university musical society
39th Annual
ch tuber
University of Michigan • Ann Arbor
Hagen Quartet
Sunday, October 28, 4 pm
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
Presented in memory of David Eklund.
St. Petersburg Conservatory Chamber Ensemble
Tuesday, October 30, 8 pm
Michigan Theater
SPONSORED
B Y
slityE
w'
..REAL TORS
Brentano String Quartet and Mark Strand
Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ
poet
Sunday, January 13, 4 pm
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
Media Sponsor Michigan Radio
Da Camera of Houston
Marcel Proust's Paris
Saturday, January 26, 8 pm
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
SPONSORED BY
CART IL1.P
Media Sponsor Michigan Radio
UMS/UM Co-Commission!
Harolyn Blackwell soprano
Florence Quivar mezzo-soprano
From the Diary of Sally Hemings
Wednesday, February 13, 8 pm
Sunday, February 17, 4 pm
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
Media Sponsors Michigan Radio 8 WGTE 91.3 FM
Da Camera of Houston
Epigraph for a Condemned Book
Sarah Rothenberg director and piano
Music by Frederic Chopin
Texts by Charles Baudelaire
Wednesday, March 20, 8 pm
Power Center
Presented with the generous support of Beverley and Gerson Geltner.
This performance is co-produced by UMS and the University of Michigan.
Media Sponsor Michigan Radio
Emerson String Quartet and the
Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio
Friday, April 5, 8 pm
Michigan Theater.
Presented with the generous support of Maurice and Linda Binkow.
Takitcs Quartet and Robert Pinsky
All the World for Love
poet
Saturday, April 13, 8 pm
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
SPONSORED By
BORDERS
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the Jewish Museum.
Like Oppenheim, Chagall, the
oldest of eight children, was born
in a family steeped in religious life.
His parents were observant chasidic
Jews whose life revolved around
faith and prayer.
World War I displaced the
shtetl culture and more than a
million Jews from their homes. It
was that lost world that Chagall
sustained in memory and in his
art.
Like Oppenheim's idealized ghet-
to scenes, Chagall's romanticized
paintings reflect a culture that no
longer exists as well as a bridge
between the Old World and New.
"It's a body of work primarily
from the two major museums in
Russia, the State Tretyakov Gallery
in Moscow and the State Russian
Chagall's "Jew in
Cremieux, head
Museum in St. Petersburg," explains
Bright Red," 1915.
of French Jewry
Susan Tumarkin Goodman, senior
The artist endows
in Paris, in 1842
curator-at-large at the Jewish
in recognition of
the beggar with the
Museum and curator of the exhibi-
spirituality of a
the efforts of
tion. "These are the works which
migrant holy man
world Jewish
Chagall left behind when he left
or chasidic rabbi,
leaders who
Russia in 1922 for good."
surrounded by an arc
fought publicly
The exhibition begins with the
of sunlight filled with
to stop persecu-
work of Yehuda Pen, Chagall's first
the Hebrew letters
tion of Jews.
art teacher, who opened up a pri-
from "Genesis." vate art school in Vitebsk in 1897.
As a 19th-cen-
tury academical-
It was the first and for a time the
ly trained
only Jewish art school in the Pale.
painter, Oppenheim also produced
From Pen, Chagall learned that
many works on paper, reflecting his
Jewish themes were legitimate subjects
abilities as a consummate draftsman.
for art. Pen's greatest contribution was
The earliest surviving portrait of a
teaching his students, including
Rothschild painted by the artist is a
Chagall, that it was possible to be
work on paper of James de Rothschild,
both Jewish and an artist, notes
who built the Paris branch of the
Goodman. Equally important was
banking family.
Chagall's introduction to modern art,
"His most unique niche is as a
a crucial fact in Chagall's artistic devel-
Jewish genre painter," says Goldstein.
opment, she adds.
"That being said, it is also incumbent
Chagall made a huge leap from Pen's
upon us to recognize the full range of
academic paintings to his own work
his artistic skill and achievements, the
grounded in imagination and memory.
broadness of his beauty and vision."
"He had an extraordinary imagination
and saw in Paris all of the latest mod-
ern movements, including the wild
Chagall's Unseen Wbrks
colors of Fauvisiri and the breakup of
Five years after Oppenheim died,
space in Cubism," explains Goodman.
Marc Chagall was born in 1887 in
Chagall left Vitebsk for further
Vitebsk, a town in the Pale of
study
in St. Petersburg in 1909, giving
Settlement, where most Jews of czarist
him
his
first exposure to Western art.
Russia lived, confined by law.
painted in 1908, is the
The
Window,
The exhibit, which includes almost
earliest
extant
work by Chagall that
60 paintings, drawings and murals by
remains
in
the
Russian collection.
Chagall and nine works of Yehuda Pen,
Nostalgic for.his hometown, the
Chagall's first art teacher, reflects the
artist is looking out the window of his
shtetl (Jewish village) culture of Vitebsk.
parents' house. The work was painted
Except for the murals, these works are
when
Chagall was a struggling 19-
being seen in the United States for the
year-old
student in St. Petersburg and
first time. The exhibit recently made
reflects
the
artist's transition from his
news when an 8x10-inch oil painting
study
under
Pen with later works.
valued
at
called Study for Over Vitbesk,
The four years Chagall spent in
$1 million, was reported stolen from