Crane Presents Guest Concert of Works by Composer Killed in WWII

Guest Artist Recital Revives Song Cycle by Holocaust Victim Marcel Tyberg

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Baritone Alexander Hurd is one of two singers performing a song cycle by Marcel Tyberg.

POTSDAM, NY (01/13/2011)(readMedia)-- An upcoming guest artist recital at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music will feature a series of Austrian lieder that were composed by a Holocaust victim and until recently had never been performed.

University at Buffalo faculty members Alexander Hurd, Tony Arnold and Alison D'Amato will present "Songs of Marcel Tyberg" at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 25 in Sara M. Snell Music Theater on the SUNY Potsdam campus.

Accompanied by D'Amato on piano, Hurd, a baritone, and Arnold, a soprano, will sing the "Song Cycle from Heine's Lyric Intermezzo" by Marcel Tyberg (1893-1944).

Tyberg was an Austrian composer, conductor and pianist who spent much of his career in Italy. He was one-sixteenth Jewish and was sent to a death camp by the Nazis during World War II. Before he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he later died, the musician entrusted his original compositions with a friend, Milan Mihich.

After World War II, Mihich in turn passed the scores on to his son, Dr. Enrico Mihich, who brought them to Buffalo, N.Y., for safekeeping when he moved to the United States. For years, Dr. Mihich tried unsuccessfully to find someone to publish or perform Tyberg's works. Finally, he has had recent success, with Naxos Records recently releasing a recording of the composer's "Symphony No. 3" and "Piano Trio."

Last year, the trio agreed to pick up Tyberg's "Song Cycle from Heine's Lyric Intermezzo" and present the vocal works in a world premiere in April 2010. Composed between 1910 and 1929, the song cycle contains 21 lieder, or short German songs, set to the poetry of Heinrich Heine.

"Throughout his cycle, Tyberg demonstrates the ability to illuminate the irony in Heine's poetry. ... He seems quite willing to provoke laughter in his songs," Hurd said. "Devotees of lieder and Austrian and German composers from the beginning of the twentieth century will feel at home in Tyberg's sound world."

The text and translations of each of the poems will be included in the program, and the concert will include an intermission.

"Heine's descriptive power and sense of whimsy, even in English translation, touch the heart," the Buffalo News said in a concert review. "This recital was truly the debut of an important song cycle that warrants wider exposure."

This concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.

For more information about Tyberg, visit orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/marcel_tyberg/.

To find out about the many free guest artist recitals offered at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music, visit www.potsdam.edu/crane.

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Founded in 1886, SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music has a long legacy of excellence in music education and performance. Life at Crane includes an incredible array of more than 300 recitals, lectures and concerts presented by faculty, students and guests each year. The Crane School of Music is the State University of New York's only All-Steinway institution.

-www.potsdam.edu/crane-