Korngold Festival: New Budapest Orpheum Society Concert

Performance of the New Budapest Orpheum Society – “Garlands Twenty Times as Sweet”: The Golden Age of Jewish Film Music

• Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano
• Philip V. Bohlman, artistic director and commentary
• Jim Cox, bass violin
• Stewart Figa, baritone
• Danny Howard, percussion
• Iordanka Kissiova, violin
• Ilya Levinson, arrangements, piano, and musical director
• Don Stille, accordion

Part 1 – Three Early Lieder by Erich Wolfgang Korngold to Poems by Joseph von Eichendorff

• Winternacht / Winter Night
• Abendlandschaft / Evening Landscape
• Das Mädchen / The Young

Part 2 – Three Yiddish songs from Jewish Poland 

• Mordechai Gebirtig – Reizele / Rose
• Mordechai Gebirtig – Drei Techterlech / Three Daughters
• Benzion Witler – Varshe / Warsaw

Part 3 – Darius Milhaud – Three songs from Poèmes juifs, op. 34 (1916)

• Chant de nourrice / Song of the Nurse
• Chant de laboureur / Song of the Worker
• Lamentation / Lamentation

Part 4 – Two Shireh chalutzim / Songs of the Pioneers

• Paul Dessau – ‘Ali b’er / Arise, Well of Mine
• Erich Walter Sternberg – Kuma echa / Rise, O Brethren
• Stefan Wolpe – TLaMidbar, Tel Aviv / To the Desert, Tel Aviv

Part 5 – Two Songs from postwar Polish cabaret

• Zygmunt Konieczny and Agnieszka Osiecka – Chwalmy Pana / Let’s Praise the Lord
• Andrzej Zarucki and Osip Mandelsztam – Skrzypek Hercowicz / The Violinist Hercowicz

Part 6 – Two Yiddish Songs of Remembrance

• Isadore Lillian – Dos reydele dreyt zikh / The Wheel Spins
• Binem Heller and Chava Alberstein – Mayn Shvester Khaye / My Sister, Khaye
• Mordechai Gebirtig and Manfred Lemm – Blayb Gezunt Mir, Kroke / Farewell, Cracow

Part 7 – Three Songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold

• Schneeglöckchen / Snowdrops
• Das Ständchen / Serenade
• Tomorrow (from The Constant Nymph)

Part 8 – Two Songs from The Eternal Road – Kurt Weill and Franz Werfel

• David’s Psalm
• Song of Ruth

The Korngold Symposium encompasses performances and academic presentations, which together complement and enhance the American premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's 1937 opera, Die Kathrin, at the Logan Center for the Arts. The Symposium participants, both guest speakers and those from the University of Chicago, represent different departments and disciplines. Presentations will address a range of topics related to Korngold's life and work, as well as broader issues in Jewish music and culture in Europe and the United States, including the relationship between music, film, and other media and the experience and effects of exile. The extensive participation of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, the Humanities Division Ensemble-in-Residence, will enhance the presence of performance. The Symposium aims to open new avenues for interpreting Korngold's compositional oeuvre and for contextualizing European and American music and film before, during, and after the Shoah as means of understanding modern cultural history.

Organized by Philip V. Bohlman, Michael A. Figueroa, Matthew Johnson, and Na’ama Rokem

Day 2 Schedule

Day 3 Schedule

HEALTH AND SAFETY

All event attendees aged 5+ who are attending Festival events must provide proof of vaccination. By exception, visitors who are unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons or due to a sincerely-held religious belief may provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of the event, or proof of a positive test 14-90 days prior to the event with affirmation that you are not experiencing any symptoms.

The University of Chicago, including the Logan Center, is mask optional.  We strongly encourage unvaccinated individuals and those preferring to wear masks to do so.

For full details on vaccination and masking policies, visit the Logan Center For the Art’s COVID-19 guidelines page.