An episode featuring singer Hilda Bronstein and her collection of Yiddish songs.
Hilda Bronstein.
Each piece captures a facet of the lives and culture of Eastern European Jewry, an expression of a people’s soul, from the darkest hours to moments of ecstatic joy. For example, three of the greatest Yiddish poets are represented here, as well as folk songs by unknown composers.
Since Hilda Bronstein cautiously returned to her childhood music in 2004, she has become one of Europe’s foremost interpreters of Yiddish song. Following the success of her album, Yiddish Songs Old and New, in 2008 she took part in the International Jewish Music Festival at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and received the Mira Rafalowicz Award for the ‘Best Interpretation of Yiddish Song’.
Hilda uses her original Polish dialect on some songs and the standard ‘Lithuanian’ or Lithuanian dialect on others. The poetry in the lyrics is unmistakable and powerful, sometimes easy and cheerful and sometimes particularly sad (for example, Avrom Sutzkever’s old poem, A Vogn Shikh, which contrasts the joy of dancing with the truckloads of shoes carried away from Vilna during the holocaust.
CD. Yiddish songs old and new – Hilda Bronstein.
LABEL: Arc Music (2016), code: EUCD 2684. Video
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