Mark Warshawsky - "Oyfn Pripetshik" | arr. Udi Perlman | Reut Ventorero

‪@reutventorero8379‬ ‪@IsraelCamerata‬ ‪@udiperlman‬ Mark Warshawsky (1848-1907) – “Oyfn Pripetshik” or “Der Alef-Beys” (ca. 1900) Arrangement by Udi Perlman | http://www.udiperlman.com Reut Ventorero | Mezzo-Soprano | https://reutventorero.com/ Israel Camerata Jerusalem Cond. Nir Cohen-Shalit | https://www.nircohenshalit.com/ From the concert “Memories of a Lost World”, Tel-Aviv, July 2024 The Jewish troubadour Mark Warshawsky was born in Odessa amid a veritable rejuvenation of Yiddish culture - in prose and poetry, music and theater, historiography, and folklore. Thetime was the nineteenth century, and the place was the Czarist and Austro-Hungarian empires. M. Moykher Sforim was born in Minsk (1817), A. Goldfaden – in Volyn (1840), Y. L. Peretz in Zamość (1852), Sholem Aleichem in Kyiv (1859), S. An-sky in Vitebsk (1863), and M. Gebirtig in Krakow (1877). Warshawsky is usually associated with Mordechai Gebirtig, another great troubadour. Both wrote songs – lyrics and melodies – that reached such a vast circulation that they started to be regarded as authorless “folksongs.” Yet there were differences between the two: While Mordechai Gebirtig was a Krakowiak carpenter with no formal education and whose only fluent language was Yiddish, Warshawsky – along with Jewish studies from cheder to yeshiva – received an extensive general education. He was fluent in Russian and familiar with its literature, mastered other European languages, and studied law at Kyiv University. Only later did he “discover” the beauty of Yiddish and turn his back on Russian and Ukrainian, as well as his legal practice. Abandoning his source of livelihood led him to such severe poverty that he was not in a position to publish his songs. Fortunately, word of his prowess reached Sholem Aleichem and Bialik in Odessa. The former was so impressed with Warshawsky’s talent that he began to appear with him at cultural evenings. In 1900, Sholem Aleichem published Warshawsky’s songs in a book, prefacing it with a commendatory introduction. Slowly, or rather quite quickly, Warshawsky’s songs spread throughout the Jewish world – initially in Eastern Europe and then across the globe. An anthology of Yiddish songs published by the Hebrew University in 1983-2002 honored Warshawsky with a volume, alongside Gebirtig’s and Manger’s volumes. According to the anthology's editor, Sinai Leichter, the appearance of Warshawsky’s song “Oyfn Pripetshik,” caused quite a sensation among orthodox and progressive Jews alike. Leichter points out that many were surprised by the fact that in an era where “Enlightenment” and “Modernization” were the bon ton, an assimilated Jew, who spoke foreign languages and was a lawyer, authored such a powerful song with such a mesmerizing melody, but carrying such a “conservative” message: Jewish children should go to the cheder, study the Alef-Beys and then Chumash and Rashi. It seems that the song had a paradox at the core: precisely the educated Jew, who had tasted the flavors of surrounding cultures, chose the Yiddish language, which many disparagingly referred to as “a mere jargon,” to clothe in poetry and music the worries, joys, and sorrows of his people. Maestro Cohen-Shalit refers to the arrangement created by young composer Udi Perlman for this evening: “The arrangement is a musical journey parallel to the spiritual journey of children learning to read. It is embodied both in the development of the arrangement from D minor to F minor, just like the opening melodic motif, and in the musical inspiration from outside sources: the extended use of tremolos in the strings reminds us of burning embers – warming yet consuming; at the beginning and end of the arrangement there is also an echo of Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) composed approximately at the time when Warshawsky’s song gained popularity. The connection between the two is prophetic and chilling. Another source of inspiration is the arrangement Menachem Wiesenberg wrote for Chava Alberstein’s rendering of “Oyfn Pripetshik,” released close to Udi Perlman's birth. In Perlman's arrangement, the general and personal, the biographical and musical are intertwined.”