Album Notes

This album is a tribute to the composers of the Jewish Music Society founded in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1908. They joined in an unprecedented collective effort to create a Jewish national school of classical music. The major composers were Joseph Achron (1886-1943), Mikhail Gnesin (1883-1957), Alexander Krein (1883-1951), Moshe Milner (1886-1953) and Alexander Veprik (1899-1958), but many more participated. The movement was crushed during the Stalin regime in the 1930s. The political boycott has overshadowed this music ever since. Now, a hundred years later, it is possible to finally rediscover these musical jewels.

The idea for a program featuring music of the forgotten composers of the St. Petersburg Jewish Music Society was born during Sovali’s visit to singer Masha Benya in New York in 1999. The scores were found in libraries in New York, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin and Jerusalem. Parts of the program premièred at the International Scientific Conference of Jewish Professional Music in Russia, held in St. Petersburg, 1-2 December 2003, in commemoration of the composer Moses Milner (1886 - 1953). The recordings were made in 2007 and 2008 in Amsterdam.

“Musical Heroes” - CD review by Jan Waas in NIW (Dutch Jewish Weekly):
“Full of love for the material they found, the Sovali-Prenen duo gave a magnificent performance of the music.”

“(The album) has been carefully done with good transcriptions of the Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian lyrics, and English and Dutch translations, so the contents are accessible to everyone.”

1-10. Milner’s Vokal-suite oyf Tsen Peretz’s kinder-lider / Vocal Suite Mother and Child (1916) consists of ten songs set to Yiddish poems by Polish-Jewish poet Y.L. Peretz depicting scenes from the world of children. The music is characterized by Yiddish speech patterns.

11. Khevre leytsim / Jesters for piano solo (early 1920s) is the second movement from the piano suite Goylem by Milner. It is dedicated to folklorist S.A. Kisselhof (1876-1939).

12-16. Two Songs, Op. 52 (1922) and Three Songs, Op. 53 (1923) by Joseph Achron are dedicated to Achron’s wife, singer Marie Rap-Hof. They are are settings of Hebrew poems by Jacob Fichman, Avraham Ben-Yitzhak, David Frischmann, Jacob Cohen and Yehuda Karni. The music is based on tropes (cantillations of the Bible), freely developed and woven into contemporary Western counterpoint and harmony.

17-20. Achron’s Statuettes for Piano, Op. 66 (1930) are short monothematic tone poems.

21-22 Mikhail Gnesin set two fragments from the Song of Songs to music. Achot lanu ketana /Our sister is little, Op. 37, No. 3 (1926), is a playful song with melodic elements of Jewish dances. Ani chavatselet hasharon / I Am a Rose of Sharon, Op. 33 (1919), has the groove of a slow dance in syncopated rhythm. An undulating, pentatonic melody alternates in rondo with counter melodies, culminating in a dramatic climax that reveals Gnesin’s penchant for opera.

23-24. Gnesin’s Two Songs of Laura for the second act of The Stone Guest by A. Pushkin, Op. 51, Ia zdes’, Injezil’ia / I Am Here, Inezilia and Liubovnaia pesnia Laury / Laura’s Love Song, were written for a radio broadcast of the play in 1937.

25-26. The Two Yiddish Songs, Zayt gezunterheyt / Be Healthy and Spatsiren zaynen mir gegangen / We Went for a Stroll, Op. 8 (1926) by Alexander Veprik are arrangements of traditional Yiddish songs.
27. Kaddish (without words), Op. 6 (1925) is an original composition by Veprik with an elegiac quality. Themes from liturgical chants are interwoven in a complex contrapuntal texture with extended harmonies.

28-36. Alexander Krein’s Dances for piano, Op. 50 (1937), and Yiddish Songs, Op. 49 (1937), are arrangements of traditional Jewish folk songs and dances, several of which were collected by the ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovski.

Soprano Sovali (Sofie van Lier) and pianist Paul Prenen have been working together for a long time and form an ideal partnership in the performance of this music. Sovali studied singing with Gerhard Meyer in the Netherlands and Eleanor Steber in New York. She got a Master’s degree in musicology at the University of Amsterdam, where she graduated with Frits Noske and Ton de Leeuw. She has given solo recitals in the Netherlands and abroad, performed in music-theater productions and was featured on recordings such as Bernard van Dieren Songs with Paul Prenen (BVHaast), Le Dor Va Dor and From Ancient and Newer Roots, Klezmokum (BVHaast), Sun and Rain - Jewish Songs and Chamber Music by M.Weinberg, V.Basner and D.Shostakovich (JMP) and Tribute to Mikhail Gnesin (JMP).

Paul Prenen studied with Jan Wijn and Edith Lateiner at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, where he graduated cum laude. At present he divides his talents between the concert hall and the theatre. In addition to his piano career, he composes for film and theatre. He arranged various operas for Frank Groothof, Opera Trionfo and the Combattimento Consort and composed music for the music-theatre productions of the Werkteater and Gebroeders Flint as well as children’s theatre performances of O`ma Marée. He was featured on the JMP CD Sun and Rain - Jewish Songs and Chamber Music by M.Weinberg, V.Basner and D.Shostakovich.

See also our CDs Sun and Rain - Jewish Songs and Chamber Music by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Veniamin Basner and Dmitri Shostakovich (JMP CD 001) and Tribute to Mikhail Gnesin (JMP CD 003).