"The conception of the conductor, Murry Sidlin,
was marked by an irresistible spiritual
propulsion, tempered with an actor's timing."
The New York Times

"He's a cross between Lenny and Leno."
The Oregonian

"Sidlin is a conductor who speaks as skillfully as he conducts, very much in the passionate tradition of Leonard Bernstein."
The San Diego Union-Tribune

Aspen Music Festival 2005
L to R John Rubenstein (Stalin), Murry Sidlin (conductor/writer), Michael York (Shostakovich) after performance of Russian David-Soviet Goliath
Received thumbs up from Actor Jack Nicholson, and comment of 'Ingenious' from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
Large Picture

Nazareth's powerful concert drama moves its audience to tears

JOHN PITCHER
STAFF MUSIC CRITIC Democrat and Chronicle
Nov. 8, 2004

Nazareth College's presentation of the Defiant Requiem probably will be remembered as among the most powerful and poignant performances heard in Rochester this season.
This amazing "concert drama" - a multimedia mix of documentary and music for orchestra, chorus, narrators and film - received a riveting rendition Sunday evening at the Nazareth College Arts Center.
Conductor Murry Sidlin, the creator of Defiant Requiem - Verdi at Terezin, led the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the choruses of the University of Rochester and Nazareth College. It was an unforgettable event, one that proved to be so moving and unsettling that it left many in the audience in tears.
Defiant Requiem is Sidlin's tribute to Raphael Schächter, a young conductor who led a chorus of inmates in Verdi's magnificent Latin Mass for the Dead at the Terezin concentration camp near Prague. In performing this work, with its heart-pounding "Dies Irae" ("Day of Wrath") movement, Schächter and his choral army were singing to the Nazis what they could not say.
The best thing about Nazareth's presentation of the Requiem was the singing. Soprano Kimberly Upcraft-Russ and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Granville both sang with urgency, bass Mario Martinez performed with power and tenor Robert Swensen revealed a voice that was deeply expressive, if not always in tune. The chorus, meanwhile, produced a sound that was wonderfully blended and luminous in texture.
For his part, Sidlin led the RPO with vigor. RPO pianist Joseph Werner, who played the sort of out-of-tune piano that would have accompanied the singers at Terezin, proved to be an effective 88-key orchestra.
The only disappointment was the Arts Center's acoustics and amplification system, which made the narrators seem somewhat removed from the stage. But this was a small matter.
Sunday's concert ended on an emotionally wrenching note. As the soothing harmony of "Libera me" began to fade, the chorus slowly began filing out the hall. Overhead, the video screen showed footage of Terezin inmates being loaded onto cattle cars, while menacing SS men glared. A final message asked the audience to observe a moment of silence in lieu of applause. It was all any of us could do to hold back the tears.
JPITCHER@DemocratandChronicle.com

'Defiant Requiem' stirs audience with dramatic touches

By Tim Smith
Baltimore Sun Music Critic
April 20, 2004

Adding a multimedia dimension to a classical concert is nothing new, but an imaginative and sensitive application can still seem fresh. There was an extraordinarily compelling example over the weekend.

I've heard performances of Verdi's Requiem by more seasoned choruses and orchestras, and certainly heard them in better spaces than Catholic
University's Pryzbyla University Center, but none that moved me more deeply or left me more unsettled than the one given there Sunday night.

  Complete Review

DEFIANT REQUIEM

"I want to make Schachter famous, as the hero he was," is Sidlin's explanation of why he devised this program. He certainly does that, and with the context he supplies, he makes it the most powerful Verdi Requiem I have ever experienced.

Joseph McLellan, critic emeritus of the Washington POST
Complete Review

DEFIANT REQUIEM received major awards from the New York Festivals Awards, and the Columbus Film and Video Festival

" Around the nation the musical landscape is littered with failed or
failing orchestras because these ensembles are not perceived as living
organisms within their communities." Murry Sidlin in SFORZANDO MAGAZINE.

