2617Booklet.indd 1 09/09/2015 17:08:11 Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi Presents CITY OF THE FUTURE YIDDISH SONGS FROM THE FORMER SOVIET UNION City of the Future: Some Thoughts on a Polonski’s catalogue of works includes numerous World Premiere Recording compositions, both instrumental and vocal, by Eric A. Gordon based on Jewish themes, and others based on the folk cultures of Belarus and elsewhere. City of the Future is a contemporary recreation of the 19 Reading the brief biographical entry on songs in his 1931 songbook Far yugnt/For Youth. Shmuel (Samuel) Vladimirovich Polonski in the There was in fact another collection, 30 lider far Encyclopedia of Soviet Composers and Musicians kinder/30 Songs for Children, published in 1930, (Moscow, 1981) and Tatiana Halevo (see below), also including lyrics by leading Soviet Yiddish we learn the basic outlines of a life ardently poets such as Kulbak, Feffer, Kvitko and others. devoted to music. Born in 1902 in Gaisino in the Another project, perhaps? Podolsk region of Ukraine, Polonski grew up in a traditional Jewish environment, the son of a Obviously not one of the leaders of Soviet music, klezmer violinist father and a mother who knew Polonski was, however, central to Soviet Jewish and sang a treasury of folk songs. Shmuel himself music. He composed and conducted, enlisting became a master of improvisation on woodwind the collaboration of major poets, and published instruments and played in an itinerant klezmer his work. It’s worth noting that Polonski died at orchestra. the age of 52 in 1955 – two years after Stalin – so until we learn more, we presume that he was left But the world was changing fast: He was 15 years personally unscathed by the anti-Jewish Terror of old in 1917 when the Russian Revolution broke the 1940s and 1950s; but there is scant reference out. From the age of 17 to 20, he served in the Red to him after his move to Moscow in 1945, when he Army, and by his early 20s was already leading returned from the internal eastward evacuation musical ensembles and choruses. that saved millions of Soviet Jews, and Jews from elsewhere in Europe as well. 2 2617Booklet.indd 2 09/09/2015 17:08:11 Polonski occupied the space allowed for and created by Soviet Jewish musicians in a world that had, to say the least, its uncertainties. In 1931, the Great Purges of the mid - 1930s were still unforeseeable, not to mention a new World War and the Holocaust, wherein 20 million, or possibly 25 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in the defense of the motherland, and of course the postwar crackdown on Jewish culture. The 1931 songbook predates the Stalin cult of personality: His name appears not once. In 1931, there were Yiddish schools, theaters, choruses, and the autonomous Jewish republic of Birobidzhan in the Far East had just been established. Polonski’s Foreword proposes that this collection form the basis of a new Soviet Jewish repertoire for use in the Yiddish school system. The year 1931: While the rest of the world languished in a profound economic depression, the USSR was building and growing, and even importing skilled workers. At that particular moment in the arc of Russian, Soviet, and world history, this 29 - year-old composer had reason to be hopeful. Addressing himself to youth, Polonski optimistically presumed that other songbooks and new traditions would emerge. But perhaps there are deeper messages in these songs. Polonski might have guessed that with growing urbanization, industrialization and assimilation, the future of Yiddish in the Soviet Union could not be extremely bright. (These same larger historical forces operated everywhere, not only in the USSR.) Polonski surely knew that the Yiddish schools were not attracting a large number of Jewish children, nor would Birobidzhan ever draw a significant population of Jews. Most parents wanted their children in Russian - language schools to ease their integration into modern society. It gives me a chill to imagine 10 - year - old boys in Soviet Yiddish schools singing the Itzik Feffer song “Red Army” in 1931. Ten years later they would be young men of twenty and heading for the front to defend their homeland from the Nazi invaders. I know it’s hyperbole to say this, but I can’t resist making the claim that this song (and similar ones in other Soviet song books for youth) saved the world from fascism! We find in these songs, published with solo piano accompaniment, a level of musicianship and modernity – even of experimentalism in places – and a technical range well beyond the capacities of most children’s choruses. Some of these are more properly characterized as art songs. The lyrics, many of them, are by the most respected names in the Soviet Yiddish pantheon. Undoubtedly Polonski used some of these songs in the Jewish Philharmonic Choir that he directed in Minsk for more than a decade, 1929 – 1941. 