INTONATIONS: Songs from the Violins of Hope (2020)
Jake Heggie (b. 1961) 
Texts by Gene Scheer (b. 1958)

The original chamber version of INTONATIONS was commissioned by Music at Kohl Mansion and was inspired, in part, by the book Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust— Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour by James A. Grymes.

The orchestral version of INTONATIONS was commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music with generous support from Bette & Joseph Hirsch and Diane & Richard Klein. 

Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Cabrillo Festival was unable to present its scheduled premiere in 2020. In 2021, the Festival produced a stunning hybrid version of the work in a film directed by Elena Park which interwove sections of the orchestral score (recorded remotely by members of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra) with the original chamber music score performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet with soloists mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Benjamin Beilman, and young violinist Thais Chernyavsky. Tonight’s performance marks the live world premiere of the full orchestral version of INTONATIONS. 

In February of 2017, our friend Patricia Kristof Moy reached out to tell us about the Violins of Hope project. She explained the almost unimaginable history and journey of these 86 instruments, played by prisoners in concentration camps, restored over the past four decades in Tel Aviv by Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein. The collection had already been to major cities around the world. Patricia and Music at Kohl Mansion in Burlingame wanted to bring them to the West Coast in early 2020 for an extended, Bay Area-wide residency with orchestras, chamber groups, schools, community centers, religious organizations and more. 

Central to this ambitious project, Patricia wanted to commission us to create a new composition to be premiered as part of the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. We were floored. And we immediately said yes. The project was awarded a 2017 Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions Grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Shortly thereafter, the Cabrillo Festival asked for a fully orchestrated version of the piece for its distinguished 2020 summer festival. 

The project presented us with a new opportunity: to tell stories of the instruments actually being played. The singers of the Holocaust are gone, but these instruments—84 violins, 1 viola and 1 cello—still exist to sing, vibrate and intone. These are instruments that have been held by many hands and rested on many shoulders through generations; some have vibrated with music by revered composers, others were specifically Klezmer instruments. Violins of Hope. 

Fortunately, many of the instruments’ histories had been shared with the Weinsteins. Some of these stories are documented in James Grymes’ book Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust. It was an invaluable resource. 

We decided that our piece would be a dramatic song cycle with a solo violinist, a solo singer as the voice of the violin, and a quartet of the original instruments. Each song would intone, or tell, a story from the perspective of the violin itself. This way, we could use music and words to explore the physical and emotional journeys of the instruments. 

Gene read and researched the stories in the book and other sources, and found six he wanted to explore. 

The first song, “Ashes,” is told from the perspective of one of the first violins Amnon Weinstein restored. When he removed the case, he discovered it was filled with human ashes. How could this happen? A journey ends and another begins. 

In “Exile,” we have the perspective of the violin played by Erich Weininger. Exiled from Germany, on a ship, with Palestine at last in sight, Erich and the other refugees suddenly realized there was no more fuel for the furnace. The boat was listing and sinking. The call went out to use any and all wood on the ship to feed the furnace. Erich wondered if his beloved violin was just another piece of wood to feed the flames. Eight decades later, the violin still sings.  

Prisoners were often forced to entertain Nazi officers in the camps. “Concert” tells the harrowing story of Henry Meyer when he was ordered to play a concert in the reverberant gas chamber, where family and friends were murdered every day. He apologizes to the violin and plays a waltz while an undertow of emotion pulls him down. But thanks to the violin and the music, he survives another day. 

Motele Schlein was a child prodigy with a promising career when he and his family were imprisoned. After his family was murdered, he was randomly selected to entertain at the Nazi Officers Club. At 12 years old, he devised a plan to avenge his family. Week by week, he smuggled gunpowder in his violin case to create a bomb in the basement of the Officers Club. He set it on fire and ran to the woods to watch the explosion and witness the destruction. Through it all, he was never really alone. He always had his violin and music. 

