This coming Monday I will present an intimate evening of music featured in and inspired by my father's writings, along with excerpts from his poetry, in honor of the centenary of his birth (coming up on 11 December).
The program includes piano works by Beethoven and Shostakovich, personal reflections, and a selection of Solzhenitsyn's compelling poems, some of which will be heard in English for the very first time in my new translations (see excerpt below).
This event takes place at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Monday, 19 November 2018 at 7.30pm. Details and ticket information is available on the 92nd Street Y website.
“Do not believe it, it’s not done!—I know, I wait,
Yet I am helpless to prise open eyelids weighed with sleep.
Just barely we doze off—the bell!! And in the dazzling moonlight’s majesty
We come outside in comic capes—our blankets’ formless heap.
We come out boiling, come out cursing one and all,
The very stars above do pity, warmth, and dark embargo—
When of a sudden, from a speaker, weeping,
There faintly wafts toward us a dour Beethoven largo.
I give a start as soon as its tones reach me,
I turn my grizzled, coarsened face to meet that sound—
Oh who, oh when will learn about all this
And staunchly write it down?”