3 2617Booklet.indd 3 09/09/2015 17:08:12 What I am suggesting is that while Polonski wrote these songs in utter sincerity, it was not in reality the Yiddish schoolchildren whom he was ultimately addressing. Polonski poured all his craft into these songs as a record of a given uplifting moment in time, and as a legacy to the future. In a very real sense – that became more real as the terrible tragedies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s unfolded – Polonski wrote these songs for the future, for us to discover and cherish. Now a large percentage of the Jews in the former Soviet Union are gone, the USSR itself a puff of smoke, the ideal of socialism a burning ember. The big-name poets featured here were all liquidated in a frenzy of Stalinist anti-Semitism. And yet these artifacts remain of a time of progress, building, pride, and hope. They celebrate great upheavals and changes, ask important questions, and immortalize ephemeral moments of rustic pleasure. Their honest, forward-looking spirit offers us new pleasures and new courage to make a better world in our own time. As a performance of all 19 songs in concert, the songbook was first presented by the Mit Gezang Yiddish Chorus of the Polonski’s Songbook, 1931 Southern California Arbeter Ring (Workmen’s Circle), directed by Kathryn Rowe, on August 10, 2008. That audience, and another a year later in Tucson, Arizona, are for all practical purposes the only people who have heard these songs. Only two or three of these songs at most ever escaped the pages of the songbook into the known Yiddish repertoire, “A krenetse” and “Fabrik lid” (“Hirsh Lekert” was an already extant folksong, and appeared as the first number in the songbook, as if to say, “This is the history we came out of.”). The rest are all first-time recordings that we hope will be received with interest and joy. [Those who read Russian are referred to Tatiana Halevo, “Forgotten Music of Soviet Jewry: Samuil Polonskij,” in Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies, Vol. I, The Moscow Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, Moscow, 2010.] 4 2617Booklet.indd 4 09/09/2015 17:08:13 Yale Strom’s Artist Statement: After thoroughly going through each song’s In 1931, Yiddish culture was thriving in the melody and reading the lyrics, I decided that if former Soviet Union. There were Yiddish schools, these songs were to have any relevancy for today’s theatres, choirs, literature and discussion groups. lovers of Yiddish song, I could not just recreate Polonski’s arrangements. Many of his melodies In 1928 The Jewish Autonomous Region, better were similar in their march-like feel and I knew known as Birobidzhan, had been established as this would quickly become rather boring for the an independent oblast, a homeland (located past listener. Consequently, I composed introductions Siberia along the Amur River) for Jews where to many of the songs using klezmer, classical, Yiddish along with Russian were the official Russian folk and jazz motifs. I also arranged the languages of the state. (To learn more about songs in such a way as to take advantage of the Birobidzhan, you can see my documentary film, different timbres of the singers who are on this “L’Chayim, Comrade Stalin!”.) recording. For example, in the song “The Factory” Shmuel Polonski was a 29-year-old composer I gave this a cappella piece a Khasidic flavor, whereas “October” was arranged as an art song who wanted to spread the joy of Yiddish and and “Young Forces” has a carnival klezmer feel. the Soviet way of life through his songs, which The seven singers you will hear on this recording were to be sung by youth choruses. Polonski represent some of the best interpreters of Yiddish set his original compositions to poems by such song performing today. This recording brings a renowned Yiddish poets as Peretz Markish, Izi freshness to a genre of Yiddish songs that still Kharik and Itzik Feffer. His music is noted for its resonates today. I hope this project encourages experimentalism, and demands a high level of Yiddish singers to once again sing these songs that musicianship and vocal range for any singer, represent a golden era of Yiddish culture in Soviet especially for children. Jewish history. From left to right: Norbert Stachel, Peter Stan, From left to right: Jeff Pekarek , Yale Strom & Elizabeth Schwartz Yale Strom & Elizabeth Schwartz 5 2617Booklet.indd 5 09/09/2015 17:08:13 Artist Biographies: Yale Strom (violinist, the Old World to the New, hosted by Leonard composer, filmmaker, Nimoy, as well as numerous film and dance writer, photographer, scores.