The Cleveland Jewish News/part one

[Dan Kazez <kazez...>]

26 February 1996

Many readers (off-list) have asked me for a copy of an 
article that appeared in the Cleveland Jewish News 
regarding my recent European concert Tour.  In case you
all would like to have a peek at it, here it is.  (The 
story begin with a cover photo that took up the entire
cover!  I guess the Jewish public really is interested
in "Jewish music"!)

Dan Kazez

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Daniel (Dan) Kazez                      e-mail:  kazez (at) wittenberg(dot)edu
Associate Professor Music                          tel:  513-327-7354
Wittenberg University                              fax:  513-327-6340

Daniel Kazez / Wittenberg University / Springfield, Ohio 45501  U.S.A.
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            Music on Jewish Themes:  A European Concert Tour
                             Daniel Kazez
                         Cleveland Jewish News

                               part one


This past summer, Daniel Kazez, Associate Professor of Music at 
Wittenberg University, achieved what most musicians can only dream of:  
a concert tour of Europe.  His activities as a cellist and as a 
researcher in the field of Jewish art music attracted invitations to 
perform in eight major centers of culture--Prague, Berlin, Rome, 
Florence, Salzburg, Paris, Brussels, and London.  He performed to full 
houses in some of Europe's most significant synagogues, community 
centers, and museums.  Below, he tells the story behind the story.

   *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

Monday, June 12:  I drove to Chicago, and, conveniently, arrived at the 
airport four hours early for my flight to Prague.  Wasting no time, I 
took out my cello and practiced in the departure lounge.  A crowd 
developed--other travelers with ample time to kill.  Once on the plane, 
I was met with good news and bad.  The bad--my cello, which was to 
travel safely in the cabin with me, was bumped down to baggage; the 
good--I was bumped up to first class.  So, while my valuable cello was 
jostled in with the rest of the luggage, I was treated to fine china, 
cloth napkins, shrimp, salmon, fillet of sole, duck, and copious leg 
room.

On board, I discovered that my neighbor was the great grandson of a man 
who traveled to America in the 1890's with Antonin Dvorak, the best 
known of all Czech (Bohemian) composers, famous for such American-
inspired compositions as the New World Symphony.  Transition to central 
European culture was swift.  The moment the plane lifted off, nearly all 
the travelers began to smoke.  And soon thereafter, beer was served.  
Nowhere was English to be heard, at least not in first class.  Along 
with other passengers, I opened a copy of the Prague Post, looking for 
news of our destination city.  I was tickled to find a complete listing 
and description of my own concert, now only 12 hours away.

Tuesday, June 13:  I set my watch ahead 7 hours and, after a couple 
hours of sleep, was awakened at 7:30 a.m. Prague time (12:30 a.m. 
Chicago time!) for a thoroughly unwanted breakfast of pancakes.  I was 
picked up at the airport and driven--at insane speed--to the center of 
Prague.  There, I found my pianist (Eric Street) waiting for me, and we 
proceeded together to our lodging--a room located next to the British 
Embassy, at the foot of towering Prague Castle (Prazsky hrad).  By the 
time we were settled in, two hours remained before the first concert of 
our European tour.  I practiced for half an hour, dressed, and we went 
to the hall.  With 30 minutes remaining, we arrived at the Jeruzalemska 
Synagogue--a building of incomparable beauty, both inside and out, with 
architecture featuring Art Nouveau orientalism and Moorish style.

Our performance was an extraordinary success.  The audience was near 
capacity and loud in their support.  At the conclusion of our program 
were repeatedly called to return to acknowledge applause, and we were 
presented with flowers on stage.  With some trepidation, we played two 
encores.  (Though I had practiced the encores alone for the previous 
months, Eric and I had never rehearsed the music together!)  We enjoyed 
a post-concert feast of Czech food:  onion soup, beer sausage, roast 
beef, dumplings, and apple pie.

Our music was built on a theme:  music in which the melodies, the 
harmonies, and the myriad nuances of pitch and rhythm are unmistakably 
Jewish--in short, "Music on Jewish Themes."  Composers such as Ernest 
Bloch and Joachim Stutschewsky have based their music on the many 
musical styles of the Jewish world:  Sephardic, Yiddish, Klezmer, 
Hassidic, Yemenite, Hebrew, Israeli, and others.  Playing the program in 
the extraordinary grandeur of the Jeruzalemska Synagogue, I discovered 
how essential acoustics are to this music.  Several works we perform 
(including Ernest Bloch's Prayer) imitate the style of a Jewish cantor.  
The music contains numerous "holes"--moments during which we wait for 
the sounds to reverberate through the hall.  The cavernous Jeruzalemska 
Synagogue provided the space necessary for this to occur.

