequence that morphs into a crazed Hasidic dance, and in its penultimate movement has a repeated, jagged, striking, four-note punctuation for all the strings that is thrilling. The performance was superb and had the audience buzzing at intermission.

The second half of the program was focused on the 1927 Double Concerto by Erwin Schulhoff, another Jewish Czech composer who died in a concentration camp in 1942. I have heard about a half dozen chamber pieces by Schulhoff over the last decade, who seems to be on a lot of musicians' rediscovery radar, which is a good thing because he wrote great music, somewhere between Alban Berg and Kurt Weill with a Czech flavor all its own.

The concerto was originally written for flute, piano, and chamber orchestra, but Hope admitted that he stole the flute part for himself on the violin. He's an extraordinary performer, and seemed to be having a good time towering over Venezuelan piano soloist Vanessa Perez, but I wish we had heard the original flute version instead. Listening to a recording on YouTube with those forces, the piece sounds lighter and jazzier than the violin substitution, but it didn't really matter. It's a pleasure just getting to hear more Schulhoff.

For an encore, Hope and Perez played Ravel's Kaddish, an appropriate enough choice. There was also an announcement in the program that this summer the ensemble will be making their first European tour throughout Germany with a side trip to Poland. The New Century Chamber Orchestra is sounding better than ever under its new Music Director and they should be a success.