Yiddish at Moscow Philarmonic

On April 15, 2023, the Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of the world-famous conductor and violinist Vladimir Spivakov conducted a concert at the Rachmaninov Concert Hall of the Moscow State Academic Philharmonic. The program included Dmitri Shostakovich’s chamber symphony “In Memory of the Victims of Fascism and War,” Isaac Schwartz’s concerto for orchestra “Yellow Stars” and Iván Fischer’s German-Jewish cantata for soprano, trumpet and orchestra, which includes a lullaby and an aria in Yiddish.

Ivan Fischer (born 1951) is a renowned Hungarian conductor, the founder and music director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and an outstanding composer. His German-Jewish cantata is associated with an interesting fact of his family history: a poem by Goethe is carved on the grave of the composer’s uncle who is buried at the Jewish cemetery of Budapest.

Another source of Fischer’s inspiration is the tragic fate of the Jews. According to the composer, he once read a very touching Yiddish poem by Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010) dedicated to his mother who was killed along with other relatives. The then young Avrom miraculously managed to save himself. When the murderers left, he put on his mother’s clothes so that he could still feel her loving warmth…

Despite the terrible contradiction between Jewish and German culture during the Holocaust, Ashkenazi Jews and Germans have a lot in common, including their related languages. That is why in Fischer’s musical “collage” the words of a Jewish folk song and Sutzkever’s tragic poem alternate with the works of Rilke and Goethe.