OREGON SYMPHONY CAPTURES BERLIOZ'S POWER
" Through letters and narration written by Murry Sidlin, the actors
dramatized Berlioz's neurotic obsessions". " Sidlin and the Oregon Symphony really got inside the music".
The Oregonian

"Actors rise to the level of the composer's eloquence and outrage as the
symphony portrays his struggles with Stalin". " Sidlin skillfully adapted
the readings to incorporate musical examples from the 7th symphony, and from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra......to bring out the agony of
Shostakovich's oppressed creativity."
The Oregonian

Flamenco, The Darkness and the Passion: " Murry Sidlin put together a
riveting combination of orchestral music, dance, singing, video
excerpts,.......... and an audience conspicuoulsly younger....".
The Oregonian

"The Oregon Symphony's latest Nerve Endings Concert pulled listeners into the trenches of World War I, a basement of a Gestapo prison, and into throngs of protesters during the Vietnam war....."
Excerpts from Britten's War Requiem, Gorecki's 3rd Symphony, Tippitt's A Child of Our Time, and Leonard Bernstein's MASS powerfully
presented..................."
The Oregonian

RUSSIAN MUSIC AS IT SHOULD BE PLAYED
At last, someone who understands Russian tempos, and what a difference it makes. Last night at the Orpheum, American conductor Murry Sidlin and violinist Mark Peskanov teamed in one of the most satisfying evenings of Russian music heard here in years.....quickened the pulse and intensified the drama"
Vancouver(B.C.) Province

"Last night's thrilling performance of Leonard Bernstein's MASS by nearly 200 musicians and singers at the Aspen Music Festival, gets my vote for the musical event of the entire summer. Most of the credit must go to Sidlin. I simply can not imagine a more fully realized performance. A sell-out audience whooped their appreciation at the end".
Denver POST

From BILLY TAYLOR'S SOUNDPOST:

Back in June we performed with the Oregon Symphony under the direction of Murry Sidlin. Not only is Maestro Sidlin a fine conductor, he is a creative educator of the first rank. He examined the ways improvisation had been used in European classical music, and compared that to the ways we use the process in Jazz. The concert was presented in a most imaginative way;Sidlin guided the audience through the ways composers have used cadenzas, and other devices to give instrumentalists and singers the opportunity to add their own creativity to the music being performed."

SIDLIN A MASTER WITH COMPLEX COMPOSITION

(Charles Wourinen's 3rd Piano Concerto)
"Sidlin rose to the occasion in an exemplary manner, indeed. His control was masterful. He knew the intricacies of the score cold, offering us an
interpretation worthy of the masterpiece at hand."
New Haven REGISTER

LORD BYRON'S MANFRED COMES ALIVE IN TWO WORKS
"Murry Sidlin gave both the Schumann and the Tchaikowsky the sort of
romantic aural opulence they need to make them alive. The guest conductor emphasized lush string sonorities, clarion woodwinds, and theatrical brass. But he did not urge the overt drama to turn into melodrama or something vulgar and base."
Seattle POST-INTELLIGENCER

"Murry Sidlin conducted with sweep and passion without slighting detail. The large orchestra played splendidly for him." ( Long Beach Opera, King Roger by Szymanowski.)
Los Angeles TIMES

"Good orchestras from Chicago, Paris, and Vienna have come to town, and I have heard others in New York. Sidlin interpreting the Schubert Unfinished in Long Beach is the event I will remember the longest."
Alan Rich on KUSC, Los Angeles

" A conductor who would stand victoriously in the middle of these worlds
needs to possess an uninhibited virtuosic temperament, a kind of ultimate
confidence in his own destiny as an interpreter, and a heartbreaking
sincerity and belief in each and every note of Mahler's audacious score--a
conductor like Murry Sidlin who led the Long Beach Symphony in Mahler's Resurrection Symphony Saturday night. It was 'Resurrection' as it was meant to be.
Los Angeles Herald Examiner

" With Sidlin in charge and members of the Pittsburgh Symphony at his
fingertips, he music of The Tender Land emerged in all its fragile beauty
and luminous detail"

Pittsburgh PRESS

"..............finely played by members of the Pittsburgh Symphony. All in
all the Pittsburgh Opera Theater was a double winner, presenting this
wonderful opera, and performing it so well."
Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE

THE CRITICS ALL AGREE . . .

about

THE TENDER LAND BY AARON COPLAND

Performed by The Third Angle New Music Ensemble
Conducted by Murry Sidlin . . .
In the Chamber Orchestration by Murry Sidlin

REVIEW From Fiasco to Filigree Aaron Copland's operatic masterpiece The Tender Land was at first written off as a disaster. Then Oregon Symphony's Murry Sidlin rescued it from the fire.

