Concert Summary
British bass baritone Mark Glanville and pianist Alexander Knapp presented the American premiere of the extraordinary song cycle, “A Yiddish Winterreise.” Schubert’s classic love poet is reimagined as a Yiddish wedding singer, fleeing the burning city of Vilna. The songs celebrate the richness of Jewish life and culture with love and humor, while exploring the depths of Jewish tragedy and the loss of a monumental European Jewish civilization. The performance took Yiddish folk songs and turns them into classic German lieder, without stripping them of their original identity and beauty. This startlingly original emotional journey meshes Glanville’s deep knowledge and love of German romantic poetry and lieder with his equal mastery of Yiddish and traditional Jewish music. The pianist, composer and arranger Alexander Knapp, a scholar and expert in Jewish music, has arranged these songs in a masterly stylistic form. “A Yiddish Winterreise” has been met with great acclaim in Britain as a brilliantly creative act of musical memory for our own age.