Appropriately timed for Holocaust Remembrance Day, soprano Jaclyn Grossman and pianist Nate Ben-Horin in conjunction with the Harold Green Jewish Theatre presented a concert of music (mainly) from the Vilna and Kovno ghettoes in Lithuania.  Their earlier concert, which I wasn’t aware of, featured fairly well known material from Terezin but most of this program was unfamiliar, having largely survived by chance.  Some of it only exists as a melody line and had to be recreated by Ben-Horin.

The composers featured are Edwin Geist, Percy haid, Abraham Brudno and Mark Warshawsky.  It’s pretty serious classical artsong for the most part rather than the more folk/cabaret style of much of the music from Terezin and it’s all very ably performed.  There’s about twenty five minutes of music interspersed with a “timeline” of the Vilna ghetto and it’s very well filmed and recorded by Ryan Harper.  It’s worth a look.

There’s also a seventeen minute Zoom style introduction which has some interesting things to say but is technically a bit rough.  The video is available online here.