BY BILL SMITH
Willamette Week
Portland, OR
December 8, 1999

The Tender Land:
The Complete Chamber Version, A World Premiere Recording
KOCH International Classics
Purchase Amazon.com

At the peak of his powers, America's greatest composer, Aaron Copland, a gay Jewish socialist from Brooklyn, brought a story to life. The Tender Land, an opera, was a quintessentially American tale of rural poverty and the disintegration of family; of labor and itinerant workers; of strangers and ignorant suspicion; of youth and aging. Harshly critical of McCarthy-era paranoia, it laid open the evils of the country's growing prosperity and the middle-class complacency of the 1950s.

It bombed.

What went wrong with Copland's highly anticipated first--and only--opera when it debuted in 1954 at the New York City Opera, only to vanish into the dustbin of American musical-theater history? Oregon Symphony Resident Conductor Murry Sidlin has just released the first recording of his answer to that very question--a revised chamber version of Copland's masterwork.

Back in 1975, when Sidlin was a young conductor with the National Symphony, he heard Copland conduct his excerpted suite from The Tender Land. The young man was stung by the work's emotional honesty and quiet Americana forcefulness. "I was pretty naīve at the time," Sidlin says about the question he posed to the 75-year-old composer right after the performance. "I said, 'Mr. Copland, that is a wonderful piece of music. Is the rest of the opera any good?'"

Little did Sidlin know that he'd just hit the nail on the head of the biggest disappointment of Copland's professional life. Fortunately for him, Copland was extremely generous toward young musicians. That his youthful bravado culminated in the new recording of The Tender Land 25 years later is a testament to Sidlin's tenacity.

Sidlin's dogged evaluation of the opera revealed an essential flaw: The delicate dramatic work was overwhelmed by the full orchestral sweep of the score. "The full orchestration makes the opera out of proportion to itself," says Sidlin. "Onstage you had a wonderful chamber opera, with Grand Opera overwhelming it from the pit."

Sidlin completed his version in 1987. The revision allows each of the singers his or her own sparse chamber accompaniment, rather than a symphonic wave that batters their fragile lines. As Sidlin tells it, Copland greeted the cast after the 1987 premiere with tears in his eyes and said: "Thank you for saving my child."

It's clear what a milestone that moment was in Sidlin's life. It also broke the ground for a popular eruption of the work, rousing it from dormancy. Until Sidlin's '87 revision, there had been only seven attempts to produce the original fully orchestrated version. Since Sidlin's breakthrough there have been 32 productions--all using his re-orchestrated chamber version.

This new recording should accelerate that trend. From the awakening strains of the opera's introduction, this is pure Copland at the peak of his Americana phase. Sidlin's stripped-down chamber model puts the raw rev back in Copland's distinctive tonality, elucidating the music's subtlety and allowing us to hear it anew. An underlying loneliness and yearning in the score is brought home by the spacious ensemble playing of Third Angle New Music Ensemble.

This cast of Northwest all-stars is outstanding. Milagro Vargas sings the role of Ma Moss, the opera's most tragic figure, with great emotional depth. Grandpa, so difficult to play sympathetically, is sung with subtle strength by Richard Zeller. And Suzan Hanson brings a youthful freshness to the headstrong teenager Laurie.

You'd think, with a long-dreamed-of recording just behind him, Sidlin might relax. Instead, he's busy planning the 2001 video production of the opera, which is to be filmed on location at an Oregon farmhouse. "Once that video is on the shelf on its rightful place alongside Aīda and Boheme," says the now white-haired conductor, "I'll pack it in and move on to something else."

Copland - The Tender Land
Michael Oliver
Gramophone - May 2000

And his (Sidlin's) re-scoring (nine strings, three woodwind, piano) points up Copland's stated intention to write an operatic equivalent of Appalachian Spring. Best of all, his young cast sing with intimacy and quietness, suggesting emotions that even the characters themselves can hardly formulate. He and they demonstrate that The Tender Land is not one of Copland's failures but a delicately subtle lyrical pastoral, flawed but poignantly memorable

Copland - The Tender Land
International Record Review
Graham Simpson
April, 2000

Murry Sidlin's chamber version, with the Second and Third Acts sensibly amalgamated, gels closer to its enduring vision of honesty and compassion, reaffirmed in a context of minimal dramatic action, but tangible feeling.