Feivel Wininger’s is a story of legacy through music. An older man, distraught from the losses of the war, gave his violin to Feivel so he could make a living with music. After the first wedding he played, Feivel was paid in loaves of bread and returned to give the old man half of what he had earned. The old man had taken his life. But Feivel went on to save many others, generations that now thrive thanks to the kindness of that old man, his violin and the music of hope. 

The sixth section of INTONATIONS is a Lament for string quartet. Here, the instruments sing a song without words. 

The liberation of Auschwitz began on January 27, 1945. The final song is inspired by Paula Lebovic’s recollection of that day and the kindness she received from a Russian soldier. Her experience and the experience of millions of others who were sent to the camps is something that must not be forgotten. May the voices of the millions who perished, distilled into the sound of these remarkable violins, remind us of the late Elie Wiesel’s words: “as we remember the past, we must remember to always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” 

The premiere of the original chamber version of INTONATIONS took place January 18, 2020 at Kohl Mansion in Burlingame with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Daniel Hope, youth violinist Sean Mori, and a quartet of instrumentalists from the San Francisco Opera Orchestra: Kay Stern, violin 1; Dawn Harms, violin 2; Patricia Heller, viola; and Emil Miland, cello. 

— Jake Heggie & Gene Scheer 

Symphony No. 6 (2019) 
Christopher Rouse (1949-2019)
[West Coast Premiere]

In memory of Chris Rouse, an extraordinary composer and friend who continues to hold a special place in our hearts.

Symphony No. 6 was Rouse’s final work before his death in 2019. Included among the words he wrote about this work were the following: “Now I hope to have lived a full enough life to have something to say that is worth perhaps a little of my listeners’ time. To live one’s life is, it sometimes seems, to spend all of one’s time on a rollercoaster as we try adapting to the sudden, unexpected changes of direction our ‘amusement park ride’ subjects us. (Sometimes those changes aren’t always very ‘amusing.’) Nonetheless, it is the very unpredictability of life that makes it so wonderful.”

In my earlier years I found the task of writing a program note for a new work a comparatively easy, even pleasant, one. More than a few of my pieces had some sort of quasi-programmatic basis, and I found that I could often say much about the sources of inspiration in hopes that my observations might help the listener better understand my intent. In more recent years, however, I find that my new pieces fall into one of two categories: (a) scores that, while always placing emotional expression at the forefront of my intent, had no particular story or triggering event that led to the work’s composition, or (b) works that were so deeply personal that I found myself reluctant to share intimately private sources of motivation. In both cases, though, it seemed that there wasn’t much I could say.

My Sixth Symphony inhabiting the second of these two groups, I hope listeners will not be disappointed if I limit myself to more “objective” observations about the music. Commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, this twenty-five minute symphony was completed at my home in Baltimore on June 6, 2019. The first challenge I face when planning a new piece is to settle upon a beginning and an ending and to decide the number and order of movements; in this case, I (rather unusually for me) chose a more-or-less standard four-movement structure with the outer movements being slow in tempo and elegiac in mood. The two middle movements are faster and the third, in particular, is meant to be highly dramatic. As is usual in my music, each movement connects to its successor without a break. In each of my symphonies I’ve also chosen to use an instrument or instrumental combination that might be seen as somewhat unusual in a symphonic context. My First Symphony, for example, requires a quartet of Wagner tubas. Here I have chosen to make use of the fluegelhorn, a larger and more mellow member of the trumpet family, and it is the fluegelhorn that presents the symphony’s opening melodic material; it returns later in the first movement and again near the end of the entire work as a way of bringing the music “full circle”. The scoring comprises two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets (second doubling of bass clarinet), two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets (first doubling on fluegelhorn), three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion (two players), and strings. As is also my wont, the harmonic language traverses areas of substantive dissonance as well as sections much more consonant (especially near the end of the symphony).

I know the “meaning” of this work in my own mind but wish to leave it to each listener to decide for him or herself what this could be. My main hope is that it will communicate something sincere in meaning to those who hear it.

—Christopher Rouse