National Symphony Orchestra Journey to America–A Musical Immigration January 31, 2002 – February 9, 2002		Thursday at 7 p.m. February 7, 2002 Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts 2700 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20566 On February 7, as part of its "Journey to America–A Musical Immigration" series, the National Symphony Orchestra will perform A Survivor From Warsaw, Arnold Schoenberg's landmark composition about spiritual resistance in the Warsaw ghetto. At this time it might be appropriate to revisit the occasion of this work's last performance at the Kennedy Center, on April 21, 1993, at a concert marking the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. From the program booklet for that event, here are the notes to A Survivor From Warsaw: Arnold Schoenberg Kennedy Center Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was personally affected by Nazi policies of Kulturkampf and antisemitism. He was obliged to resign his position at the Prussian Academy of Arts shortly after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and his music, branded "degenerate" and "Bolshevist," was banned throughout the Reich. That same year he left Germany forever; friends and family who stayed behind perished in killing centers. A prophet in the field of music, Schoenberg also turned a visionary eye toward the political scene. Of Europe's threatened Jewry he wrote in 1938: "Are they condemned to doom? Will they become extinct? Famished? Butchered? ...[T]he fate of the Austrian and Hungarian Jews was sealed years ago. And can a man with foresight deny that the Jews of Romania and Poland are in danger of a similar fate?" Schoenberg spent the war years in southern California, in reduced circumstances and ill-health, only rarely able to compose. On hearing a personal account of the Warsaw ghetto rebellion, however, he created A Survivor from Warsaw in a ten-day burst of inspiration, drawing the text almost directly from the survivor's words. The work received its premiere in 1947. A Survivor from Warsaw is in two short sections, played without pause. The first part, for speaker and chorus, consists of the survivor's account of his ordeal. The second part depicts a chorus of panic-stricken Jews en route to the gas chambers, where—to the survivor's amazement—they begin to intone the traditional confession of their faith, the Sh'ma Yisrael. Eyewitnesses affirm that such chanting did occur in Treblinka, Auschwitz, and other killing centers. Sh'ma Yisrael was by custom the final utterance of Jewish martyrs, sages, and others—a last profession of trust in divine will. In the face of an annihilation that promised to wipe out both the individual and the culture whose essence the prayer embodied, the act of reciting the ancient creed was more than a demonstration of faith or submission. As Schoenberg recognized, and as the music to A Survivor from Warsaw forcefully asserts, to pray Sh'ma Yisrael under such circumstances was also an act of defiance. Links: NSO/Kennedy Center Music of the Holocaust Warsaw Ghetto Uprising More on A Survivor From Warsaw: Jewish Virtual Library Ticketing: For reservations, visit Kennedy Center or call (800) 444-1324 or (202) 467-4600.