Murry Sidlin directs with unobtrusive conviction, his belief evident in every bar.

Sidlin's plain-spun account reassesses it for the domain of music theatre where it rightly belongs.

Copland - The Tender Land
The American Record Guide
May/June 2000

The Third Angle Music Ensemble plays with a great deal of warmth and feeling and with only 13 instruments manages to project a good, rich overall tone. Conductor Sidlin's conducting offers just the right mixture of strength and tenderness, humor and drama. The recorded sound is quite excellent. Everyone involved can feel proud of this one. Copland, I think, would be too.

Copland - The Tender Land
Fanfare - March/April 2000
William Zagorski

This is a hard call to make. If you already own the Virgin production, you have a quite satisfying effort. If you must have The Tender Land in all its permutations, then this version is self-recommending. If you have yet to discover that wondrous opera, then the palm goes to Maestro Sidlin et al.

Bernstein's 'Mass' Celebrated at Catholic U.

By Mary McCarthy
Herald Staff Writer
(From the issue of 4/10/03)

When it was announced to the public that Catholic University in Washington would perform Leonard Bernstein’s "Mass" to inaugurate not only the Great Room in the new Pryzbyla University Center, but also the first President’s Concert, University President Father David M. O’Connell said he received many complaints.

The complaints deemed the musical as "irreverent" and "sacrilegious." Someone asked, "How could The Catholic University of America justify presenting a performance that depicts such a crisis of faith?" Father O’Connell responded to this question in his opening remarks before the performance Saturday night, saying, "If The Catholic University of America, of all places, cannot address crises of faith, who can?"

Father O’Connell presented Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center with the university’s highest honor, the President’s Medal, "for its role in originating ‘Mass.’" The musical was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy and first performed in 1971 for the opening of the Kennedy Center.

There were almost as many people involved in the powerful performance of ‘Mass’ as there were spectators in the sold-out seating. With the exception of the celebrant, played by Douglas Webster, and the boy soprano played by Gleb Drobkov, the rest of the 300 members of the cast, choirs, and orchestra were CUA students and teachers.

The star of the performance was the conductor and dean of the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Murry Sidlin. Sidlin’s silver hair shined in the lighting throughout the show as he conducted the orchestra for nearly two hours. Last weekend marked the eighth time Sidlin has conducted "Mass."

In a recent press release, Sidlin called "Mass" "the best of Bernstein. It combines his eclectic musical language of American impressionism, jazz, Broadway, folk, rock, with his political and humanistic obsessions, his deep sense of faith and reverence against the backdrop of hypocrisy, vis-ā-vis the lightweight justifications for the Vietnam War, the once-a-week religious edicts, and that many Americans of Color had to fight or beg to vote and to have full citizenship privileges."

This latest performance marked the fourth time Sidlin has conducted the musical with Douglas Webster starring as the celebrant.

Webster has come to be known as the "foremost interpreter" of the role of the celebrant. Webster debuted singing the role at Bernstein’s 70th birthday celebration at the Tanglewood Festival in Lenox, Mass., and Bernstein commented, "He’s got it all: The highs, the lows, the ‘look’ and the croon."

Webster was nearly out-shined by the incredibly talented cast of CUA singers.

The Street Chorus was composed of 24 of Catholic’s best vocalists. The singers mirrored the Celebrants troubles and turmoil in coming to terms with their religious beliefs.

In "I Don’t Know" and "Easy," Alan Wiggins, Mark Bush, Danny Tippett, Kurt Boehm, Eric Thompson, Dane Edidi and Teresa Scalise confess their vices. The petite Scalise dressed in leopard-print and leather, surprised the audience with the power of her voice and her ability to sing over the voices of five men.

Brian Cali plays the part of a zealous preacher who leads the other chorus members to wonder about God’s purpose in creation in "God Said."

The only actor, other than Webster, not associated with Catholic University is Gleb Drobkov, the boy soprano. Playing the part of a devout altar server, Drobkov complements the tenor Webster with his angelic soprano solos.

The tensions rise through the musical as actors ask "Will I become a god again?" (Philip Olarte), "You said you’d come again, When?" (Kristin Green), and "Does God believe in me?" (Wiggins).

