Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Foreground, Andy Goldsworthy's Garden of Stones. Photo: Melanie Einzig.
Interview with David Marwell
Director of The Museum of Jewish Heritage,
A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Classical Domain: Did the idea for the concert originate at the Museum.
David Marwell: Interview with David Marwell Director of The Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Classical Domain: Did the idea for the concert originate at the Museum.
David Marwell: Yes it did. We work nine months to a year in advance when we create our program schedules. So we were doing this fall's programming last winter. We look for significant anniversaries to commemorate, and programs that will relate to other activities in the museum. For instance we are opening an exhibition about Pope John Paul II and the Jewish people, so we are planning a series of programs in the next several months that relate to that exhibition.
We look for themes in our core exhibition that might be explored more deeply, the public has said, for instance, “Why don't you have more about Sephardic Jews in the exhibition,” so we use the public program venue as a way to supplement, explore and deepen some of the themes we deal with in the core exhibition.
When we sat down to look at the fall of 2006, we began by looking at significant dates, and we knew that the 65th anniversary of Babi Yar would fall in September. We asked ourselves how could we commemorate this anniversary in the best way? It seemed that with certain events you can produce historical programming, you can have a historian talk about what happened. But for something of this magnitude and significance we thought an appropriate way would be through art, in one fashion or another.
CD: Also the direction of the museum is not always about academic, or museum exhibitions about death, you're as interested in life and how people lived, so the concert seems a perfect fit.
DM: Yes, we are far more about life than death We are a museum that's dedicated to commemorating the Holocaust, but we do that by putting the Holocaust into its crucial context; life before, life after. We think that there's a danger in a museum where you learn how Jews died, but not how they lived.
We are dedicated to make sure that doesn't happen. When people leave this museum, they know not only that Jews died but also how they lived before the Holocaust and how they rebuilt their lives afterwards.
CD: The significance of Babi Yar to the Holocaust and how it was accomplished on a local level, fit that structure...
DM: Yes, so the commemoration of Babi Yar was entirely consistent with our Mission.
We learned that Yevgeny Yevtushenko was in the United States, at the University of Tulsa, and we contacted him, and he agreed to read his poems, including Babi Yar at the museum. Then we decided that we would see if we could build upon the reading and put it into a certain context, and we thought about the Shostakovich symphony. Frankly we originally thought about a full orchestral presentation.
CD: That would be daunting...
DM: We learned quickly that it would be a very elaborate undertaking to produce the symphony with full orchestra and chorus. So I wondered whether there might be a piano transcription of the work. I did my dissertation about a German character named Ernst Hanfstaengl, who was not a concert pianist but was very accomplished. He played the Liszt transcriptions of Wagner, which were his specialties. I was doing a biography of him so I listened to those pieces to try to get an understanding of who he was and what moved him. I am not an expert in classical music, but I know if you can distill the full range of an orchestral piece into a piano voice, you can have something wonderful.
CD: It's true, but interestingly the compositional process is the opposite, a composer will write the work out on the piano and then orchestrate it. It's rare that the original piano document is released. It's much more common to have some one else reduce the score for the piano, but that's not what you found.
DM: Right, I thought there might be something, so I did an internet search and I looked for Shostakovich transcriptions for Babi Yar, at one site, there was a listing of his works and I saw Opus 113b — Babi Yar symphony transcribed for two pianos. So I asked my colleagues to find it. They went up against a brick wall. No one had ever heard of it, no one could find it. The Shostakovich Society didn't know anything about it, it turns out that it has never been published.
They kept saying to me “We'll do something else” and I said “It's on the website. It has to exist” (said with an irony hard to convey in cyber-print).
We found it with the help of Stephen Vann, the Artistic Producer for the Shostakovich event. He contacted Madame Shostakovich, and we determined that, in fact, this two piano version did exist, and that it only existed in the original manuscript. We were given permission to have the original copied and prepared for performance. This was done by Shostakovich's publishers in France.
CD: Did someone go over there to find it?
