The Breman, ASO Team Up for Glorious Night

In a rare move of cultural cooperation, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) and The Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum promoted an evening of 20th century music classics. Featured was the “Symphony No. 7” by the Jewish-born, Austrian composer Gustav Mahler.

Also on the program was the “Piano Concerto No. 1,” by Dimitri Shostakovich, featuring the Israel-born pianist Inon Barnatan. Both of his parents were sabras, living in Tel Aviv, who encouraged his training when he was only 3 years old. He’s been a frequent guest at the ASO.

The Breman’s program, which was part of the orchestra’s season finale, featured an introduction to Mahler’s music by Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, a classically trained Black vocalist and composer who is a Jew by choice. Before the evening’s performance, he spoke about the Jewishness of the turn-of-the-century composer.

Mahler was a self-proclaimed agnostic Jew, whom many believe converted to Catholicism to further his career as an acclaimed conductor in Europe. It did little to ingratiate him to the antisemitic rabble who populated Vienna and other major European cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As Russell pointed out, Mahler, despite his success, was a restless soul who never felt truly at home, “neither as an Austrian among Germans or as a Jew throughout the world, always an intruder, never welcomed.”

During his lifetime, the nine symphonies he composed that are today considered masterworks were often not greeted with the same kind of enthusiasm as they are today. His seventh symphony was no exception, despite the fact that it was prominently premiered as a featured work at the 60th anniversary celebration of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph.

It would take another Jewish conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein, with his performances of the Mahler canon in this country, in Europe and in Israel in the decades following World War II to properly situate him in the musical hall of fame in which he resides today.

The program in Atlanta’s Symphony Hall capped a season of high-profile partnerships The Breman has undertaken this year. They have included an ambitious co-sponsorship earlier this year of the Theatrical Outfit’s production of “The Lehman Trilogy,” about the Southern Jewish family that founded the Lehman Brothers Wall Street financial firm.

The month-long run of the epic, critically acclaimed production, just like the ASO concert, is part of The Breman’s ongoing effort to bring audiences together for works with Jewish themes. It’s been an initiative close to the heart of The Breman’s executive director, Leslie Gordon, who ran The Rialto Theater in downtown Atlanta before coming to the museum a half-dozen years ago.

“So right now, we, at The Breman, are actively trying to focus on Jewish peoplehood,“ Gordon said. “What we’ve observed after Oct. 7 is that there seems to be a longing for Jews who may not feel like they’re part of a particular community or a synagogue community but want to gather together. So, being able to create programs that bring people together and give them that space has been super important to us.”

Music, whether at Symphony Hall or at The Breman’s own venue in the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta building, has often been the catalyst for this effort at rebuilding community. The Breman has launched a new Sunday afternoon musical series at its Midtown location underwritten by the Levison family.

First up in the series earlier this year was an afternoon of jazz with The Joe Alterman Trio and guest violinist, Aaron Weinstein. The series also focused of the golden age of American popular music with the works of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. A program by the Flying Carpet Theater Company that The Breman also co-sponsored in Lawrenceville at the Aurora Theatre was also on the schedule. Finally, the Levison Family series presented, “Mazel,” a modern-day tribute to the Yiddish music tradition of the past century.

The Breman has set an ambitious goal of trying to bring people together again. It could prove an important challenge as we begin the second half of a decade that has been marked by such dislocation and upheaval, socially. politically, and historically. It is a period that Mahler, who also lived in trying times, particularly for Jews, would surely recognize.

Which is what Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell asked the attendees of The Breman concert to consider as they settled into an evening of music.

“I want you to think about what these sounds say to you” Russel asked, “whether Mahler sounds and feels like he felt about himself — ‘homeless…always an intruder, never welcome’ — I want you to listen to Mahler tonight and to ask yourself whether the home and welcome that Mahler sought … actually resides within you.”