The stress crescendos until all of the 300 members of the cast, chorus and orchestra sing in competition in "Agnus Dei," which, at its height, was so overwhelmingly impressive, it left the audience as breathless as the singers.

Last weekend’s performances of "Mass" followed a week of discussions held at Catholic to discuss the musical in reference to culture and society in the 1960s. At a time when the student body at Catholic is deep in debate with each other and their professors on the current conflict in Iraq, they were invited to engage in seminars reflecting on what many of their parents might have experienced in the 1960s during the Vietnam War.

Catholic University chose to perform "Mass" before its relevance to the present was fully realized, but the 30-year-old play written about Catholic Mass by a man of Jewish faith is still embraced by adults and youths alike because of its themes of peace and the search for true spirituality.

   ARTICLES

Reclaiming American Music:
A Copland Opera Comes to the Farm
The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Published June 30, 1993.
By Lawrence Biemiller

Red Lake Falls, Minnesota -- Swallows dart across the farm Lou Schafer grew up on -- tree to barn to house to tree, tree to shed to barn -- and the American flag that Mr. Schafer's father has put up waves and flaps against a rich blue sky. In the barn, Mr. Schafer is explaining that there's been a dairy herd on the farm since his grandfather bought it in 1941; meanwhile he unties bales of hay and pulls them apart, stopping in front of each of his 40 Holsteins to make sure she gets her fill. At the end of one row, he bends and reaches to feel the belly of a cow he says will give birth in a day or two.

In Mr. Schafer's house, a rhubarb cake that his mother brought over from next door waits under a tea towel on the big round kitchen table. On the front lawn, two technicians are hooking up speakers for this evening's rehearsal. The risers have been in place for a few days already, in a cozy semicircle facing Mr. Schafer's spacious front porch.

It's the white-painted porch -- Doric columns below, balustrade above -- that is bringing opera out County Road 13 to the Schafer farm, two miles past Red Lake Falls. The University of Minnesota's School of Music is presenting Aaron Copland's rarely heard 1954 work The Tender Land here as part of a two-week tour. Instead of trucking sets all around Minnesota and the Dakotas, the opera is being produced on the porches of seven farmhouses -- appropriately enough, since it tells the story of a high-school girl's decision to leave her family's farm. At each stop, the company is relying on a nearby town to provide a chorus, a junior-high-school girl to play the younger sister, and accommodations for nine student singers, 13 student musicians, four directors, and the two technicians -- 28 in all.

"There's something very important we want the students to get out of this," Murry Sidlin says during the cast's post-rehearsal dinner in the back room of J.P.'s Restaurant and Pizza. Mr. Sidlin is an associate professor of music at the university and a well-known orchestral conductor; in 1985 he transcribed Copland's 60-instrument opera score for the 13 instruments Copland used in the original Appalachian Spring ballet.

"The musical world in America is faltering dangerously," Mr. Sidlin says. "Musicians have to start thinking of alternatives to the major urban centers -- there's a large and very inviting audience waiting in places that are not the traditional concert centers.

"In Staples last night, some of those dairy farmers came over to me and said they were really moved by the libretto. I think Copland would be thrilled if he knew we were doing this on farms."

Later, Mr. Sidlin and the opera's director, Vern Sutton, ask their singers to perform a song from The Tender Land for their local hosts. "Orchestra, you'll have to hum your parts," Mr. Sidlin says. The song is a simple one, "The Promise of Living," that becomes a fine quintet in the opera: "The promise of living/With hope and thanksgiving/Is born of our loving/Our friends and our labor." Amid folding tables and mirrored walls and the Lions Club insignia, the students' strong young voices make Copland's song as lovely, as American, as hopeful as music can be.

The opera is a major event in Red Lake Falls, a friendly town of 1,481. The Gazette has been running articles about the preparations for weeks, and some 600 tickets have already been sold. The chorus -- mostly members of the St. Joseph's Catholic Church choir -- has been rehearsing Act II with George French, assistant professor of music at the university's campus in Crookston. Darci Delage, an eighth-grader from nearby Brooks, has been learning the younger sister's part. Space has been set aside on the farm for concessions -- a burger stand run by St. Joseph's parishioners, a stand that uses a Norwegian flatbread to make what the sellers call "Uff-da Tacos," a horse-drawn hay wagon for rides. Roger Thibert -- of Thibert Chevrolet, Buick, and RV's -- has offered a midnight-green '39 Master Deluxe for the postman's arrival in Act I. Mr. Schafer has rebuilt his porch stairs and hung out pots of geraniums.

