Following today’s Noontime Concert on WWFM, we look ahead to the Jewish festival of Purim, with a complete performance of George Frideric Handel’s “Esther.” Generally acknowledged to be Handel’s first English oratorio, “Esther” recounts the events of the Biblical book (by way of an Old Testament drama by Jean Racine), in which a Hebrew woman becomes Queen of Persia and thwarts the extermination of her people by Haman, the king’s jealous vizier.
We’ll also hear the symphony, “Midrash Esther,” by Jan Meyerowitz. Meyerowitz’s family experienced an analogous threat in Germany in the 1930s, but their solution was the opposite of Esther’s. Rather than reveal their Jewishness, they chose to conceal it, converting to Christianity shortly before Meyerowitz’s birth. So carefully kept was the secret that the composer himself didn’t learn of his true heritage until the age of 18.
Meyerowitz studied in Berlin, then in Rome with Ottorino Respighi and Alfredo Casella. He emigrated to the United States in 1946, where he found employment at Tanglewood, then Brooklyn College and the City College of New York. The symphony was first performed in 1957, by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos.
Purim begins on Saturday at sunset. Enjoy the music with a cup of coffee and some hamantaschen, this afternoon, beginning around 1:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.