MusicaNova Orchestra is Coming to Scottsdale in March

Three works explicitly banned by the Nazi regime will be performed by the MusicaNova Orchestra at 2 p.m. March 29 at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

"Music with a Voice - A Concert of Reclamation" celebrates the inextinguishable nature of art through the music of Franz Schreker, Paul Hindemith and Felix Mendelssohn. "These voices were suppressed by the Nazis. At our concert you can hear them again," says MusicaNova Music Director Warren Cohen.

Tickets are available at tickets.scottsdalearts.org.

The suppression of Jewish artists by the Nazis changed the trajectory of artistic life for the rest of the 20th century. This effect was especially profound in the area of music.

Nazis feared that Jewish culture would "infect" society. "This is the most interesting point in the whole Nazi attitude toward art," Cohen says. "The idea of 'Judaism as contagion' led to the Holocaust, and it started with banning so called 'Jewish' music and art. I am proud to celebrate the survival, however precariously, of this music.

The pieces on the program include:

· Schreker's Ekkehard Overture. Schreker was nearly as popular as Strauss in the 1920s, but, because of the Nazi's suppression of his music, almost forgotten after World War II. Nazi officials criticized his "Jewish qualities of sentimentality, over-wrought emotion, and degenerate sensuality." His expressive musical language suggests a direction music could have gone in the 20th century.

· Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphony. This symphony is based on the life of Renaissance painter Matthias Grunewald, a symbol of resistance against oppressive political and religious interference in art. It was the first piece explicitly banned by the Nazis, who regarded it as a deliberate provocation and insult. Hindemith was forced to leave Germany and moved to the United States.

· Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor. The suppression of Mendelssohn's music was one of the oddest examples of the Nazi attempt to control art, as the German composer's work had already been part of the repertoire for a century. He was the grandson of Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, but his father had converted to Lutheranism. The Nazis, though, considered Mendelssohn's music to have far too many Jewish characteristics, which they feared would weaken German Aryans and make them more susceptible to Jewish influence.

Sharon Hui, first prize winner in the 2019 Arizona Piano Institute Concerto Competition, will be the soloist for the Mendelssohn concerto. A multiple prize winner, Hui is a junior at Red Mountain High School in Mesa. She hopes to pursue a degree in piano while exploring additional academic interests during her college years.

The concert program also includes Ludwig von Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and contemporary composer Mayumi Kimura Meguro's "Hana o Tobashite," a striking evocation of the suffering of everyday people in a war.

Remaining concerts in MusicaNova Orchestra's 2019-2020 season include Stabat Mater: Reflections on Holy Week on April 5 at Scottsdale Presbyterian Church, and the season finale, The Mannheim Phenomenon: Centuries of String Orchestra Sound on May 10 at the Musical Instrument Museum.

MusicaNova is a professional symphony orchestra founded in the Valley in 2003. MNO also presents its Young Artists Concert and free Community Concert Series at venues in Phoenix, Tempe, and Scottsdale, conducts extensive educational outreach with Valley schools, and created the unique MNO Composition Fellows Program for hands-on mentoring of emerging composers.

MusicaNova concerts are supported by grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Gannett Foundation, the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture,

and Tempe Arts Grants.

Call 480-750-9466 for more information, or visit musicanovaaz.com.

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