So the soft rain falling the morning of the day itself disappoints. Mr. French, who has been the local organizer, remains hopeful. But Mr. Sutton, the director, is uncharacteristically quiet. He stands for some time on Mr. Schafer's porch, brushing water off the railing and talking with Linda Fisher, his assistant, about the back-up plan to move the show to the high-school gym. They decide to hold the morning blocking rehearsal at the farm anyway. "I think this is the prettiest house of the seven," Mr. Sutton says, brushing off another section of railing.

"Usually as a director you work with a set designer for the mood you want," he says. "Here we literally have to change the way we do things to make it appear like we live in this house. It's opera verity -- people walking out of the door and singing."

Adds Elizabeth Collins Smith, who sings Laurie and Mrs. Jenks on alternate nights: "The challenge is making reality look like a show."

Later in the morning the singers stop by the high-school gym to block the show yet again, just in case. "It's a two-week-long improvisational exercise," says Glen Todd, who will sing the postman tonight but also sings Martin.

"We knew the blocking would change, because every farm is different," says Amy Johnson, who alternates with Ms. Smith as Laurie and Mrs. Jenks. "The tour is really unique. We all have individual duties -- the Ma's and the Lauries are in charge of costumes, and then we help with equipment.

"The opera is really so beautiful that I don't know how anyone could not like it," she adds.

After lunch the rain tapers off. At the farm, Mr. French, Mr. Sidlin, Mr. Sutton, and Ms. Fisher confer again about the timing of a final decision as the rain resumes; Mr. French makes it clear that local residents would prefer to see the opera at the farm if rain is not actually pouring down on them. Mr. Thibert, the Chevy dealer, arrives from town with tarps to use as flooring in the orchestra tent. The milk truck arrives to empty Mr. Schafer's 600-gallon tank. "We've had hardly any rain all spring," Mr. Schafer muses, staring out at a light drizzle. "Till three weeks ago."

At 3:30 someone comes into the crowded kitchen to say the opera is being moved to the high school. Mr. French stalks out. At 6 Mr. Sutton appears, unexpectedly; Mr. French and other local people have persuaded him to move the show back to the farm. "The people said, `We don't mind,"' Mr. Sutton grins. "And the singers want to do it here even if it does rain."

Soon Red Lake Falls County sheriffs are directing a torrent of traffic, and people are carrying lawn chairs and umbrellas onto Mr. Schafer's lawn, and hamburgers are being grilled, and Mr. Thibert is teaching Mr. Todd how to use the starter pedal in the '39 Master Deluxe. "It's like Field of Dreams," Mr. Sidlin says, standing on the porch steps to look at the growing crowd. "If you play it, they will come."

By the time the opening notes of Mr. Copland's overture drift across the porch, more than 1,300 people are crowded onto the lawn. Darci Delage has the first lines, and within minutes the Chevy idles up to the porch steps and Mr. Todd delivers the graduation dress that sets the plot in motion. No one seems concerned about the occasional raindrop or the mist that obscures the trees beyond Mr. Schafer's alfalfa fields.

As Act II begins, the genius of presenting an opera here becomes clear. Toddlers play under the risers; 10-year-old boys appear and disappear, as 10-year-old boys will. The libretto captivates the rest of the audience -- farm girl falls in love with itinerant boy; girl's family, suspicious of strangers, sends boy away. Girl sings: "The closer I feel to our land,/The more I wonder what those other lands are like." Boy sings: "A man must take a handful of earth/And work it for his own,/A handful of earth and a handful of seed,/But how can he do it alone?"

Mr. Schafer's porch lights glow yellow as darkness falls during Act III. Ms. Stevens, as Laurie, searches one of the aisles for the banished Martin; up close, the power of her voice astonishes children and grown-ups alike. Then, accompanied by a few beautiful notes from the flute, Laurie leaves the farm on the morning of her high-school graduation, and the opera ends.

