On the disc, Schoenfield’s works give musical voice to two men – one who survived, and one who perished -- and their evocative words that communicate rage and bitter humor, tenderness, and fragile hope.  Camp Songs is a setting of five poems written by Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a non-Jewish Polish journalist who survived six years as a political prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The songs are full of mordant humor and bitter irony. A crematorium operator boasts of his enthusiasm for his work; the concentration camp itself is mocked in a sarcastic alma mater; Hitler’s approaching end is greeted with schadenfreude. Camp Songs was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in its setting with the original Polish texts. This CD is the first recording of a new English version. It features baritone Erich Parce and mezzo-soprano Angela Niederloh. Schoenfield joins the instrumental ensemble as pianist.
 
 

Schoenfield’s Ghetto Songs (2008) draws on the lyrical legacy of Mordecai Gebirtig, a carpenter by trade whose folksinging and acting earned him a reputation as Poland’s “Yiddish troubadour”.  Gebirtig was forced to the Krakow Ghetto in April 1942, and before his murder there two months later he composed poems in a notebook which has been preserved. Ghetto Songs sets six of these poems. “It is very different from Camp Songs,” said Schoenfield. “These poems by Gebirtig are written across this whole range between hope and gladness and despair.” The song cycle opens with Gebirtig talking hopefully to a portrait of his daughter, but descends into despair as their reunion remains uncertain. Later he rejoices in a ray of sunshine, and the cycle concludes with Gebirtig’s meditation on Jewish resilience. Mezzo-soprano Angela Niederloh and baritone Morgan Smith are joined by an instrumental ensemble that includes Schoenfield as pianist.
 

Gerard Schwarz composed Rudolf and Jeanette, his second MOR commission, in memory of his mother’s Viennese parents, Rudolf and Jeanette Weiss. Denied exit visas, they were deported to a Riga concentration camp and shot there in 1942. “Rudolf was exactly my age now when he was murdered,” wrote the Seattle Symphony conductor in his composer’s notes for the piece.  Scored for a 14-piece chamber orchestra, the work opens with a haunting melody, juxtaposes a Nazi march theme with nostalgic Viennese waltzes, and concludes with a funeral march. Schwarz’s son Julian, winner of MOR’s first David Tonkonogui Memorial Award, is one of the cellists on the recording.
 

The CD’s release coincided with MOR’s November 9, 2009 concert, Cantillations, at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.