Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025 • 5 p.m.
Timashev Recital Hall
Columbus, OH
Renana Gutman, piano
Unheard Melodies
This program introduces music by composers whose Jewish identity sealed their fate as musicians and as human beings in the period surrounding the two world wars. The colorful, imaginative soundscape these composers created was influenced by other composers they were personally associated with, such as Debussy and Berg, by their geographical journeys to Eastern, Western Europe and Palestine, and ultimately by the turbulent circumstances of their time — a monumental chapter in history. Their compositions bear witness to their rich life experiences, encompassing great stylistic diversity and a vast range of emotions.
Presented by the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and Ohio State's School of Music. Supported by the Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium fund.
Program
Sonata Op. 1 (ca. 1909)
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
“Preludio” (1943)
Mario Melli (1924–1944)
Mazurka No. 6 in E minor
Sabbathiada No. 2, Op. 15 in C minor
(1940, Warsaw Ghetto)
Josima Feldschuh (1929–1943)
Sonata No. 1
(1943, Theresienstadt Ghetto)
Gideon Klein (1919–1945)
1. Allegro con fuoco
2. Adagio
3. Allegro vivace
From Children’s Corner (1908)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
“The Little Shepherd”
“Golliwogg’s Cakewalk”
Suite dansante en Jazz (1931)
Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942, d. Wülzburg concentration camp)
Stomp
Waltz
Tango
“On Eagles’ Wings” (2023)
Dina Pruzhansky (contemporary)
“Oiseaux tristes” (“sad birds”)
from Miroirs, 1905
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
From “five pieces for piano” Op. 34
Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984)
Pastorale
Canzonetta
Toccata
About the Artist
Praised by the New York Times for her “passionate and insightful” playing, Renana Gutman has performed across four continents as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and collaborative artist. She played at venues like The Louvre Museum, Grenoble Museum (France), Carnegie Recital Hall, People’s Symphony Concerts, Merkin Hall (New York), St. Petersburg’s Philharmonia (Russia), Stresa Music Festival (Italy), Ravinia Rising Stars (Chicago), Jordan Hall, Gardner Museum (Boston), Herbst Theatre (St. Francisco), Menuhin Hall (UK), UNISA (South Africa), Marlboro (VT), and National Gallery, Phillips Collection, and Freer Gallery (Washington DC). Her performances are heard frequently on WQXR Young Artists Showcase, NY, WFMT Dame Myra Hess, Chicago, and MPR in Performances Today, MN.
Professor Gutman is on the piano faculty of Boston’s Longy School of Music of Bard College. She had previously been on the piano faculty of the Yehudi Menuhin Music School in the UK, and of Bard Pre-College and The 92nd Street Y in NY.
A native of Israel, Renana started playing at age six, and soon after, garnered multiple awards and honors. She received scholarships from the America Israel Cultural Foundation, and the Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women. She completed her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at Mannes College of Music, NY, where she studied with Richard Goode. In Israel, her teachers were pianists Natasha Tadson, Viktor Derevianko, and the Israeli composer Arie Shapira.
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