Silenced Voices: Love & Remembrance, a Valentine concert

Mistral is pleased to announce that its annual Valentine concert, Silenced Voices: Love and Remembrance, will feature a celebration of music from composers whose voices were silenced during the Holocaust. This special concert, for strings, piano, mezzo soprano, and flute, features a pastiche of works by Franz Schreker, Kurt Weill, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Erwin Schulhoff, Felix Mendelssohn, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Alexander Zemlinsky, all of whom faced unique challenges and tragedies during this dark period in history.

Several of these composers were forced to flee their homelands and leave their legacies behind to escape prosecution and discrimination under the Nazi regime. Others were arrested and perished in concentration camps. And still others were stripped of their art when their music was banned and removed from the repertoire of German orchestras by the Third Reich and Nazi-occupied Europe.

Despite the obstacles they faced, these composers left enduring works that continue to move and inspire audiences around the world. This collection of pieces speaks for itself and doesn’t need to be put in a memorializing context to appreciate it, but the works may engender deep thought in sound, aesthetics, and history.

Among the featured performers will be violinists Julianne Lee & Kina Park, pianist Sophie Scolnik-Brower, violist Stephanie Fong, double bassist Don Palmer, flutist Julie Scolnik and two guest artists from New York City, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, and mezzo soprano Kara Dugan, who sang Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder with Mistral during its 2019-20 season.

MISTRAL has been bringing “unstuffy, unpredictable, and unmatched” concerts with internationally renowned musicians to the Merrimack Valley and Greater Boston area since 1997. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Julie Scolnik, Mistral performances are always a little eccentric, stubbornly personal, impassioned, and committed to invigorating old traditions with an ever-youthful perspective. The Mistral 2022 – 2023 concert season is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.