The program includes music by Felix Mendelssohn, Alexander Zemlinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Hanns Eisler. In this playlist I have included pieces that resonate with the themes of the project.

In addition, I am excited to announce that I have commissioned a new piece for the project: a 20 minute solo piano work by Bruce Adolphe! Listen to an interview with myself and Bruce on Rachel Katz's WWFM radio show, A Tempo, to find out more about the piece!

Pianist Carolyn Enger has gained critical acclaim for her lyrical and dynamic playing, her deeply felt interpretations of works from Beethoven and Schubert to contemporary music, and her warm personal approach. In addition to an active performance schedule, Ms. Enger has enjoyed remarkable success as a recording artist, particularly with her 2013 release of piano music by Ned Rorem on Naxos Records. Renowned critic Laurence Vittes wrote in his review for Gramophone (2/2014): “Enger raises the miniatures to a higher level by taking the time and care to capture the emotional impact each must have had when their dedicatees read their inscription and title, and then heard the music for the first time.” The album was selected as one of the “Best in Classical Recordings” by The New York Times:

Among the 90th-birthday tributes this year to the essential American composer Ned Rorem, this recording especially stands out. The fine pianist Carolyn Enger plays Mr. Rorem’s complete Piano Album I, published in 2003, a collection of tender yet pungent miniatures written for friends, intimates and personal occasions from 1978 to 2001. - Anthony Tommasini, 12/2013

Highlights of Ms. Enger's 2016/17 season include a performance at Michaelis Kirche in Erfurt, Germany; a Chicago residency with recitals at several Steinway Galleries, the Chicago Public Library and a Masterclass broadcast on WFMT; performances at the National Gallery of Art in Oslo, Norway; the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County in New Jersey; the Chelmsford Center for the Arts in Massachusetts; Chicago Theological Seminary's Center for Jewish, Christian and Islamic Studies, a Texas residency with recitals at the San Antonio and Austin Steinway Galleries; and a variety of recitals in the Tri-State area. Ms. Enger will present her ambitious multimedia concert experience, The Mischlinge Expose, at community centers throughout New York and New Jersey, and will premiere a new work written by the acclaimed composer Bruce Adolphe especially for this project.

With a keen sense of history and identity, Ms. Enger views music in the context of the unfolding of human affairs, past and present, leading her to design programs that relate the music she performs to the times in which it was composed. Currently these interests have stirred Ms. Enger to plan a multimedia concert program set in the World War II period, combining music, literature and images that focus on the haunting memories of the lives of Mischlinge – half-Jews – in Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust, an experience reflected in Ms. Enger’s own family history. The Mischlinge project will be presented in spring 2016 in New York City.

An active recitalist with engagements throughout the United States and beyond, Ms. Enger has performed at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, The National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Design Museum, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Nantucket Musical Arts Society, The Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Tenri Cultural Institute. A recent collaboration with renowned illustrator and writer Maira Kalman featured Ms. Enger’s playing as part of“Maira Kalman Selects”, an exhibition curated by Ms. Kalman at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. Ms. Enger’s dedication to bringing music to new audiences has motivated her to perform in accessible civic spaces such as Israel’s Bet Yad Lebanim in Nahariya, the Felicja Blumental Music Center in Tel Aviv and, in New York City, at St. Peter’s Church and the Donnell Library Center. Ms. Enger’s community engagement performances have left presenters and audiences, in the words of Cheryl Wylen, Program Director, of the Backstage at the Y Concert Series, “in complete awe of her passion, skill and genuine warmth.”

Ms. Enger has a special gift for creating original and intriguing programs that range from European masterworks to fresh discoveries among the compositions of such innovative American and Israeli composers as Ned Rorem, Lowell Liebermann, Betty Olivero, Avner Dorman and Lior Navok. Her debut album, In Evening Air, released in 2009, offers a refreshing mix of music by Beethoven, Scriabin, Hanson, Copland, Liebermann and Ned Rorem – all attesting to her command of a wide variety of musical idioms.MusicWeb International lauded her playing as “thoughtful and sensitive… expressive… She plays with fine nuance and tone shading. (10/2010)” And from Fanfare came praise for“Enger’s dynamic control and emotional sensitivity, her keen sense of timing and proportion. (9/2009)”

Ms. Enger is a Steinway Concert Artist.

BOOKS

• The Jews of Germany – Ruth Gay

• The Invisible Wall – Michael Blumenthal

• The Pity of It All – Amos Elon

• Jewish Stories and Hebrew Melodies – Heinrich Heine

• Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis – Economic Needs and Racial Aims 1938-1944 – Wolf Grunner

• The Death of the Adversary – Hans Keilson

• The Jews of Weimar Germany – Donald L. Niewyck

• How Jews Became Germans – Deborah Hertz

• Rachel Varnhagen – Hannah Arendt

• Music and the European Mind – Wilfred Dunwell

• Between Dignity and Despair – Jewish Life in Nazi Germany – Marion A. Kaplan

• The Rise and Destiny of the German Jew – Jacob R. Marcus, PhD

• Stranger From Abroad – Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness – Daniel Maier-Katkin

• The Jewish Enemy – Nazi Propaganda During World War ll and the Holocaust

• The Devil and the Jews – The Medieval Conception of the Jew and It’s Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism – Joshua Trachtenberg

• Daughters of Absence – Transforming a Legacy of Loss – Mindy Weisel

• Children of the Holocaust – conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors – Helen Epstein

• Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor – A Century of Wisdom – Caroline Stoessinger

• Lives of Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers – Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Fought for the Third Reich – Bryan Mark Riggs

• Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers – The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military – Bryan Mark Rigg

• Half-Jew – Susan Jacoby

• The World Must Know - Michael Berenbaum

• Racial Hygiene – Medicine Under the Nazis – Robert N. Proctor

• Writing the Holocaust: The Ethics of Holocaust - Peter Steinfeld

• Fanny von Arnstein: Daughter of the Enlightenment – Hilde Spiel

• Conversion To Judaism: From the Biblical Period to the Present – Joseph R. Rosenbloom

• Jewish Responses to Anti-Semitism in Germany, 1870-1914 – Sanford Ragins

• Baseless Hatred: What it is and What You Can Do About It – Rene H. Levy, PhD

• Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews – James Carroll

• A German Life: Against All Odds, Change is Possible – Bernd Wollschlager, M.D.

• Inside Europe – John Gunther

• In the Garden of Beasts – Erik Larson

• Felix Mendelssohn: A Life in Letters – Edited by Rudolf Elvers – Translated from the German by Craig Tomlinson

• Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters – Alma Mahler

• Hidden Inheritance: Family Secrets, Memory and Faith – Heidi B. Neumark

• I Sleep in Hitler's Room: An American Jew Visits Germany – Tuvia Tenenbom

• Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators – Ed. Alan Berger and Naomi Berger

• Famous Musicians of Jewish Origins – Gdal Saleski

• Historical Atlas of the Holocaust – USHMM

• Children of Job: American Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust – Alan L. Berger

• The Fires of Autumn – Irene Nemirovsky

• Mischling – Affinity Konar

• Judische Frauen im New Yorker Exil: 10 Begegnungen – Elfi Hartenstein

• 796 Days: Hiding as a Child in Occupied Amsterdam During WWll and Then Coming to America (Covering the Period 1939-1957) – Leo Ullman

• Mendelssohn and His World – Edited by R. Larry Todd, article by Leon Botstein, “The Aesthetics of Assimilation and Affirmation: Reconstructing the Career of Felix Mendelssohn and by Nancy B. Reich, “The Power of Class: Fanny Hensel”

• Mendelssohn: A Life in Music – R. Larry Todd

• Before the Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia – Marion, Countess Dunhoff, translated by Jean Steinberg

• Between Gods – Alison Pick

• On Judaism – Martin Buber

• Six Million Paperclips: The Making of a Children's Holocaust Memorial – Peter W. Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand

• Oral History Interview Guidelines – USHMM

• Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500-1750 – Elisheva Carlebach

• God, Faith and Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors – Edited by Menachem Rosensaft, Prologue by Elie Wiesel

• The Rise and Destiny of the German Jew – Jacob R. Marcus, PhD.

• A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis – Michael Berenbaum

• The Fires of Autumn — Irène Némirovsky

• Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors & Perpetrators — edited by Alan Berger & Naomi Berger

• Maus I: A Survivor's Tale — Art Segliman

• Man's Search for Meaning — Victor Frankel

• The Drowned and the Saved — Primo Levi

• Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under Nazis - Probert N. Proctor

• Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home – Nora Krug

• The Teller in the Tale: A Half-Jewish Child in Nazi Germany – Elizabeth Heyn

FILMS:

• Unknown Soldier

• Watchers of the Sky

• As Seen Through These Eyes

• Defamation

• Schindler's List

• Life is Beautiful

• Jakob the Liar

• Kinderblock 66 – Return to Buchenwald

• Only a Number

• Quarter to Eight – The Story of Motty Hod

• Fate Did Not Let Me Go

• The Grey Zone

• Hanna’s War

• The Pianist

• Sunshine

• Exodus

• A Woman at War

• The Brave Little Boat

• Conspiracy

• The Wannsee Conference

• Hitler's Children

• Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

• Sophie's Choice

• Europa Europa

• The Pawnbroker

• Ida

• Night and Fog

• The Counterfeiters

• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

• Judgment at Nurnberg

• Defiance

• The Shop on Main Street

• Shoah

• The Diary of Ann Frank

• Angry Harvest

• Au Revoir, Les Enfants

• Ann Frank Remembered

• The Long Way Home

• Germans and Jews

• Fateless

• Playing for Time

• Ann Frank: The Whole Story

• Die Wannseekonferenz

• Rosenstrasse

• The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

• Enemies: A Love Story

• Inglorious Basterds

• Everything is Illuminated

• The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

• The Memory Thief

• We Were So Beloved

• Shadows in Paradise: Hitler's Exiles in Hollywood

Numerous articles from Leo Baeck Institute Year Books

Numerous lectures

Interviews with Mordechai Paldiel, Fritz Stern, Elie Wiesel

Jewish Link Profile

“…How lucky are we, as a people, that Carolyn Enger did not allow herself to be driven from Judaism by one person’s extremely insensitive comment. What a joy to learn that a woman of such spirit, determination and talent has joined the tribes and become a beacon of light for us and the nations. And how wonderful to contemplate that one of her brothers, also a convert, is the father of a daughter named Charlotte, after her Jewish great-grandmother. Dos pintele Yid continues to burn and enlighten the world.…” —Barbara Wind

See the full profile on JewishLinkNJ.com

The Jewish Press