'Violins Of Hope' In Berlin Honors Holocaust Remembrance Day

As world leaders on Jan. 27 converged on the grounds of World War II's largest death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, to commemorate the 70th year since its liberation on Jan. 27, 1945, Berlin hosted a concert uniquely connected to this historic occasion.

Members of the Berlin Philharmonic performed a concert at the Philharmonie's concert hall titled “Violins of Hope,” featuring music by Gustav Mahler, Joseph Achron, Max Bruch, J.S. Bach, Samuel Adler, Ludwig van Beethoven and a world premiere of Ohan Ben-Ari's “Violins of Hope,” which was commissioned for this concert by the Berlin Philharmonic.

On the cover of the printed program was a graphic of a violin whose strings were made of barbed wire, an image taken from James A. Grymes' book of the same name and subtitled “Violins of the Holocaust - Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hours,” published in 2014. The book is the account of violin-maker Amnon Weinstein's 20-year search for violins that belonged to musicians in the death camps, and his subsequent restoration of the instruments. A showcase in the Philharmonie's foyer displayed six of the 50 violins he restored.

The Berlin Philharmonic's string players, led by Sir Simon Rattle and his young protégé Duncan Ward, performed after an opening address by Germany's foreign minister, Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The program began with the finely wrought tenderness of the fourth movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 5, followed by Achron's achingly beautiful “Hebrew Melody,” Adler's plangent “Elegy” and Bruch's impassioned “Kol Nidrei” with solo cellist Zvi Plessner.

Violinist Guy Braunstein performed solo works by Bach and Beethoven before Plessner joined him for a haunting arrangement by İstanbul's renowned violinist, Cihat Aşkın, of the traditional melody “Avinu Malkeinu.”

Ben-Ari's wildly divergent and descriptive six-part opus was the finale; its last movement was a wonderful sonic portrait of the hope that springs eternal despite unspeakable tragedy.

Alexandra Ivanoff, Berlin (Cihan/Today's Zaman)