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inroads into Mozart, Berlioz and opera,<br />
Veronique Gens is ideally suited<br />
to perform these songs. A lyrical<br />
soprano with a wonderful light voice.<br />
but with occasional Carmen-like<br />
earthiness when the text requires it,<br />
Gens is also a native of the Auvergne<br />
with full command of the dialect. Her<br />
singing is luscious, uninhibited yet<br />
graceful and a joy to listen to.<br />
The Orchestre National de Lille<br />
under Jean-Claude Casadesus gives<br />
a sensuous and imaginative accompaniment.<br />
The recording is sumptuous<br />
and destined to be a best seller.<br />
Ja11os Gardo11yi<br />
Dancing on the Edge of a<br />
Volcano: Jewish Cabaret,<br />
Popular and Political Songs<br />
1900-1950<br />
New Budapest Orpheum<br />
Society Chicago; Philip V.<br />
Bohlman, artistic director; llya<br />
Levinson, Music Director<br />
Cedille Records CDR 90000 065<br />
University of Chicago ethnomusicologist<br />
Philip Bohlman and Moscow<br />
Conservatory-trained pianist Ilya<br />
Levinson have created an important<br />
recording, supplemented by 78 pages<br />
of valuable liner notes. Disc one<br />
presents songs in original languages;<br />
on di c two they reappear in English.<br />
The ensemble combines opera<br />
singers with new music and jazz instrumentalists,<br />
the same heady mix<br />
that prevailed first time around.<br />
Aside from the minority who made<br />
it across the Atlantic to the Americas,<br />
or across the Mediterranean to<br />
Palestine, the Red Sea did not pare<br />
for most Viennese Jews. But thanks<br />
to these scholars, some of their music<br />
has survived.<br />
Magic Breath - English,<br />
Phil Ehre11saft<br />
Yiddish and Hebrew Art Songs<br />
composed by Helen Medwedeff<br />
Greenberg; Margaret Burton,<br />
soprano; Elizabeth Acker, pianci<br />
Toreador<br />
(www .toreadorrecords.com)<br />
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Chants d'Auvergne<br />
Veronique Gens, Soprano<br />
8!'>5191<br />
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Classes high and low, and multiple<br />
ethnicities, rubbed shoulders in Vienna's<br />
cabarets in the years leading<br />
up to World War Two. Major composers<br />
and writers in the Austro<br />
H ungarian Empire and Germany<br />
transformed popular cabaret music<br />
into a high, mordant art of social and<br />
political satire. Jewish participation<br />
was especially pronounced: Leon<br />
Botstein estimates that between a third<br />
and half of the patrons attending concerts<br />
and opera in Vienna before the<br />
Holocaust were Jewish. Jewish composers'<br />
were equally active - think<br />
Schoenberg and Weill for starters.<br />
"Dancing on th.e Edge of a Volcano"<br />
begins with a Yiddish variation<br />
on the ultimate cabaret waltz,<br />
Viennese Coachman 's Song, penned<br />
in German by the Jewish composer<br />
Gustav Pick. So here's the precedent<br />
for Irving Berlin's all-time<br />
cross-over hit, White Christmas.<br />
Berlin's Cohen Owes Me Ninety<br />
Seven Dollars may be the outstanding<br />
track on an outstanding disc. It's<br />
a fine illustration of how the cabaret<br />
baton was passed on to popular<br />
cheaters on New York's Lower<br />
East Side, Montreal's Main, and<br />
the like. Hebrew songs by Weill,<br />
Dessau, Milhaud, Wolpe and Copland<br />
show how the baton was<br />
passed on in Palestine.<br />
APRIL 1 - MAY 7 <strong>2005</strong><br />
Originally ,from Baltimore, now living<br />
in Toronto, Helen Medwedeff<br />
Greenberg (b.1939) has composed<br />
many works for solo voice and piano,<br />
choir, and wind instruments.<br />
"Magic Breath" presents an array<br />
of excerpts from her various song<br />
cycles based on Yiddish and English<br />
poems, as well as settings of<br />
Hebrew liturgical and biblical texts,<br />
beautifully realized by soprano Margaret<br />
Burton of Minneapolis, and<br />
Toronto pianist Elizabeth Acker<br />
(with occasional accompaniment by<br />
Tom Bartsch),<br />
In describing the overall compositional<br />
style, the term neo-Romantic<br />
comes to mind, The Yiddish<br />
songs, which comprise the first six<br />
tracks on this recording, are highly<br />
programmatic or expressionistic in<br />
nature, The music is well-wedded<br />
to the poetic imagery. In A Vinterlid<br />
(A Winter Song), for example,<br />
the opening words "Run wild angry<br />
winds" are reflected quite literally<br />
in the vocal and piano lines.<br />
The next six tracks present refreshing<br />
(if somewhat sentimental)<br />
arrangements of familiar Hebrew<br />
texts, in a gentle, lyrical mode, In<br />
Shehecheyanu, Burton is joined by<br />
lyric baritone Matthew Zadow in a<br />
V•n"-l - Symph. Vol. 3<br />
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