DM: It required the permission of Madame Shostakovich to release it, but it was done through Stephen and his connections. There must have been an “eureka” moment, certainly.
We then had to deal with the performance. We found out that Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater were going to do the full performance at Lincoln Center (October 29th at Avery Fisher Hall link). Lincoln Center was very gracious and agreed to help us. We are using the same chorus as Gergiev (Patrick Gardner leading the combined forces of Riverside Choral Society, Rutgers University Kirkpatrick Choir and the Rutgers University Glee Club).
Our bass is Valentin Peytchinov, and of course we will have Yevtushenko reading Babi Yar. We were also fortunate to interest Misha and Cipa Dichter in the program. The Dichters committed well before they had a chance to see the score. They did not get the score until the middle of August.
CD: The concert is fascinating for a number of reasons. First, most people are aware that Shostakovich had to pass everything before Soviet censors to have it performed and that the 13th Symphony which not only attacks anti-Semitism, but attacks Soviet life in general, so it's not just a working document, it's a finished piece.
DM: Right, it was vetted by the authorities
I don't want to overstate its importance, but I suppose it's crucial to the acceptance of Babi Yar by the Soviets and the work being performed in the first place.
CD: When I was reading before coming to speak with you I saw photographs taken of Jews being executed at Babi Yar. I had never seen the images of Babi Yar before and, I suppose one never gets used to them, but it's hard to believe that the pictures exist.
DM: The Babi Yar massacres were carried out in the context of this major sweep of these mobile killing units from the Baltics all the way down through the Ukraine, that moved eastward in the summer and fall of 1941. In some cases these mobile units actually advanced beyond the front line of the Wehrmacht, assisted by local police and officials.
It turns out that Babi Yar was the largest single massacre, 33,700 killed during those two days that September. But it was all within the context of more than a million other shooting deaths, in smaller individual actions. The method was to bring the killers to the victims. This method was changed as the methods were perfected? and the Germans created stationary killing centers; they then brought the victims to the killers. There was a kind of — this is not the right word — “intimacy” to these early murders that was engineered out of the later killing process.
CD: There was no distance at Babi Yar. No possibility — not to know what was happening and why. 30,000 resident of Kiev were marched off and executed by machine gun fire, it could not have been a silent process.
DM: Early on in the war these massacres were public spectacles, but by September of 1941, more of an attempt was made to keep them as non-public events. We have a film in our exhibition, one of these shooting actions from very early in the war. You can see the townspeople lining up watching it. The murder of anyone is a terrible thing, but there is something about these murders that strikes a chilling, a bone chilling resonance because these people were taken from their homes taken a very short distance, within site of their neighbors and some cases by their neighbors, because the German Einsatzgruppen could not have operated alone. They needed local volunteers.
CD: This is what Babi Yar is about. The importance of the poem is not simply about what the Nazis did at Babi Yar, it's about anti-Semitism. It's directed at the Russians, couched with in terms of the Holocaust which we identify with the Nazis. The poem is a reference to the fact that Babi Yar was not an historic anomaly.
I think the concert's a brilliant idea, so let's go see the theater...
A note from Stephen Vann on the search for the two piano arrangement of Babi Yar and the “eureka” moment.
I became involved with the Shostakovich/Yevtushenko project this summer, when I learned that the Museum of Jewish Heritage was putting together an event in commemoration of the Babi Yar massacre. What impressed me was that the Museum had such a deep commitment to the program, and had uncovered the existence of a Shostakovich 2 piano work that no one else — not even one of his biographers — knew existed. Dr. Marwell deserves full credit for unearthing this version, and for getting the wheels in motion to locate and perform it. So I joined the team, and took over the process of getting the formal permission and the physical parts, and the shaping of the program itself.
This labyrinthine process included the Paris branch of DSCH Publishers, formal permission of a lawyer in Paris doing work for the Shostakovich family, and several conversations with the Moscow Publishing arm of the Shostakovich publishers (including several conversations using the skills of a Russian translator from the Museum).
