Pasatieri's Letter To Warsaw
Thomas Pasatieri's song-cycle for soprano and orchestra, "Letter to Warsaw" (2003)is a worthy companion to Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 and Beveridge's "Yizkor Requiem" as a large-scale work written in commemoration of the Holocaust. Pasatieri (b. 1945) is an American composer of opera and song. This CD was my first experience with his music. He composed the work under a commission from Music of Remembrance, a Seattle-based organization formed in 1998 dedicated to commemorating Holocaust musicians. "Letter to Warsaw" received its first performance from Music of Remembrance on May 10, 2004, Holocaust Memorial Day, in Seattle.
"Music of Remembrance" is a song-cycle of approximately 70 minutes in which six songs for soprano solo, movingly performed here by Jane Eaglen, alternate with orchestral sections. The work is directed by Gerald Schwarz with Mina Miller, the director of Music of Remembrance, playing the piano, which figures importantly in this score. The texts were composed by Pola Braun (b; 1910), a Warsaw poet and cabaret singer. Braun was deported from Warsaw in 1942 and killed at Treblinka in November, 1943. Two of the six poems, "Jew" (no. 1) and "Tsurik a Heym" (no. 3) were written in Warsaw while the remaining poems, "Mother" (no. 7), "Letter to Warsaw" (no. 9), and "an ordinary day" and "moving day" (no. 12) were written at Treblinka. The final poem is a setting of the Jewish Mourner's Kaddish, the prayer for the dead.
I tend to be skeptical of topical pieces. But "Prayer for Warsaw" succeeds both as a commemoration of the Holocaust and as a work of music. The music has an almost immediate, visceral appeal; and it tugs at the heart from the opening few bars in which the violins sing a song of grief. Ms. Englen has a darkly-hued soprano voice which brings out the emotion, passion, and sorrow in Braun's texts. I thought the vocal writing moves beautifully between declamation and lyricism, with a moment of cabaret-style chanteuse singing in the climactic "Letter to Warsaw". The orchestral sections are also effective, with long melodies in the strings alternating with solos for brass, flute, and clarinet. At times the work has a klezmer-like feel. In particular, sections 4-6 of the work are an integrated piece of orchestral writing within the framework of the piece as a whole. I was reminded of Mendelssohn's symphony no. 2 "Lobesgang" at times, with its alternating voice and orchestral sections and its spiritual theme, as well as of the more obvious antecedents in Gorecki and Beveridge.
This work is part of the Naxos "American Classics" series and sells at a budget price. It includes full and informative program notes as well as the song texts. This disk will appeal to those listeners wanting to explore new works of contemporary American music as well as to those listeners wanting to hear artistic meditations on the Holocaust.
