Release of three new music scores by the EIJM's publishing house
The EIJM’s publishing house is happy to announce the release of 3 new music scores by Serge Kaufmann:
Ima ou la Mère dépossédée, Cantata for mezzo-soprano solo, narrator, mixed choir, piano, clarinet, cello and percussion
Dix duos pour deux violons
Dix duos pour deux violoncelles
As described by Alain Duault[1]Alain Duault is a French writer, poet, radio and television host specialized in classical music and opera born on January 11, 1949 in Paris, Serge Kaufmann is not only “a composer, but a Jewish composer who offers us ( . . ) shreds of a fragmented memory of which he feels himself as one of the bearers – as though these pages of score rolled up and became another Torah, a symbolic one, one in which a nameless God speaks in a luminous way, which allows him precisely to be heard during the night…”.
The Cantata Ima ou la mère dépossédée, created in 2003, is one of Serge Kaufmann’s major compositions. It reflects the author’s strong attachment to his own mother, and a feeling of brotherhood with the Jewish people that was revealed to him when he discovered, in 1950, upon his arrival in Paris, the extent of what really happened during the Second World War.
This terrifying work was commissioned by Patrick de Chirée, Director of the Festival Éclat de voix in Auch, who wanted Serge Kaufmann to write a Stabat Mater. In response to this request, the composer made this revealing remark: “Instead of writing a Stabat Mater for you, I would prefer to write a Shabat Mater”, a proposal that was granted by Patrick de Chirée. Ima is that Jewish mother who, until the very end of her strength, wants to save her child from death, an innocent being who is taken from her to be led to the gas chambers.
As expressed by Serge Kaufmann himself, born of a Jewish father who had left the family home, and a mother who was the Temple’s guardian, Jewish at heart and Protestant in her flesh, “Ima, (…), this is what could have happened to me”.
Listen to an excerpt from Ima ou la Mère dépossédée (CD Coll. PMJF n° 8 – The EIJM’s publishing house, 2009), Ensemble vocal Unité, dir. C. Nadalet
Quant aux Dix duos pour deux violons et Dix duos pour deux violoncelles, dont la consonnance (ou résonnance) juive est indéniable, ils ont été composés en 1997 et ne font pas exception à la recherche identitaire du compositeur et à son rapport/apport au judaïsme.
Listen to an excerpt of the Duo n°7 (CD Coll. Classiques n°3, The EIJM’s publishing house, 2017) performed by V. Constant et K. Alemany
Listen to the Duo n°10 (CD Coll. Classiques n°3, Les Editions de l’IEMJ, 2017) performed by V. Constant et K. Alemany
Purchase the sheet music online :
Browse the list of Serge Kaufmann’s works on the EIJM’s online shop
| 1 | Alain Duault is a French writer, poet, radio and television host specialized in classical music and opera born on January 11, 1949 in Paris |
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