Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage, Volume I
      Abraham Ellstein & Other Songwriters of His Circle

*  Songs by Ellstein, Meyerowitz, Schwartz, Trilling, and Doctor

Simon Spiro, tenor; Elizabeth Shammash, mezzo; Amy Goldstein, soprano;
Robert Bloch, tenor; Bruce Adler, tenor; Joanne Borts, mezzo; Nell Snaidas,
soprano; Benzion Miller, tenor; Vienna Chamber Orchestra; Barcelona
Symphony-National Orchestra of Catalonia/Elli Jaffe.
Naxos 8.559405  Total time: 62:33

Summary for the Busy Executive: Second Avenue revisited.

Yiddish is a dying language, although at one time it thrived.  To a
great extent, it perished in the Holocaust and in the American diaspora.
Indeed, after World War II, the public library in my home town of
Cleveland, Ohio, had the second-largest collection of Yiddish-language
material outside of Buenos Aires.  There was a large reading contingent
among Cleveland Jews.  My father, however, belongs to a generation that
-- beyond certain phrases that also appear in general English and even
in the most assimilated Jewish families -- speaks no Yiddish at all,
and he passed this along to me.  I'm hard put to find even a Yiddish
newspaper outside New York.  But there were poets, novelists, playwrights,
songwriters, columnists, and belle-lettristes all writing in what was
once the lingua franca (you should pardon the expression) of the Jewish
world.  Today, we look on the equivalent of Ozymandias's monument.

I learned German in school, and it didn't take me long to make the
connection between Yiddish and juedische Deutsch.  Even though Yiddish
was spoken by Jews throughout Europe and took on some of the vocabulary
and even grammar of the "host country," a good deal of it derives from
German.  Leo Rosten's Joys of Yiddish is still one of my favorite books,
and I keep it in a handy place, just to dip in now and then.  The Yiddish
corner of the world fascinates me.  Although I still can't speak or write
the language at all, I've gotten myself to the point where I can translate
short bits of poetry, as long as they're not too complex.

Consequently, I grow nostalgic for something I never knew first-hand.
The Yiddish theater, flourishing along and around Second Avenue in New
York, in particular seems a rich source of material - with such stars
as Adler, Carnovsky, Muni, Skulnik, and Picon.  The "theater" included
not only stage, but also vaudeville, burlesque, radio, records, and even
movies.  I managed to see Skulnik and Picon on Broadway (and in English),
but on the basis of what this CD offers, probably at nowhere near their
full star-power wattage.  I also in the Sixties acquired marvelous
Theodore Bikel LPs of some of the same material, but those discs appear
to be long gone.  Kudos to the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
(founded by Lowell Milken) and to partnering Naxos not only for a multi-CD
series but for keeping pop music in the mix.

What is this stuff like and do you have to be Jewish to care for it?  To
answer the second question first: no more than you have to be Viennese
to enjoy Schubert.  Asking what it's like is also asking what the pop
music in general of the time was like.  The Yiddish stage had operettas,
Broadway-style musicals, vaudeville "numbers," songs written directly
for radio and records.  Some of it was based on Central European folk
music, melodic-minor scales, even cantorial chant, and so on (think of
Smetana's "Moldau"), and some of it incorporated the dance-band rhythms
of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.  Furthermore, you had both songwriters
and composers (those who could write things other than melody, lyrics,
and chords) working on the Avenue.  Ellstein, for example -- along with
Sholem Secunda, one of the most successful composers of the Yiddish
theater -- wrote opera, cantatas, and orchestral arrangements of liturgical
music.  If you know Jan Peerce's "cantorial" recordings, you probably
have heard Ellstein's work.  Ellstein was nothing if not versatile.  His
songs range from the klezmer-like "Der nayer Sher" ("the new wedding
dance") to the Russian folk-ballad/tango "Oygen" ("eyes," lyrics by Molly
Picon) to the Viennese-y love duet "Ich vil es hern nokh amol" ("I want
to hear it again") to the Kernian "Ikh zing" ("I sing," lyrics again by
Picon) to the almost-jazzy "Abi gezunt" ("as long as you're healthy,"
lyrics yet again by Picon).

The sensibility of the music and the lyrics may prove too sentimental
for some.  It lacks the irony of a Lorenz Hart and the big-city sensibility
of someone like Ira Gershwin or Irving Berlin.  It usually strives for
a quality known in Yiddish as "haimish" ("homey") -- as if you were
talking to your most intimate friends or even to your family.  With your
family, you can indulge your sentimental side without fear of getting
slapped for it.  Within the limits of this sensibility, however, songwriters
achieved not only variety, but sophistication and poetry.  Take just the
first verse of Molly Picon's "Ikh zing":

  King Solomon sang to his Shulamit a love song,
  And just like Solomon, my love,
  I bring my song to you.

  I sing my Song of Songs for you.

What the translation doesn't convey is the lovely blend of sacred
and secular diction -- for example, "Song of Songs" is actually the
Hebrew (not Yiddish) "Shir ha-shirim." And, of course, any time you can
successfully work in the Song of Songs, you immediately heat up a love
ballad.

I'd be lying if I tried to sell these songs as musically memorable as
Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, or Arlen, but at their best, they lay a claim
to one's personal jukebox.  The original orchestrations have almost all
been lost, and the ones here sound a bit grander to me than what might
have actually pertained -- larger orchestra, more strings, and so on.
But, what the hey?  The Yiddish theater in my head is idealized anyway,
and the new scorings have been carried out with taste and resistance to
the temptation of turning everything into Strauss's Four Last Songs.

The performances are nothing short of terrific.  The Milken Archives
have done things up with a ribbon and a bow.  Nothing chintzy here.
The singers all know how to put over a song, and, amazingly, all of them
(including the "comic" singers) sing on pitch.  To single any one of
them out does an injustice to the ones you don't mention.  Tenors Simon
Spiro and Robert Bloch both can put across the Ardent Young Man, while
Spiro also reveals a talent for comedy in "Der alter Tsigayner" ("the
old gypsy").  Elizabeth Shammash, Nell Snaidas, and Amy Goldstein play
the ingenue in love, each from their own point of view.  Tenor Benzion
Miller and baritone Robert Abelson tug at the heartstrings, depicting,
respectively, an immigrant wondering about his small town back in Europe
and an old man working as a dishwasher, thrown out by his grown children
-- a Jewish Lear.  Bruce Adler, a terrific comic singer, does the Yiddish
mega-hit "Ikh bin a 'Boarder' bay mayn Vayb" ("I'm a boarder at my
wife's").  In fact, my only complaint is that he doesn't do all the
verses (did reasons of "propriety" enter into this decision?).  Elli
Jaffe, leading a Spanish (!) orchestra, provides clean, close, and lively
accompaniment.

One of my favorite Naxos discs.   I'm on the lookout for volume 2.

Steve Schwartz