Kol Nidre

This new live recording pairs profound works by two of the twentieth century's greatest composers: Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich. Writer Phillip Huscher describes Schoenberg's Kol Nidre a "stark, strong modernist statement," set to the prayer said on the eve of Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement. Schoenberg, who had fled Europe in 1934, premiered the work in Los Angeles in 1938, one month before the devastating the anti Jewish pogroms of Kristallnacht took place throughout Nazi-Germany. Shostakovich's suite explores similarly weighty concerns, including themes of love, morality, death, and the human spirit through the poetry of the Renaissance master Michelangelo. Although originally conceived to honor the fifth centenary of the artist's birth, Shostakovich's settings became a highly personal testament to concerns the two men shared across the centuries.