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Return, a song cycle for baritone & piano
A few years ago I visited my hometown Leipzig for the first time in forty-eight years. My wife and companion for over fifty years was with me. We walked hand in hand through the streets which were the streets of our childhood. The houses looked smaller, the streets narrower and time had eaten into the walls of the houses a shade of gray, death and decay. It was bitter cold and all the windows were closed. The snow muffled our four steps as we walked in the middle of the street, for very few cars were circulating then in Leipzig.
These were the houses, once our homes. Here lived our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, childhood playmates, school comrades, uncles, aunts, cousins and other relatives. Nameplates of people we
once knew, attached to the outside of houses, were removed and the gaping holes have never been filled. In our minds we recalled the names which each house evoked. There was an eerie silence behind the windows. Nobody knew us, nobody greeted us. Who lives now behind these windows? We saw the old churches and the empty spaces where once our synagogues stood. Our old parochial school is still standing but there is not a single child of our faith there to attend it. The school is
now an institution for the blind.
Return is the music for this scenario, though written some thirty years ago. We were “Travelers knocking at the moonlit doors,” sailors from “The shore of darkness” and weary exiles without a home in the sky, the waters and the earth. At the old cemetery there is only one tombstone with our name. Most of the others have no tombstone, no cemetery. Clasping our hands we knew that we had not returned. We only visited as two of the “three beautiful pilgrims who came here together touch slightly the dust of the ground.” Return is only in the clasp of our hands. No more, no less. (These songs are dedicated to Dr. and Mrs. Sidney Friedman who believed when nobody else did.) —Herman Berlinski, 1985
Sinfonia No. 10 for Cello and Organ (1977)
This work is dedicated to the memory of Milton Feist, rabbi, kabbalist, music publisher and a dear friend. Milton, crippled at the age of four by polio lived his whole life in a wheel chair. This life, a never ceasing struggle against the overwhelming power and brutality of this disease became to all who knew him a metaphor for the triumph of the spirit over a decaying body. Milton Feist was called, after he had passed on, by his Kabbalist colleagues MEIR a “Shining Star.” He was and through his faith I still believe, he is.
The first movement of this Sinfonia is based upon kabbalistic interpretation of the words of Psalm 130 “Out of the depth have I called Thee O Lord.” According to kabbalistic tradition it is not from the depths of desperation that we cry unto the Lord. It is into our own depths we must reach in order to experience God and only then can we address ourselves to Him. No traditional Hebrew music motifs are used, in this movement but it nevertheless mirrors a central Jewish attitude towards religion. Faith does not just exist. It must be acquired from the depths of ones own being. However, for the blessing of the Lord, one must, like Jacob with the angel, fight for it. The `cello here becomes a metaphor for man who, groping for wordless prayer, the experience of God; is confronted with a brutal, seemingly impenetrable wall of sound, to be pierced only by deep and abiding faith which first we must acquire. Only a few among us succeed in this
fight which, after all, leaves all of us somewhat limping.
The second movement is based on a melody called: Av-Ha-Rachamim (Father of Mercy) attributed to the 19th Century Russian-Jewish composer Abraham Dunayevsky. From a musical point of view it is a set of theme and variations. The hostile sound wall slowly overcome, gives way to prayer which flows towards its intended destination. —Herman Berlinski, 1999
Herman Berlinski
Composer and organist was born of Polish Jewish parents in Leipzig on August 18, 1910. His prolific output includes symphonic and chamber works, solo works for the organ, song cycles, numerous liturgical choral works, and oratorios. Among his recent large-scale works is Ets Chayim (The Tree of Life), commissioned by Project Judaica for performance at the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C., on the opening of the “Precious Lagacy” exhibit.
Berlinski has given organ recitals throughout Europe and America, in Temple Emanu-El, New York; Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris; and the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. His principal works for the organ include Eleven Sinfonias, The Burning Bush, and The Glass Bead Game, commissioned by the Rogers Organ Company for the new Carnegie Hall organ in 1974. In 1993, the Union Theological Seminary of New York commissioned Berlinski, with Catholic composer Robert Helmschrott of Munich and Protestant composer Heinz Werner Zimmermann of Frankfurt, to compose a work in honor of the German Anti-Nazi fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Altar Tryptichon for Bonhoeffer” has now been performed in America, Germany, Isreal, and South Africa.
