Arts & Entertainment

A Way With Notes

Temple Israel concert highlights two Jewish composers
who've made the U.S. their home.

Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News

T

wo piano teachers — one in
Poland and another in Argentina
— raised sons who became
distinctive American composers and
whose music soon will be heard during an
eclectic concert at Temple Israel in West
Bloomfield.
The Carpe Diem String Quartet, based
in Ohio, will perform String Quartet by
Jan Radzynski, who left Poland for Israel
and then immigrated to the United States,
and Tenebrae by Osvaldo Golijov, who left
Argentina to follow a similar route.
The concert, which includes Two Pieces
for String Quartet by Shostakovich and
Quartet No. 1 in D Major by Tchaikovsky,
begins 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 23. It
is part of the Schmier Chapel Chamber
Series.
"The program sounds like it has some-
thing for everybody," says Radzynski,
57, professor of composition and music
theory at Ohio State University.
"My piece, the first I wrote in the United
States while a graduate student, draws its
inspiration from the liturgical Sephardic
music of the Middle East often character-
ized by highly ornamented melodic lines,
microtonic intervals and [melody varia-
tions]!"
Radzynski contrasts his work with the
contemporary feel of the Golijov piece, the
romantic nature of the Tchaikovsky work
and the classical tones of the Shostakovich

segment.
The concert was arranged by Neil
Michaels, cantorial soloist at the temple.
"The Carpe Diem String Quartet is a
young group on the rise, and the mem-
bers champion works by new composers:'
Michaels says. "The group picked the
selections based on conservations we
had.
"Carpe Diem plays a lot of Jewish music
although the members are not Jewish. Two
of them, violinist Charles Wetherbee and
cellist Wendy Morton, are alumnae of the
Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,
and so am I."
The quartet, in residence at the
Conservatory of Music at Capital
University in Columbus, also includes
violinist and violist Korine Fujiwara and
violinist John Ewing.
The group's recording projects have
focused on the nine string quartets of
Sergey Taneyev and the first part of a
complete Shostakovich quartet cycle.
Collaborating with Columbus Dance
Theater, members have prepared a pro-
gram for public television. They also have
begun working with accordion and bando-
neon performer Peter Soave on a concert
called "Five Tango Sensations."
"I think Carpe Diem is terrific:'
Radzynski says. "The first violinist is
the concertmaster of the Columbus
Symphony, and the other members also
play in the symphony"
Radzynski, who has lectured at the
University of Michigan, was trained as a

cellist and started composing as a teen-
ager. Because of anti-Semitism in Poland,
he moved to Israel in the 1960s and stud-
ied at the Tel Aviv University Academy of
Music. In 1984, he received his doctoral
degree from Yale University.
Radzynski's works have been played
and commissioned both inside and
outside the United States. His Kaddish,
recorded by the Jerusalem Symphony,
received a special commendation at the
International Rostrum of Composers in
Paris in 1983.
"Several years ago, I started a Jewish
music series at Ohio State University,"
Radzynski says. "We put on concerts, lec-
tures and presentations, and I co-direct it
with colleagues!'
Golijov's Tenebrae is the 21st-century
piece in the temple concert.
"I wrote Tenebrae as a consequence of
witnessing two contrasting realities in a
short period of time in September 2000:'
Golijov says. "I was in Israel at the start of
the new wave of violence that is still con-
tinuing today, and a week later, I took my
son to the new planetarium in New York,
where we could see the Earth as a beauti-
ful blue dot in space.
"I wanted to write a piece that could be
listened to from different perspectives. If
one chooses to listen to it from afar, the
music would probably offer a beautiful
surface; but from a metaphorically closer
distance, one could hear that, beneath the
surface, the music is full of pain!"
Golijov, 47, who studied piano in

Argentina, moved to Israel in 1983 and
began attending the Jerusalem Rubin
Academy. After relocating to the United
States in 1986, he earned his doctoral
degree at the University of Pennsylvania
and was a fellow at Tanglewood.
Working closely with the St. Lawrence
and Kronos string quartets, he experi-
enced the recording of his chamber music
piece Yiddishbbuk and its nomination for
a Grammy.
Golijov, a recipient of a MacArthur
Fellowship, has had his music performed
and recorded in many countries. Artists
who have presented his works include
Dawn Upshaw, Yo-Yo Ma, Alisa Weilerstein
and Matt Haimovitz.
A Loyola professor of music at
the College of the Holy Cross in
Massachusetts, Golijov also is on the fac-
ulty of the Boston Conservatory. His most
current projects include an opera commis-
sioned by the Metropolitan Opera and the
soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's film
Youth without Youth.
The day after the West Bloomfield
concert, Golijov's opera Ainadamar will
be performed at the Adelaide Festival in
Australia. ❑

The Carpe Diem String Quartet will
perform 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 23,
at Temple Israel, 5725 Walnut Lake
Road, in West Bloomfield. Admission
is free. For complimentary tickets,
call (248) 661-5700.

March 20 0 2008

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