Night’ Concert Project a STAND AGAINST HATE!
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The ‘Night’ Concert Project A STAND AGAINST HATE! “The Holocaust must remind us: We must put a stop to the Hate that is simmering in the world… because it can only lead to further genocides!“ 1 The ‘Night’ Concert A STAND AGAINST HATE! The concept of The ‘Night’ concert is to communicate A STAND AGAINST HATE - hate that is simmering throughout the world in our time. The concert presents the Holocaust experience as an example that Hate eventually leads to genocide! The principle intent is to promote this Stand Against Hate through the use of ‘Night’ - the historic memoir of the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), who survived the Auschwitz death camp at age 15, and integrating it with the amazing music of Leib Glantz (1898-1964), which was transformed from the Liturgic genre to the Classical music genre by the renowned American composer Joseph Ness. The concert event is planned to be performed in concert halls, theatrical venues and places of worship throughout the world by prestigious orchestras, choirs, soloists and actors. The audiences at these concerts are offered a truly moving experience – the performance of excerpts from the memoir ‘Night’, accompanied by a rear-screen projection of historical genocide photos, a symphony orchestra, a massive choir, performances by professional international singers and teenage vocalists. The ‘Night’ acting/narrating is performed by nationally prominent actors in the language of each country in which the event is performed. Composer Leib Glantz’s music is sung in the Hebrew language with translated subtitles appearing on the giant stage screen. 2 The World Premiere of the ‘Night’ Concert in Kaliningrad, Russia 2January 27, 2019 The World Premiere took place in the Baltic Sea city of Kaliningrad, Russia on January 27, 2019. The concert was performed at the amazing Kaliningrad Dome – formerly the Prussian Cathed- ral of Königsberg. Twenty compositions of the great composer Leib Glantz were performed by three vocal soloists – Cantor Daniel Mutlu (New York), Tamara Gverdt- siteli (Moscow), and Helena Goldt (Berlin), as well as three instrumental soloists – Violinist Rita Schteinfer (Israel), Cellist Grigory Yanovsky (Isra- el), and Oboist Ekaterina Bergstedt (Sweden). The artistic director, Maestro Arkadi Feldman, conducted the Kaliningrad Symphony Orchestra and four international choir ensembles – The Moscow Jewish Male Capella, The Vilnius State Choir, The Cyrillic Chamber Choir, and The Kaliningrad Musical Theatre Choir – totalling more than 100 singers. The world-famous Russian actress and singer Tamara Gverdtsiteli presented excerpts from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel’s shocking memoir ‘Night’ – the recounting of his experience as a 15-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz death camps during World War Two. Cantor and leading opera tenor Daniel Mutlu sang the musical liturgic compositions of Leib Glantz (1898- 1964), as recomposed and orchestrated by American Maestro Joseph Ness. This ‘Night’ concert was accompanied by a video PowerPoint presentation on a giant screen, depicting historical Holocaust and other genocide images. 3 The ‘Night’ Concert in Vilnius, Lithuania January 29, 2019 The identical ‘Night’ concert was performed on January 29, 2019 at the St. Johns Church in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, formerly known as “The Jerusalem of the North.” This concert again included The Kaliningrad Symphony Orchestra, The Vilnius State Choir, and The Moscow Jewish Male Capella, with soloists Daniel Mutlu and Helena Goldt. The renowned Lithuanian actress Elze Guda- viciute presented excerpts from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel’s shocking memoir ‘Night’, with Holocaust images presented on a giant screen. Lithuanian National TV projected the concert to the entire nation. The importance of presenting the ‘Night’ Holocaust Concert in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, was the fact that 95% of the Jewish population of 210,000 were murdered in the Holocaust. More than 205,000 of Lithuania‘s Jewish population were massacred over the three-year German occupation – a more complete destruction than befell any other country affected by the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the local Lithuanian paramilitaries, and not by the German Nazi forces that occupied Lithuania as of June 1941. Jews had lived in the area now known as Lithuania since the fourteenth century. Lithuania had been a center of Jewish learning and religious study during the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Vilna in particular was called “The Jerusalem of the North.” Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (also known as the Vilna Gaon, or the Genius of Vilna), who lived from 1720 to 1797, had established a famous school that attracted some of the brightest minds and scholars in the Jewish world. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jewish culture in Lithuania thrived. There were over 100 synagogues in Vilnius (Vilna) before the Holocaust. 4 The German Premiere of the ‘Night’ Holocaust Concert in Hanover, Germany January 27, 2020 The date of January 27, 1945 is inextricably linked to German history. Since 2005, the Inter- national Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Holocaust has commemorated the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of that day. On this occasion, several organizations collaborated to present an international concert event to Hanover, at the 3,600-seat “Kuppelsaal” Hanover Congress Centrum: the Region of Hanover; the Ahlem Memorial; the City of Hannover; the Villa Selig- mann for Jewish Music; the Hanover Association for International Understanding and Tolerance; and the USA ‘Night’ Holocaust Project. The ‘Night’ concert combines the liturgical music of Leib Glantz, recom- posed and orchestrated by American Maestro Joseph Ness, with excerpts from the memoir ’Night’ by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. This concert was dedicated to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, who passed away in 2016 at age 87. The symphonic music of Leib Glantz was performed under the musical direction of Russian Maestro Arkadi Feldman by the Russian Kaliningrad Symphony Orchestra, the Lithuanian State Choir Vilnius, the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella, the North German Synagogue Choir and the Synagogue Choir of Hanover. Three internationally famous soloists performed the music: tenor Daniel Mutlu (New York), soprano Helena Goldt (Berlin) and baritone Benjamin Maissner (Toronto). “The ‘Night’ Holocaust Project” aims to keep alive the memories of Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) and connect them with the moving music of Leib Glantz (1898-1964), one of the most important cantors and composers of Jewish music. Elie Wiesel’s memoir was exceptionally performed in German by the internationally acclaimed movie and stage actor Sebastian Koch. 5 The Holocaust The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. In 1933, the Jewish population in Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the “Final Solution” – the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. The Nazi regime established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. 6 Genocides The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Notable Genocides in History: victims 1. The Holocaust Nazi-Germany controlled Europe 1942-1945 11,000,000 2. Holodomor Genocide Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic 1932-1933 7,500,000 3. Cambodian Genocide Democratic Kampuchea 1975-1979 3,000,000 4. Armenian Genocide Ottoman Empire 1915-1922 1,500,000 5. Rwandan Genocide Rwanda 1994-1994 1,000,000 6. Greek Genocide Ottoman Empire 1914-1922 750,000 7. Assyrian Genocide Ottoman Empire 1915-1923 750,000 8. Zunghar Genocide Western Mongolia 1755-1758 600,000 9. Porajmos/Romani Genocide Nazi controlled Europe 1935-1945 500,000 10. Genocide by the Ustase Croatia 1941-1945 385,000 11. Bangladesh Genocide Bangladesh 1971-1971 3,000,000 12. Burundi Genocides Burundi 1972-1972 & 1993-1993 260,000 13. Kurdish Genocide Ba’atist Iraq 1986-1989 200,000 14. Guatemalan Genocide Guatemala 1962-1996 170,000 15. Hereo & Namaqua Genocide German SW Africa 1904-1908 110,000 16. Bosnian Genocide Bosnia & Herzegovina 1992-1995 39,000 17. Selk’nam Genocide Chile, Tierra del Fuego 1999-2001 4,000 18. Genocide of Yazidis (by ISIS) Iraq & Syria 2014-present. Thousands 19. Syrian Genocide Syria 2011-present. est. 500,000 7 The ‘Night’ Concerts Kaliningrad | Vilnius | Hanover 8 Biography Elie Wiesel Born September 30, 1928, Eliezer Wiesel led a life representative of many Jewish children. Growing up in Sighet, a small village in Romania, his world revolved around family, religious study, community and God. Yet his family, community, and his innocent faith were destroyed upon the deportation of his village in 1944. Arguably the most powerful and renowned passage in Holocaust literature, his first book, ‘Night’ , a memoir of a 15-year-old death- camp survivor, records the inclusive experience of the Jews: – Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. – Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.