Herman Berlinski received his primary music education at the Landeskonsevatorium Leipzig, graduating with honors in 1932. Forced to leave Germany at the onset of the Nazi regime, he became a student of the Ecole Normale de Musique, studying composition with Nadia Boulanger and piano with Alfred Cortot. Berlinski, formerly a Polish citizen, enlisted as a volunteer in the French Army, receiving the Croix du Combattant Volontaire from the French government for his wartime service. He fled the German occupation of France in 1941, settling in New York. In 1960 he became the first doctoral candidate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to earn the degree of Doctor of Sacred Music. He has held the posts of organist at Temple Emanu-El, New York, and Minister of Music to the Washington Hebrew Congregation. He was the founder and director of the Shir Chadash Chorale, a choir distinguished by its pioneering programs of historical and contemporary Jewish music.
Berlinski has lectured as a visiting professor in many institutions of learning, both here in the United States and in Germany. His most recent lectures were given under the auspices of the American Information Agency at the Mendelssohn Academy, Leipzig, and at the Europischen Zentrum for Judische Musik, Hannover. Among the honors, awards, and fellowships the composer has received are a MacDowell fellowship (1958); The Peabody Waite Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1984); a commission from the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress (1985); the establishment of the Herman Berlinski Collection at the Sabin Music Center of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1986); the Shenandoah University and Conservatory medal of Excellence (1992); and The Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Guild of Organists (1995). He was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse by the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1995.
Berlinski's most recent major work, Oratorio Job (Hiob), may also be his most important. Commissioned for the ground-breaking ceremony for the re-building of the synagogue in the city of Dresden, Germany, received its world-premiere there (in its German version) on November 9th 1998. This work was performed by singers, dancers, the orchestra of the Dresden State Opera and the Dresden Chamber Choir, all under the direction of Hans Christoph Rademann.
Bass-Baritone Donald Boothman 's varied career as singer, teacher and musical commentator includes performances in operas, oratorio and concert in forty-six of the United States and in thirty-eight countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. His formal education at Princeton and Oberlin was in English Literature as well as Music, and subsequent teachers have included William Albert Hughes in Oratorio and Welsh Song, Daniel Harris in Opera and the great Todd Duncan in every aspect of the vocal art.
Boothman came to Washington, D.C. as a soloist and announcer for the U.S. Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants, and following that service, became the leading baritone with the Washington Civic Opera. He also began teaching, both privately and on the faculty of The American University. For many years he was the Cantorial Soloist at the Washington Hebrew Congregation Donald Boothman has been recognized here and abroad as an outstanding interpreter of songs—one who hold the musical and poetic values in equal measure and possessing the taste and technique to perform Baroque Oratorio or abstract contemporary chamber music as living and persuasive expressions.
Lori Barnet, cello, is an active freelance musician in the Washington, DC area. She is a graduate of Bennington College, where she first developed an interest in contemporary performance. Currently, she is cellist for two ensembles specializing in the presentation of contemporary repertoire: Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia, and the Contemporary Music Forum in Washington, DC. She has toured Russia, Denmark and England with Orchestra 2001 and participated in their many recording projects, available on CRI. Barnet regularly appears as soloist, recitalist and chamber artist, and serves as principal cellist with two orchestras in Washington, the National Chamber Orchestra and the Washington Chamber Symphony. She is professor of cello at The George Washington University and cello coach for the Montgomery County (MD) Youth Orchestras. Also available on CRI is her recording of Robert Parris' Fantasy & Fugue for Solo Cello (CRI CD 792).
RETURN, a song cycle for baritone & piano (1950, rev. 1985) (21:37)
1. The Listener (Walter de la Mare) (6:09)*
2. Return (Demetrios Capetanakis) (6:30)
3. Travelogue for Exiles (Karl Sahpireo) (2:40)
4. Portrait of a Girl (Conrad Aiken) (6:18)
Donald Bothamn, baritone; Herman Berlinski, piano
*The Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and the Society of Authors as their representative.
SINFONIA No. 10 for `Cello and Organ
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I - “Min-Ha-Maakim” Out of the depths (19:12)
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II - “Av-Ha-Rachamim” Father of Mercey (17:26)
Lori Barnet, cello; Herman Berlinski, organ
Total Playing Time: 58:20
(p) 1987, 2000 & (c) 2000 Composers Recordings, Inc.
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