Mark Glanville | |
|---|---|
 Glanville at his old house in London, 2009 | |
| Born | London, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Singer/Writer |
| Website | www.yiddishwinterreise.com |
Mark Glanville (born London, England) is an English classical singer and writer. He grew up in West London with his father, the writer Brian Glanville.
Mark chronicled his early life, including flirtations with the world of football hooliganism, studying Classics and Philosophy at Oxford University and forging an operatic career as a bass-baritone with Opera North, Scottish Opera, Lisbon Opera and New Israeli Opera among others, [1] in his memoir The Goldberg Variations, published by HarperCollins in 2003 and shortlisted for the Wingate Prize for Jewish Literature and the National Sporting Club Award. [2] [3] [4] In his memoir Glanville suggests that his interest in football violence had ended by the time of his marriage to the soprano Julia Melinek, but he later confessed to being drawn back into that world via the notorious hooligan firms of Millwall in south London. [5] An article referencing that experience, in the Sunday Times, led to numerous almost entirely condemnatory readers comments. [6] In the final chapter of his memoir Glanville claimed to have found his true identity as a Jew. [7] Glanville's recent writing has focused on the literature of the Holocaust. In November 2020 he was commissioned to write a feature for the Times Literary Supplement celebrating the centenary of the great Romanian, German-language poet, Paul Celan. [8] He has also written frequently on the Vilna Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever. [9] [10] [11]
Among his opera recordings Glanville sang the role of Armando in Donizetti's L'assedio di Calais for Opera Rara.
His later work as a singer moved away from the opera house towards the recital hall with the song cycle Yiddish Winterreise – A Holocaust Survivor’s Inner Journey told through Yiddish song, released on the Naxos label in 2010. [12] Using songs from the Yiddish folk tradition, many in original arrangements by the composer/accompanist Alexander Knapp, Glanville took Schubert's Winterreise "as a symbol for the destruction of home and family". [13] The programme was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of Pro Musica Hebraica. [14] It was reprised in March 2024 at Kings Place for the Jewish Literary Foundation, with pianist Marc Verter. [15]
A second programme of Yiddish song Di Sheyne Milnerin – A Yiddish Die Schöne Müllerin was released on the Nimbus label in 2012 [16] and performed live at Symphony Space, New York City in 2011 [17] and St John's, Smith Square in October 2012. [18] Glanville returned to the Kennedy Center in March 2016 to perform songs by Salomon Sulzer for Pro Musica Hebraica in the programme, 'Wandering Stars'. [19]
On 8 November 2018, Mark Glanville and Mark Verter (pianist) gave their first performance of Citizen of Nowhere: A Sung Life, a programme devoted to the songs of Mieczysław Weinberg at the Martin Harris Centre, Manchester University [20] followed by a performance at the Purcell Room on 3 February 2019. [21] Glanville was subsequently invited to perform Weinberg songs for Israeli Opera in April 2019 [22] and again with Marc Verter on Weinberg's 100th birthday, 8 December 2019, as part of the Polin Museum Warsaw's centennial celebrations for Weinberg which also featured Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata. [23] 'Barbaric Verses', a new programme developed with pianist Marc Verter, inspired by the life and work of Weinberg, focused on the music and poetry of composers and writers living under totalitarian regimes. It debuted at Kings Place in February 2023 [24] and was subsequently performed at The Sholem Asch Festival in Kutno, home to a quarter of Glanville's ancestors, in September 2023. [25]
Since 2008, Glanville has been focusing on the history and traditions of the Italian region of Apulia, [26] [27] and performing as a singer and ciaramella player with the first London-based pizzica and southern Italian traditional music group, Amaraterra. [28] After appearing on BBC Radio 3's World on 3 [29] the group were invited to perform at WOMAD in July 2016. [30] They returned to WOMAD in 2022 to run the Malmesbury Schools Project [31] and to perform on the Charlie Gillet stage in 2023. [32] On 9 November 2017 they supported Sud Sound System at Brixton Jamm. [33] On 2 July 2019 Glanville opened the Pantelleria Festival 'La Musica e il Vento' with songs from different Mediterranean traditions (including Puglia and Sicily) accompanied by Stelios Katsatsidis, accordion-player for Amareterra. [34]
Amaraterra were at the centre of a media storm in December 2020, after claiming that their offer to appear on the BBC's 'Strictly Come Dancing' spin-off programme, 'It Takes Two', was withdrawn once they asked for a fee. [35]
Mieczysław Weinberg was a Polish, Soviet, and Russian composer and pianist. Born in Warsaw to parents who worked in the Yiddish theatre in Poland, his early years were surrounded by music. He taught himself to play the piano at a young age and eventually became skilled enough to substitute for his father as a conductor at Warsaw's Jewish Theatre. During this period, he began to compose. At the age of 12, he started formal music lessons and soon thereafter enrolled at the Warsaw Conservatory. He studied piano with Józef Turczyński, who considered him and Witold Małcużyński as one of his best students. In 1938, Weinberg played for Josef Hofmann, who offered to teach him at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Weinberg declined, because he preferred to focus on composition instead; the invasion of Poland that initiated World War II in 1939 also made it impossible for him to accept. As the Wehrmacht advanced on Warsaw, Weinberg left his parents behind and fled with his sister towards the Soviet border. Discomfort forced his sister to turn back in mid-journey—he never saw her or the rest of his family again. During his only subsequent visit to Poland in 1966, he learned that his family had been murdered at the Trawniki concentration camp.
