Moses in Nederland - For violin soloist and chamber orchestra (2022)

Program Notes:

Moses in Nederland is a violin concerto that reflects on the life of my great-grandfather Moses Schenkein. Moses was, among other things, an amateur violinist and composer, a European Jew, and a devoted father, who led his family on a treacherous journey through Europe to escape the Holocaust.

While writing this piece, I found myself sifting through an old folder of manuscripts left behind by Moses, filled with a number of melodies that he composed.

The first movement is made up of melodic fragments adapted from Schenkein’s setting of a Hayim Bialik poem entitled “A Faithful Tear.” The second is a theme and variation on another melody found in the folder: “Elegy.” The third is a musical response to a short tango that I discovered in the folder entitled “Hollandia.”

In this movement, I imagine my great-grandfather having recently immigrated to Holland from Warsaw, where he was born. The movement seeks to capture the excitement and discovery that can come with moving to a new city. Moses certainly viewed Holland as his home, and following the war, he actually returned to the Hague, living there for the rest of his life.

commissioned by Sabrina Tabby and contemporaneous

Duration: 24 minutes