"In view of our present societal situation, not only in Germany but worldwide -- both the renewed growth of nationalism and right-wing radicalism but unfortunately also anti-Semitism -- it is of paramount importance that we take an unambiguous stand. Our today's event is to show this stand."
-- Gisela Kallenbach, Event Sponsor (Director, Synagogue & Jewish Community of Leipzig; former
Member,
E.U. Parliament),
June 2019 remarks introducing Two Pianos Leipzig events
The setting
Berlin, 1933: a group of dismissed Jews petitions for a separate organization that will allow suddenly-unemployed Jewish artists
to perform for Jewish-only audiences. The “Culture-League of
German Jews” (Kulturbund Deutscher Juden) is approved by Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Enlightenment. Dozens of Kulturbund chapters soon form, by 1935 becoming the sole public access to culture
for Jews still in Germany. Early members of its Leipzig branch include three young Jewish
concert pianists and their music-loving businessman husbands.
Public Performances
Musical Odysseys
Two Pianos highlights its characters' tenacity, passion and devotion to craft. As talented student “alien residents” at Leipzig's famed Conservatory (founded by Felix Mendelssohn), Anna, Halina and Tanya mastered new languages and cultures. As young Jewish mothers they advanced their professional piano careers while juggling child-care and Nazi restrictions. Their paths soon diverged through flight from Germany on one hand, and deportation, the Warsaw Ghetto and forced-labor camps on the other. They reconnected as naturalized American citizens, teachers and performers, remaining close friends for the rest of their long lives.
2019-2022
Papers Please Inc. is founded after the Premiere by Two Pianos narrators to make the characters' power-of-music story more accessible in the U.S. and abroad. Within a year this site is on-line and Papers Please, with major commitments from local sponsors, brings our Concert Documentary package to the other main stations of the characters' lives:
June 2019: Two Pianos programs are part of Leipzig Germany's "Schalom Week," a city-sponsored week-long welcome for former Jewish residents and their descendants. We produce a highlights video of this event. Our local hosts' support includes arranging remote printing of an illustrated 32-page German-language brochure that replicates parts of the exhibit.
October 2019: The Institute of Jazz Studies (Rutgers University/Newark) sponsors our Concert Documentary featuring new audio/video clips, an English-language brochure, and an expanded exhibit. The full-length DVD includes post-performance Q and A. A highlights video features the dark journey of Halina and her daughter Jola from their forced 1938 deportation, through the Warsaw Ghetto and labor/DP camps, to their eventual Newark homes.
October 2020: Our new "sizzle reel" wraps performance footage from prior events with an overview (top of this page).
July 2021: When COVID-19 suspends live performances, Papers Please forms Penn Convoy Press to publish A Border Town in Poland: A 20th Century Memoir (July 2021), a full-length richly-illustrated nonfiction book that recounts the hairs-breadth adventures of Anna's husband Hirsch. For highlights of its ZOOM book launch, click here. For reviews, click here and here and here. To order A Border Town in Poland, click here. Highlights of our Border Town presentation to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles (April 2022) are forthcoming.
29 May 2022: Our first-ever open-air Two Pianos
performance, at Untermyer Gardens (Yonkers NY) -- once called "the most
beautiful garden in America" -- tailored to the site's
history, connects Rebecca's 1927 Beethoven performance at Hebrew
University on Mt. Scopus with NY millionaire/Progressive reformer Samuel Untermyer's
pledge of $100,000 for a permanent Mt. Scopus stage after that event.
Untermyer uses the international radio dedication of the Minnie
Untermyer Memorial Auditorium (April 1933) to call for a global boycott
of Nazi Germany. Shortly afterwards Anna and Halina give their first
Kulturbund concert (Leipzig 1934).
UPCOMING
Summer 2022: Look for a second Penn Convoy Press nonfiction volume -- Firebird: The Musical Life and Times of Rebecca Burstein-Arber. Rebecca (1894-1993), Anna's older sister, captured the Chopin Prize at the Leipzig Conservatory (1912) and the Anton Rubenstein Prize at the famed St. Petersburg/Petrograd Conservatory (1918) amid the Russian Revolutions. A pioneer concert pianist / master teacher, she was honored with the Keys to the City of Tel Aviv (1985) for 60 years' service bringing classical music to her adopted homeland.
