3 minute read
Conlon’s Recital Brings Music of Jewish Composers to Light
BY SARAH SHAW Festival Focus Writer
Known as a beloved conductor and Aspen Music Festival and School alumnus, James Conlon offers something new to Aspen audiences with a recital showcasing the fruits of his project entitled Recovered Voices on Wednesday, July 26 in Harris Concert Hall.
It’s a unique project Conlon has championed over the course of his career. “He has made it a personal mission to highlight and bring to audiences music that was suppressed under the Nazi regime, either because the composers were of Jewish descent or, in some cases, lost in concentration camps,” says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain.
On the program are works by Schulhoff, Zemlinsky, and Schoenberg—composers who, to this day, have not received the recognition due them because their music was banned. “The mission to call the names and the music of composers who were suppressed under the Nazi regime to the world's attention is a subject of critical moral, historic, and artistic importance to any serious citizen concerned with historical justice and classical music,” Conlon says. “Though it is a mission to reverse this miscarriage of justice and neglect of existing music, it goes beyond the personal, and will continue beyond my lifetime.”
Of the three composers whose works are on the program, two—Alexander Zemlinsky and Arnold Schoenberg—emigrated to the U.S. Both Viennese, they were brothers-in-law and close friends. Zemlinsky, according to Conlon, was Schoenberg’s only teacher and mentor: “Although Schoenberg was relatively the most successful and influential of the three, much of his music and his story remains comparatively unfamiliar to many music lovers.”
The third, Erwin Schulhoff, was Czech and perished of tuberculosis in a Bavarian concentration camp. Conlon describes his string sextet as “the work of a trailblazing outsider who marched to the beat of his own drum throughout his shortened life.”
Conlon will conduct a select ensemble of AMFS students in Schulhoff’s String Sextet, Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen blühten überall featuring soprano Marissa Moultrie of the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS program, and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major. In addition to conducting, Conlon will act as host, providing the musical and historical context for each composer and piece.
Long an advocate for silenced voices, Conlon’s focus on Jewish composers oppressed or erased by the Nazis helped lead to the establishment of the ZieringConlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School.
As to this curated Aspen program, Conlon says that “ all classical music lovers can welcome this concert as an opportunity to familiarize themselves with a small fraction of the music that was banned by an exclusionary, repressive regime. With the resurgence of dangerous authoritarianism around the world, this should be important and relevant to all.”
“Conlon will go into history for his work on behalf of composers whose work was silenced by the Nazis,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “No one has the ear that James Conlon has, and he chooses this music with the audience experience in mind.”
As to this curated Aspen program, Conlon says that “ all classical music lovers can welcome this concert as an opportunity to familiarize themselves with a small fraction of the music that was banned by an exclusionary, repressive regime. With the resurgence of dangerous authoritarianism around the world, this should be important and relevant to all.”
