by David C. Barnett
A musical meditation on the Holocaust, performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, inaugurated Case Western Reserve University's new Maltz Performing Arts Center, Sunday afternoon.
The concert took place in a Northeast Ohio landmark and featured instruments rescued from World War Two concentration camps.
When Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Most was planning Sunday's concert, he knew right away a composer he wanted to include.
"I said we have to play Beethoven, because the freedom of the human spirit is more present in Beethoven's music, I think, than in any other."
The Orchestra and chorus were joined by baritone Thomas Hampson and violin virtuoso Shlomo Mintz, performing in the enormous sanctuary of the century-old Temple-Tifereth Israel, recently renovated in partnership with Case Western. In addition to Beethoven, the program featured the works of two Jewish composers --- Felix Mendelssohn and Arnold Schoenberg --- both of whom were reviled by the Nazis as "degenerate" artists.
This music had a special meaning to Roman Frayman. As a child living in a Jewish ghetto in Poland, Frayman had many relatives --- most of them perished at Auschwitz.
"I would have had 85 first cousins," he recalls. "And I'm the only one that's left."
As such, the concert was very moving to the 77-year-old Clevelander. Frayman says he's happy to see how good his refurbished temple looks, and he found the performance to be overwhelming.
"I think it's so amazing that the violins are now playing music for those who perished. I just sat there in awe."
The Sunday event was part of a three-month series of concerts and exhibitions called " Violins of Hope", featuring rehabilitated stringed instruments that have toured the world as testament to human survival in the darkest of times.