Wednesday, June 14-Thursday, June 15:  With two days before our next 
concert, I soaked in the culture, sights, and sounds of Prague:  the 
Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square; the Moldau (River) and 
Vysehrad (castle/citadel)--both immortalized in Czech composer Bedrich 
Smetana's tone poem The Moldau.  I spent considerable time in the Jewish 
quarter of Prague (Josefov), visiting a medieval synagogue, a Jewish 
cemetery, and Pinkas Synagogue, on whose walls are printed nearly 50,000 
names of Czech Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, the only such 
complete record of Jews exterminated in such a large region.  I found on 
those walls the last names of my father- and mother-in-law.  
(Czechoslovakia's pre-war Jewish population was 375,000.  Today, only 
10,000 Jews remain in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.)

I attended a concert by the ensemble "Musica Gaudeans" at Klementinum, 
Mirror Chapel--a concert of mostly Baroque music, ending with 
Gershwin(!).  (This young group was musically and technically 
impeccable.)  A second concert I attended was nothing short of bizarre:  
I traveled to the outskirts of the city to attend a "Klezmer Music 
Concert."  (Typically, Klezmer indicates a mixed ensemble--singer, 
clarinet, violin, maybe brass or percussion--performing sentimental to 
rowdy Jewish folk music.)  The "concert" I attended was in a tearoom 
reeking of marijuana, with no light but a single candle and minimal 
sunlight from a dusty window.  A young man sat on the floor reading a 
lengthy text in Czech about Jewish music and the expression of identity.  
I sat on the floor; a young woman dozed on and off on a sofa; another 
man roamed in and out.  Every fifteen minutes, a woman (blind, I think) 
sang a Jewish folk song while accompanying herself on guitar.  She 
belted out each song with enough strength, conviction, and power to fill 
a large concert hall, all in the space of a living room.  An 
extraordinary experience, and all for an audience of three!

Friday, June 16:  A taxi was nowhere to be found the next morning.  So I 
carried my cello and two suitcases to the nearest subway, transferred, 
and arrived at the train station.  My five-hour ride to Berlin was 
multi-lingual:  among the four persons in our compartment, German, 
Russian, French, and English were spoken, with simultaneous translation 
provided for all.  I discovered that one member of our traveling 
entourage was an amateur cellist.  I practiced for an hour in our tiny 
compartment, attracting a bottleneck of curious onlookers in the 
hallway.

I spent the afternoon in the former West Berlin.  The contrast to Prague 
(which was not heavily damaged in World War II) was startling.  
Virtually no pre-World War II monuments (churches, etc.) were visible.  
One bomb-scarred church (Kaiser Wilhelm chtniskirche) stood as a 
grim reminder of the scourges of that "war to end all wars."  On the day 
I arrived, the contrast between the haves and have-nots was shocking.  
In the vicinity of expensive shops and smartly dressed Berliners were 
scores of homeless, beggars, and drunks.  Nearby, a woman stripped 
halfway to relieve herself in the street.

Saturday, June 17:  I crossed Berlin from west to east for our second 
performance--at an international music conference focusing on diversity 
in music.  The performance site was the Maritim Pro Arte, located only a 
minute's walk from Checkpoint Charley--the infamous East-West border 
crossing.  I presented a lecture entitled "Expression of Jewish Musical 
Style and Extramusical Associations in Art Music for the Violoncello," 
and we performed selections from our full concert program.  I filled out 
our two-day stay in Berlin with visits to sites relevant to the period 
of German history from the rise of Hitler to the fall of the Berlin 
Wall.  I was especially moved by an exhibit showing photographs taken by 
professional and military photographers at the end of World War II.  The 
scenes of death, desolation, and destruction were horrifying.  At a 
museum at Checkpoint Charlie, one exhibit and accompanying sculpture 
portrayed cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch performing at the base of the 
Wall--a musical tribute to freedom, the day after the wall began to 
fall.

On my final night in Berlin, I attended a choral performance at the 
Berlin Dom.  The program included works for organ and choir by the 
German composers Schein, Buxtehude, and others.  To my utter surprise, 
as an encore they played Shalom Alechem--the very music that we had 
played for our encore in Prague!

