Caroline Helton, soprano – Kathryn Goodson, piano
INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 2014
On the occasion of Remembrance Day 2014, the Istituto will present a concert to remember Italian Jewish composers. They were generally very well integrated in Italian society, but everything changed with the enforcement of the racial laws after 1938 and even more in 1943-45 when Italy was occupied by Nazi Germany. They lost their jobs, were forced into hiding or forced to flee in order to escape from persecution and deportation to the death camps, and some perished in the Shoah. Because of the chaos that followed World War II, much of the music of the composers on this program was essentially lost, and many of the pieces have only rarely been performed in Italy. ( read more )
Performance by Caroline Helton, soprano, and Kathryn Goodson, piano
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Castello di Rocca Ciglie in Piedmont Region by Patricia Bongiovanni
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PHOTO ID REQUIRED – DOORS OPEN AT 6:00PM
LOCATION
Embassy of Italy – Auditorium
3000 Whitehaven Street NW
Washington, DC 20008
Program
Introduction
Vocalise-Étude (Chant Hébraïque) (1928)
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
(1895-1968)
Quattro sonetti da “La Vita Nova” (1926)
I. Cavalcando l’altr’ier per un cammino
II. Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore
III. Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare
IV. Deh, peregrini che pensosi andate
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Quattro liriche italiane (1945)
E per un bel cantar
La non vuol esser più mia
E lo mio cor s’inchina
Canti ognun
Vittorio Rieti
(1898-1994)
Vecchie canzoni popolari del Piemonte,
raccolte e trascritte da Leone Sinigaglia (1914)
Verdolin Verdolinetto
Il grillo e la formica
arr. Leone Sinigaglia
(1868-1944)
Tre canti (unpublished manuscript, 1945)
O strana bimba
O falce di luna
Ad Annie
Guido Alberto Fano(1875-1961)
Le Lis (1916)
Guido Alberto Fano
Quatre poèmes de Max Jacob (1933)
La crise
Le noyer fatal
Soir d’été
Monsieur le Duc
Vittorio Rieti
L’nfinito (1921)
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Download the full program HERE
More Info
Life for Jews in Italy was qualitatively different than in the rest of Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were more integrated into Italian society, and Italian Jewish intellectuals also played a major role in the political and social process of Italian unification in the mid 19th century. They wrote music employing European compositional styles and forms, partaking of inspiration from French impressionism of Debussy to the chromaticism of Richard Strauss, rarely drawing on Jewish cultural heritage as a source of musical inspiration. However, with the enforcement of the racial laws after 1938 and even more in 1943-45 when Italy was occupied by Nazi Germany, prominent Jewish composers lost their jobs, were forced into hiding or forced to flee in order to escape from persecution and deportation to the death camps, and some perished in the Shoah. Only the resilience of Italian Jews and the support they received from significant portions of the Italian population mitigated the fate of the Italian Jews compared to that of other European Jews. Because of the chaos that followed World War II, much of the music of the composers on this program was essentially lost, and many of the pieces have only rarely been performed in Italy.
The songs of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Vittorio Rieti, Leone Sinigaglia and Guido Alberto Fano represent a snapshot of the unique Jewish compositional voices in Italy during the first decades of the 20th century. The influence of Italian operatic composers is present in the prominence of melody in these works, but in works for voice and piano, composers were free to set poetry of the highest quality to music, and then allow that poetry to drive the compositional structure more organically than is possible in opera. These composers (some of whom, such as Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Fano, were virtuoso concert pianists) employed a great deal of character in their piano writing as a means toward dramatizing the text. The result is a program that ranges from straightforward transcriptions of folk songs in Piedmontese dialect to chromatic and rhythmically complex settings of surrealist French poetry, demonstrating the cosmopolitan nature and intellectual breadth of Italian Jewish composers in the early 20th century.
The cd L’Infinito: Songs from a Lost World of Italian Jewish Composers, 1910-1945 by Caroline Helton, soprano and Kathryn Goodson, piano, is distributed by Equilibrium (to order
CLICK HERE).
Caroline Helton
Soprano Caroline Helton joined the Voice faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in the fall of 2000. An artist who enjoys the entire gamut of classical singing, from opera and oratorio to recital and chamber music, she has been described as displaying “masterful” artistry and a “clear, bell-like soprano.”
Highlights from Ms. Helton’s performances include a recital of French song with colleagues Scott Piper, tenor and Martin Katz, piano in December of 2012 on the University of Michigan campus, and a program in May of 2011 entitled “Voices of the Holocaust” at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, in which she and pianist Kathryn Goodson performed repertoire from their 2009 CD of the same name. Along with U-M faculty colleagues, including the composer at the piano, Helton performed the New York premiere of Paul Schoenfield’s Ghetto Songs on the second half of the program. Ms. Helton also sang Alberto Ginastera’s rarely performed Cantata para América mágica for soprano and percussion orchestra with the U-M Percussion Ensemble conducted by Jonathan Ovalle in December of 2011.
Ms.Helton holds BM and MM degrees in Vocal Performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a DMA in Vocal Performance from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Freda Herseth. She is an Associate Professor of Music (Voice) in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance as well as an Associate of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
( For more info click here )
Kathryn Goodson
Pianist Kathryn Goodson is an international performer, teacher and coach, whose artistry has been described as a “generator of colors and of lights” (Journal de Genève); full of “authority and feeling” (International Herald Tribune) and she herself as an “exquisite specialist of German Romantic music” (Tübinger Stadtblatt). She has appeared in the United States, Europe and Japan as soloist and recital partner at venues including Cathédrale de Rheims, Züricher Tonhalle, Alice Tully Hall and Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye. Recordings of Ms. Goodson’s collaborations are documented on Albany, Innova, U-Tube, American Public Radio and Swiss television.
Since 2002 she has served as pianist-coach for opera, art song and instrumental music at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Ms. Goodson’s Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance is from Oberlin Conservatory with Robert Shannon; twice a Fulbright Scholar to Germany, she received the Konzertexam and highest honors in Liedgestaltung from the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe with Hartmut Höll; her MM (1989) and DMA degrees in Collaborative Piano (2005) are from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Eckart Sellheim and her major professor, Martin Katz.
( For more info click here )
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