Abraham Sutzkever was an acclaimed Yiddish poet. The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest poet of the Holocaust."
Ian Charles Bostridge CBE is an English tenor, well known for his performances as an opera and lieder singer.
Yiddish song is a general description of several genres of music sung in Yiddish which includes songs of Yiddish theatre, Klezmer songs, and "Yiddish art song" after the model of the German Lied and French mélodie.
The Great Synagogue of Warsaw was a former Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, that was located on Tłomackie street, in Warsaw, in the Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. Designed by Leandro Marconi and completed in the Neoclassical style in 1878, at the time of its opening, it was the largest Jewish house of worship in the world. The grand synagogue served as a house of prayer until World War II when it was destroyed by Nazis on May 16, 1943.
Erich Walter Sternberg was a German-born Israeli composer. He was one of the founders of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
David Hobson is an Australian opera tenor and composer.
Jewish music is the music and melodies of the Jewish people. There exist both traditions of religious music, as sung at the synagogue and in domestic prayers, and of secular music, such as klezmer. While some elements of Jewish music may originate in biblical times, differences of rhythm and sound can be found among later Jewish communities that have been musically influenced by location. In the nineteenth century, religious reform led to composition of ecclesiastic music in the styles of classical music. At the same period, academics began to treat the topic in the light of ethnomusicology. Edwin Seroussi has written, "What is known as 'Jewish music' today is thus the result of complex historical processes". A number of modern Jewish composers have been aware of and influenced by the different traditions of Jewish music.
Jonas Kaufmann is a German-Austrian tenor opera singer. He is best known for the versatility of his repertoire, performing a variety of opera roles in multiple languages in recital and concert each season. Some of his standout roles include Don José in Carmen, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur, Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, Siegmund in Die Walküre, and the title roles in Parsifal, Werther, Don Carlos, and Lohengrin. In 2014 The New York Times described Kaufmann as "a box-office draw, and... the most important, versatile tenor of his generation."
Matthew Rose is an English operatic bass.
The Jewish art music movement began at the end of the 19th century in Russia, with a group of Russian Jewish classical composers dedicated to preserving Jewish folk music and creating a new, characteristically Jewish genre of classical music. The music it produced used Western classical elements, featuring the rich chromatic harmonies of Russian late Romantic music, but with melodic, rhythmic and textual content taken from traditional Jewish folk or liturgical music. The group founded the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music, a movement that spread to Moscow, Poland, Austria, and later Palestine and the United States. Although the original society existed formally for only 10 years, its impact on the course of Jewish music was profound. The society, and the art music movement it fostered, inspired a new interest in the music of Eastern European Jewry throughout Europe and America. It laid the foundations for the Jewish music and Klezmer revival in the United States, and was a key influence in the development of Israeli folk and classical music.
Max van Egmond is a Dutch bass and baritone singer. He has focused on oratorio and Lied and is known for singing works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He was one of the pioneers of historically informed performance of Baroque and Renaissance music.
Isabelle Yakovlevna Kremer was a soprano of Russian Jewish descent who at various times of her life held citizenship in Russia, the United States, and Argentina. She first drew notice as a teenager for her revolutionary poetry which was published in an Odessa newspaper. She began her professional singing career as an opera singer in Europe during the second decade of the 20th century. By the time of her relocation to the United States in 1924, she had abandoned her opera career in favor of performing as a concert soloist and recitalist.
Pro Musica Hebraica (PMH) is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is "to present Jewish classical music – much of it lost or forgotten – in a concert hall setting." Since April 2008, Pro Musica Hebraica has presented 13 concerts, typically two per year at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The concert series featured performances by Itzhak Perlman, the ARC Ensemble of Canada, the Apollo Ensemble of Amsterdam, Jascha Nemtsov, and Marc-André Hamelin, among others. The concert recordings are not sold, but are available on the website for free. PMH concerts are occasionally broadcast on WETA (FM).
Lev Mordukhovich Tseitlin, known as Leo Zeitlin, was a Russian-Jewish composer. In 1923, he emigrated to the United States. His best-known work is Eli Zion, a paraphrase for piano and cello "on a folk theme and trope of 'Song of Songs'".
Jacob Weinberg was a Russian-born American Jewish composer and pianist who composed over 135 works for piano and other instruments. He was one of the founders of the Jewish National Conservatory in Jerusalem before immigrating to the U.S. where he became "an influential voice in the promotion of American Jewish music" from the 1940s until his death.
Max Helfman was a Polish-born American Jewish composer, choral conductor, pianist, singer, and educator. He had a long career arranging both secular and religious Jewish music and was considered to have a gift for writing music that was both singable and emotionally complex, which was modern and original and yet rooted in traditional folk and synagogue melodies.
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Mascha Benya, born Masha Benyakonsky, was a Russian-born soprano known especially for her promotion and performance of Yiddish and Hebrew folk and art music in the United States after World War II. After a short career as an opera singer in the Jüdischer Kulturbund in 1930s Berlin, she emigrated to New York after Kristallnacht and became an important figure in the teaching of Yiddish and Hebrew song through the Workman's Circle, Kaufman Music Center, and other organizations, as well as a touring singer, radio performer, and recording artist.
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