Sunday, June 18:  I drove south for our next performance, in Rome.  My 
destination, however, was Florence, for a day and a half of sight 
seeing.  I drove past Wittenberg/Lutherstadt(!), Leipzig, Bayreuth, 
Nuremberg (site of the World War II war trials), and Munich.  I climbed 
the Alps, enjoying panoramic vistas at every bend of the road, entered 
Austria momentarily, and arrived at a bilingual (Italian-German) portion 
of Italy.  I chose the nearest city (Bolzano/Bozen) and by chance found 
a hotel that was as exquisite as it was inexpensive.  A nearby pizzeria 
provided an immediate taste of Italy--a pizza (for one) the 
circumference of a basketball.  Utterly lost for language, directions, 
and a hotel, the "locals" went out of their way to guide me.

Monday, June 19:  I arrived in Florence after learning the high price of 
driving in Italy--$5 per gallon for gas and $35 toll for driving a few 
hundred miles on the highway (autostrade).  A brief look at the sights 
of Florence (Piazza del Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio) culminated in a visit to 
Beth Haknesset Firenze--the Great Synagogue of Florence.  Its reputation 
as perhaps the world's most beautiful synagogue is well deserved.  An 
example of Moorish architecture and Middle Eastern influence, it is 
equal in beauty to any of the other major sights of Florence, despite 
damage inflicted during World War II.  (The Nazis used the synagogue as 
a garage for military vehicles and tried to dynamite the building when 
they retreated.  Another disaster hit in 1966 when the synagogue was 
deluged with seven feet of water after the River Arno flooded.)  The 
threat to Jews worldwide is evident here:  police vans are posted around 
the building 24 hours a day.

Tuesday, June 20:  A comfortable train ride to Rome brought me to my 
third performance, at Centro Ebraico Italiano ("Il Pitigliani").  The 
trip was multi-lingual again (English, French, Spanish, Italian and 
Portuguese spoken in my compartment) but too crowded to permit 
practicing on board.  On arrival, I was introduced to the leaders of 
Rome's 16,000-member Jewish community, with whom I enjoyed a lunch-time 
feast in my honor, prepared by the Center's chef.  Before my evening 
concert, I wandered around the nearby sights of Rome--the Piazza 
Venezia, the Coliseum, and Rome's principal synagogue, at Lungotevere 
Cenci.  Again, security was tight.  Police were posted at the four 
corners of the block, wearing bulletproof vests and wielding machine 
guns.  Following dinner at the Center and a pre-performance reception, 
our concert began.  We were warmly received by a standing-room-only 
crowd, and presented with copious bouquets of flowers.  After the 
concert, we stayed in guest quarters on the top floor of the Center.

Wednesday, June 21:  The day after my concert at the Jewish center for 
Italy, I visited the Catholic center for the world--the Vatican, 
enjoying (with a thousand others) an "audience with the Pope."  
Navigating my way through multiple security checks and throngs of 
faithful, I heard the Pontiff deliver a message in a multitude of 
languages.  Before he spoke, the usually dim interior of St. Peter's 
Basilica was illuminated with hundreds of flood lights, yielding a rare 
brilliance of color for the Basilica's paintings, statues, and mosaics.

Thursday, June 22:  I returned to Florence by train, fawned over the 
Medieval and Renaissance paintings in the Uffizi Gallery (one of the 
finest collections of its type in the world) and returned to my hotel to 
prepare for the evening performance.  We played in a hall next to the 
synagogue.  (Concerts are not permitted in this or any orthodox 
synagogue.)  The enthusiastic audience gave us a standing ovation.

Friday, June 23:  We drove from hot, humid Florence to chilly Salzburg, 
in the middle of the Alps.  We arrived in time to enjoy a Shabbat dinner 
(Friday evening meal to celebrate the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath) 
with the Rabbi, his family, and several other guests.  Table talk was in 
English, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Farsi (Persian).

Saturday, June 24:  I visited the synagogue again Saturday morning to 
join the congregation for a temple service and for the Kiddush (sabbath 
celebration), during which apple pastries and whiskey(!) were served.  I 
spent a wet afternoon milling about Salzburg's sights.  As the 
birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the city is awash in Mozart 
sights, stories, and kitsch for sale.

Sunday, June 25:  Leaving our apartment for my usual city exploration, I 
saw a mountain just beyond the city (Gaisberg--"goat mountain") and 
decided to climb to the top.  Four hours later, I reached the peak, in a 
driving rain.  My reward was a panoramic view 15 feet in all directions
--of a cloud.  I hurried down the same wet trail I had ascended, in time 
to dress and walk to our Salzburg performance.  We were warmly welcomed 
by a full house.