The cast party is a feast of Mary Anne Schafer's meatballs, and rolls she brought over from next door in a refrigerator's crisper drawer, and crudites, and a keg of beer, and here and there a flask of whiskey. Long after midnight, when it's time to say goodbye, Mr. Schafer is discovered in the fluorescent-lighted dairy barn, where he has let three opera singers try their hands at milking. Mr. Todd, who grew up in California, reports success; Mr. Schafer is smiling broadly. It occurs that dairy farmers and opera singers are equally endangered by modernity. And it occurs that all 40 cows are awake, and staring.

'Defiant Requiem' stirs audience with dramatic touches

By Tim Smith
Baltimore Sun Music Critic

April 20, 2004
Adding a multimedia dimension to a classical concert is nothing new, but an imaginative and sensitive application can still seem fresh. There was an extraordinarily compelling example over the weekend.

I've heard performances of Verdi's Requiem by more seasoned choruses and orchestras, and certainly heard them in better spaces than Catholic
University's Pryzbyla University Center, but none that moved me more deeply or left me more unsettled than the one given there Sunday night.

Created a few years ago as "a concert drama" by Murry Sidlin, dean of CU's school of music, this Defiant Requiem - Verdi at Terezin combines a
presentation of the profound score with visual and spoken documentary.

Terezin was the Nazi concentration camp near Prague where a gifted
conductor, Rafael Schachter, gathered 150 singers and, with only a battered piano for support, took on the enormous challenge of preparing the Requiem. It was performed 16 times over a two-year period, with new singers recruited to replace those shipped to Auschwitz. One audience included the notorious Adolf Eichmann, who mocked "These crazy Jews, singing their own requiem."

But Schachter's idea to use Verdi's setting of the ancient Latin Mass for
the Dead was far from crazy. Text became subtext each time the emaciated choristers sang the warnings of wrathful judgment against the wicked, and, perhaps most poignantly, the reflections on those souls who, as "promised of old to Abraham and his seed," would be delivered "from the pains of hell" to "pass from death to life."

Sidlin's Defiant Requiem, adapted for a showing on PBS last year, calls on the conductor to offer periodic commentary. Actors portray Schachter and other figures, and, on film, recollections by survivors of the Terezin
choir provide extra context.

Historic photos and, almost too painful to watch, footage from a Nazi
propaganda film made at the camp are interspersed as well. Sometimes, the flow of Verdi's music is awkwardly stopped to allow for these additions, a practice I found artistically questionable. But, in a way, the
interruptions could be seen to underline the precarious situation faced by
everyone at Terezin, where life, not just music, was routinely cut off.

For this presentation, the University Center, which is just a big, ugly,
low-ceilinged multipurpose room, was configured to provide an unusually
intimate experience for such a large-scale work (the room subtly suggested a barrack). The listener was placed inside the music and inside Terezin.

The last notes of Verdi's score segued into a O Say Shalom from the Jewish Kaddish service, hummed by the singers and played by a steadily dwindling number of instrumentalists as the performers filed out of the room and the lights dimmed. The audience was asked not to applaud. The only sound I heard was sobbing.

Sidlin's generally fast tempos and urgent phrasing yielded a consistently
impressive interpretation that communicated strongly, despite the
commentary breaks. The university's chorus, supplemented by members of the Washington Chorus, sang with considerable discipline and passion. Solid brass and percussion work drove the school orchestra's performance. The guest soloists - soprano Sharon Christman, tenor Philip Webb, bass Gary Relyea and, especially mezzo Eleni Matos - offered terrific intensity. The speaking parts, too, were delivered potently.

One of Sidlin's most inspired ideas for Defiant Requiem was to have a
small, not well-tuned piano accompany some of the music, providing yet
another affecting connection to the Terezin experience. The past couldn't
sound much closer.

The past was also recalled Sunday afternoon at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where the Baltimore Jewish Council presented a program of Music,
Remembrance and Reflection to commemorate the Holocaust. Images of the Warsaw Ghetto, before and after the heroic uprising, were projected while pianist Eric Conway played poetically sculpted Nocturnes by Chopin.

Erwin Schulhoff, one of many notable Jewish composers who died in a
concentration camp, is slowly being rediscovered. His clever, sparkling
neoclassical Piano Concerto from 1922 deserves to be better known. It has a disarming proponent in pianist Jan Simon, who brought clarity and warmth to the solo part, with supple support from conductor Elli Jaffe and lively playing from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Copyright (c) 2004, The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/
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