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VIOLINIST YUVAL WALDMAN PERFORMS “MUSIC FORGOTTEN AND REMEMBERED” IN MERKIN CONCERT HALL – KAUFMAN CENTER.
Updated: January 22, 2011

Israeli-American violinist Yuval Waldman will be giving a solo recital of “Music Forgotten and Remembered” at Merkin Concert Hall, Kaufman Center, 129 West 67th Street, NYC on Tuesday March 29, 2011 at 8 PM.

Born in the Ukraine to Holocaust survivors, Waldman – who has been described as “brilliant” (Musical America) and “spectacular” (New York Times) – has recently been presenting rarely-performed gems composed by Eastern European Jews, many of whom perished during World War II or were silenced by Soviet repression. As Artistic Director of Music Bridges International, Mr. Waldman was able to rediscover these pieces by searching music libraries and obscure music collections in Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Israel. They represent a wide spectrum of stylistic influences on Jewish composers: impressionistic, neoclassical, folk and Klezmer. These pieces fill an unexplored gap in early twentieth century Jewish music repertory which fully deserves to be heard today.

“Music Forgotten and Remembered” presents the first New York performance of five of these rediscovered works:

“Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes” (1952) was composed by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, an outstanding Russian-Jewish composer and close friend of Shostakovich, whose intervention with authorities probably kept Weinberg alive. The piece is a brilliant fantasy on Moldavian and Jewish themes.
“Lullaby”, an arrangement of a traditional Hebrew song, was composed in the Terezin concentration camp in 1943 by Gideon Klein, a young Czech-Jewish composer. Shortly after he wrote this, Klein was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.
“Colloque Sentimentale”, an impressionistic prelude on the poem by Paul Verlaine, was written in 1920 by Czech Jaromir Weinberger, who escaped the Nazis by emigrating to the United States, where he ended up on the music faculty at Ithaca College.
“Variations on ‘Hatikvah’”, a virtuoso violin solo written in the early 1900’s by then famous, now forgotten Ukrainian Klezmer violinist and composer, Yehiel Goizman.
“Entrata” from Concerto da Camera (1945), a seldom-heard master work by the Russian emigre and avant-garde composer Arthur Lourie.

Rounding out the program are two French violin masterpieces: “Sonata in A Major” for violin and piano by Cesar Franck, written for the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye, and Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane”. Mr. Waldman dedicates the performance of these pieces to his mentors Josef Gingold, a student of Eugene Ysaye and Zino Francescatti, the foremost representative of violin French romantic school who performed the “Tzigane” with Maurice Ravel.

Waldman will be assisted by Ukrainian-Israeli pianist Inesa Sinkevych, a prize winner in the Arthur Rubinstein International Competition.

Tickets are available at the Merkin Concert Hall Box Office (phone 212-501-3330) - $25, $15 for seniors and students with ID. Website: merkinconcerthall.org

For additional information about the program, please call 347-834-6124 and see website: yuvalwaldman.com

Yuval Waldman is represented by Price Rubin and Partners Management.

Waldman has appeared as a violin soloist with dozens of prominent orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel and given recitals at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London and Concergebouw in Amsterdam. He has performed with such artists as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Maureen Forrester and Henryk Szeryng. He is the first violinist in the acclaimed Kinor String Quartet and a winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Prize and the Distinguished First Prize at the Conservatory of Geneva. He has recorded on the Angel, Newport Classics, Omega Classica, CRI, Musique International and Musical Heritage Society labels.

Maestro Waldman’s career as a conductor includes performances and recordings with several of the orchestras listed above, as well as the New American Chamber Orchestra, the Midatlantic Chamber Orchestra; the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra and the Cologne Opera. He celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Israel in Moscow and conducted the memorial concert on the steps of Congress on September 11, 2002. He was the founding music director of the Madeira Bach Festival, the Jefferson Music Festival in Washington D.C., the Opus Berkshire Festival in Massachusetts and the Benedictine Millenium Festival in Rome. He has served as director of the World Bank Mozart Festival and the Midatlantic Chamber Orchestra.

As a teacher, Maestro Waldman served as Chairman of the Strings Department at the State University of New York at Purchase, and is on the faculty of Summertrios and the Waterville Valley Music Center. He gives master classes all over the world, most recently at Eastern European University in Izhevsk, Russia; Armaty, Kazakhstan; and at the University for Science and the Arts (USAO) in Chicasha, Oklahoma.

In 2005, Maestro Waldman founded Music Bridges International, Inc., to foster cross-cultural music exchange programs that feature the music of different countries. Under the Music Bridges banner, he organized the successful Young Artists Strings Competition at the “Tchaikovsky’s Homeland” Center in Izhevsk/Votkinsk, Russia.Music Bridges is presently working on exchanges with Russia,Israel ,Spain and Czech Republic.

In 2010 Yuval Waldman organized and performed in a Music Bridges Festival of Czech Music in New York City,Philadelphia and Washington DC. He toured Spain with a program of Jewish Music, was invited to present newly discovered pieces by Jewish composers in conferences in Germany and Israel and performed at the Czech and Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. In the spring of 2010 Maestro Waldman was invited to conduct the Israel Chamber Orchestra in Tel Aviv and led the members of the National Orchestra in all-Beethoven program in Kennedy Center,(Washington.DC).