Playing Jewish Music in Budapest


How does it feel to play Jewish classical music back in Eastern Europe, where it was composed? Performing in the Rumbach Synagogue in Budapest, with the dome and much of the lattice work far above our heads restored to their former beauty but with the tattered door to the ark and other stone frontispieces littering the side walls, and knowing as I played Leo Zeitlin’s Eli Zion or the heartbreaking slow movement of the Shostakovich trio (which is a conscious monument by its composer to these victims) that I was truly communing with those lost spirits, is a feeling I will cherish forever. I only hope that I will be able to repeat it and to see the day when the Rumbach Synagogue is once again a living and vibrant house of worship.

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