PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Songs Of Arrival - The Performance Space, Central Library, Manchester.

Part of Manchester Jewish community's 'Festival Of Belonging', amateur, community and student performers joined forces with operatic baritone Peter Brathwaite to bring a short concert of both songs and stories centred around the Jewish refugees who arrived in Cheetham (an area of Manchester) escaping pogroms, racist abuse and worse prior to the outbreak of world war.

Using both written transcripts and actual recordings of the refugees we listened to real stories of how and why people migrated to the area, and how they found life once they arrived here. This part of the evening was a little under-rehearsed and unfortunate. Some of the readers I felt were sight-reading, and most of the recordings were indistinct and blurred. The use of a microphone too, didn't help. The room and audience small and intimate enough to not need such amplification.

The readings were interspersed with song, and as well as Peter Brathwaite, we listened to original compositions from two local composers Joe Steele and Na'ama Zisser, performed by members of the Community Songwriting Group and three string students from the RNCM. All these compositions took text or documented history surrounding these refugees and created songs from them. Folk music in style and easy to listen to.

However the best part of the hour-long concert was the singing of 4 lieder (with piano accompaniment) by Brathwaite. The four songs were all written by German or Austrian Jewish composers living and working around the time of the mass migrations, as indeed, they themselves had to leave their homelands and find new lives in either Britain or America. The opening music was by Kurt Weill (Das Lied Von Den Brauen Insel) sung in German quite wonderfully; whilst quite surprisingly the next three were sung in English. Next came 'The Ballad Of Marie Sanders' and 'Solidaritaetslied' with texts by Berthold Brecht (now translated!) and music by Hanns Eisler; whilst the final song was by Arnold Schoenberg titled simply 'Tot' (Death). Brathwaite's diction was superb and his interpretation of these difficult narrative sprechgesang songs was perfect. A sheer joy to listen to.

At the end of the concert the audience were invited to view a few exhibits from the Jewish Museum connected to the people and places that were spoken about during the concert.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 12/3/20