It is interesting that the 2 piano version was created by Shostakovich in the summer of 1962 after the completion of the full symphonic score. This was done so that Shostakovich could perform the work for the censors, and get official permission for the work to be performed. Since it was easier to get 2 pianists together than a full orchestra and chorus, the 2 piano version was created, but was never part of his published work.
So the “eureka” moment came when we got confirmation from the Paris branch of DSCH Publishers (the Shostakovich publishing house) that Irina Antonovna (The second wife and widow of Dmitri Shostakovich), in fact, had the parts in her possession, and would give us both permission to perform it, and physically pass it to a copyist to take the manuscript and put it into a playable form for the artists.
As you know, organizations plan their programs several years in advance. The Museum of Jewish Heritage had already put a program in place with Yevtushenko coming in person to read his poem, but when the existence of the 2 piano version of Babi Yar was discovered, it became a major priority to make this all happen on short notice — it was just too important to let this opportunity pass by. So this part of the Babi Yar commemoration at the Museum of Jewish Heritage came together in only three months before the actual concert, so there was always a sense of urgency and excitement to bring an unknown Shostakovich work to the public — especially one with such historic significance.
Once we finally had the permission to move forward, we had a different problem. We wanted very much to have Misha & Cipa Dichter as the pianists to perform the work. Unfortunately, we had no music to show them, and no ability for them to know what they would be performing. When a transcription is made from a symphonic score, the process of reduction for 2 performers to play all the orchestral parts can be tricky, and often technically complex if not downright unplayable. So we tried at some length to get a copy of the manuscript for the Dichters to review. Fortunately, we were able to get the finished parts in hand, the Dichters joined the team; the program had “legs.”
For a long while during this process, we felt as though we were ourselves behind the iron curtain. Unreturned phone calls, e-mails, unanswered questions made us wonder whether the parts would actually get copied, or if the music would truly arrive. When the music finally arrived in hand, we all breathed a sigh of relief, and the process of rehearsals and performances began. With lots of persistence (and excellent cooperation from the DSCH Publishers!) we are fortunate to be writing a page of music history with this premiere. It is an honor to bring this special version to the public. I know it will be an exceptional event.
Babi Yar links:
Babi Yar
The Holocaust Encylopedia
The subject of the Holocaust and its meaning in contemporary society has been a focal point of Dr. Marwell's career since 1980. He served as the Chief of Investigative Research at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations, where he conducted historical research in support of prosecution of Nazi war criminals living in the United States. He also played a major role in the Justice Department's investigations of Klaus Barbie and Josef Mengele. From 1988 to 1994, Dr. Marwell was the Director of the Berlin Document Center, where he supervised an extensive microfilm project for the center's 25 million Nazi-era personnel files, and subsequently oversaw the transfer of the center's administration to the German government.
Before becoming the Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in late 2000, Dr. Marwell was the Associate Director for Museum Programs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Prior to his tenure at the USHMM, Dr. Marwell was the Executive Director of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board from 1994-1997.
He is the editor of The Holdings of the Berlin Document Center: A Guide to the Collections (Berlin, 1994) as well as the author of Ernst Hanfstaengl — Der Fuhrer's Klavierspieler in Die braune Elite II (Darmstadt, 1993). He is the principal author of In the Matter of Josef Mengele — Justice Department Report (Washington, 1992).
Stephen Vann Consulting offers creative solutions to a wide range of organizational challenges. Our results oriented approach includes long-range planning, event production, board development, fundraising, artistic administration, concert touring, contract negotiations for individual artists and cultural institutions.
Mr. Vann was the General Manager of the New York Philharmonic, and has worked as a consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations over the past 20 years. He has served as Executive Director of the Eos Orchestra of New York, as well as the symphony orchestras of Nashville, Columbus, Omaha, and Evansville.
Central to Mr. Vann's accomplishments in each of these posts was his continued success at eliminating deficits, increasing and balancing operating budgets and endowments, negotiating union agreements, and increasing contributions and ticket sales through creative programming, marketing, media projects, and strategic institutional positioning.
