Jewish Chamber

With her recordings praised as “heartbreakingly beautiful” (Scene Magazine), “a sweeping experience” (Pizzicato), “full of emotions” (Crescendo Magazine), Hungarian-born violinist Orsolya Korcsolan has established herself as one of the most versatile violin players and teachers of her generation. Her technical command and warm, compelling sound, combined with her spirit and elegant stage presence have captured audiences around the world since her debut in New York.

Robert Muller-Hartmann was born in Hamburg, in 1884, the son of the piano teacher and clarinettist Josef Muller and his wife, Jenny. He studied in Berlin for four years, but then returned to Hamburg where he pursued a successful career combining teaching, composing, and writing. His works were widely performed by conductors such as Karl Muck, Carl Schuricht, Richard Strauss, Otto Klemperer, and Fritz Busch, and regularly played on German Radio. With the advent of National Socialism, in 1933, Muller-Hartmann was forced to resign from his teaching posts at the University and Conservatory.

Rosina Bessie was born in Ukraine, the daughter of a Dutch merchant doing business in Kiev. The Czar’s assassination in 1881 unleashed three days of violent anti-Semitic riots, and many Jewish families like the Bessies moved to Moscow. She was a prodigy at the piano and took lessons from a piano student at the Moscow Conservatory, Josef Lhevinne, who was five years older. Later she became a student at that Conservatory and studied with Josef’s teacher, Vassily Safonov. She graduated in 1898 with a gold medal, just as Josef had done in 1892. That same year (1898) she married Josef Lhevinne and he went on to a great international career as a virtuoso pianist. Once when someone heard her and exclaimed that she a better pianist than her husband she was horrified, and vowed from that moment on never to play solo again. She performed only with him as his duo-piano partner until after his death in 1944.

Following the Grammy nominated Volume 2 featuring the music of Fitelberg, the Canadian ARC Ensemble presents Volume 3 in its "Music in Exile" series, dedicated to the music of Szymon Laks. Born in Warsaw in 1901, Laks studied in Paris before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He soon joined and conducted the Auschwitz orchestra (his auditioning with a 'Jewish' work - Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto - went unnoticed). Although the trauma of his imprisonment left him alienated and reclusive, few of his works refer specifically to the Holocaust.