Lori Laitman: The Seed of Dream - 05 "No sad Songs, please"

Lori Laitman: The Seed of Dream - 05 "No sad Songs, please"
Concert recording from St. Katherine cathedral in Vilnius, Lithuania.
27.01.09

Stein Skjervold (Norway), baritone (www.steinskjervold.no)
Tom Collingwood (UK), cello
Sonata Zuboviene (Lithuania), piano (http://www.impetus.lt/bio_zuboviene_EN.shtml)

Lori Laitman is one of America's most prolific and widely performed composers of art song. Her cycle "The Seed of Dream" is based on the poems of the Yiddish poet and Second World War partisan Abraham Suzkever. Performing this cycle in Vilnius was special, as Suzkever wrote the poems in the Vilna (Vilnius) Ghetto between 1941 and 1944 (the last poem was written in the Narocz forest). Moreover, the concert - which also included Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time - took place on The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day for the liberation of Auschwitz.

From Lori Laitman's Program Notes:
"Scored for baritone voice, cello and piano, "The Seed of Dream" sets several poems of the Vilna Ghetto survivor Abraham Suzkever (1913). Four of the five poems were translated by Pulitzer Prize winning poet C.K.Williams, while "Beneath the Whiteness of your Stars" was translated by Leonard Wolf. Sutzkever consistently produced poems of great artistry uder the most dire of circumstances. These first-person accounts, written between 1941 and 1944, not only bear witness of the destruction around him, but to his undying belief in the beauty of the world and the world."

Category:

Music

[lampardm]

Absolutely wonderful. Congratulations.

Thanks for posting. It has made my evening watching this performance

[raelyz]

I'm your fan!

[Yale75]

Beautiful job!