By Eileen Wingard in La Jolla, California
Yoel Engel, (1868-1927) once called the Father of Jewish Music, collected Jewish folk songs, which he transformed into art songs by adding harmonious piano accompaniments. His lecture recitals of this music prompted the creation of the Jewish Folk Song Society, motivating other Jewish composers in the Russian empire to write serious music using Jewish themes.
At the Treasures of the Jewish Music Collection program Thursday, October 29, at 2 p.m. in the Astor Judaica Library of the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center,
Engel’s music and that of five of his fellow composers in the Jewish Folk Song Society (JFSS) will be heard, as well as the music of one of the Russian teachers who inspired the group, Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov. In addition, we will hear the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Holocaust-era Polish-born Jewish composer, who settled in the Soviet Union.
I serve as host of the series, Treasures from the Jewish Music Collection, with this segment being Composers of the Jewish Folk Song Society of Russia. My guest will be Ilana Shapiro, a Ph.D candidate at UCSD in computer science, who continues her musicological research of composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg, the subject of her thesis when she graduated with a minor in music from Pomona College (also majored there in computer science).
The program will begin with a violin-piano piece by Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) Hebrew Love Song, in which the Russian composer and music professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory modeled his advice to his Jewish students to use Jewish thematic material. The recording features my sister, violinist Zina Schiff, and pianist Cameron Grant.
Yoel Engel’s Freilachs, will follow, a joyous composition with fragments from the Yiddish folksong, Az der rebbe Singt, also performed by Schiff and Grant.
Engel was born in Berdyansk, now in Ukraine. His parents were secular Jews and he studied law at the Kharkiv National University. Later, at the urging of Tchaikovsky, who heard his compositions, Engel entered the Moscow Conservatory. After graduating, he worked as the music critic of the influential Russian newspaper, Russkiye Vedomosti. A chance meeting with the art critic and proponent of Russian Nationalism, Vladimir Stasov, motivated Engel to take a profound interest in his Jewish roots when he challenged Engel, “Where is your national pride in your own people?”
As a result of that encounter, Engel became a leading force in the formation of the Jewish Folk Song Society, officially recognized in 1908 by the municipality of St. Petersburg. He went on expeditions to record Jewish folk music throughout the Pale of Settlements. He organized concerts and he oversaw the publication of some 800 works. With nearly 1000 members throughout the Russian empire, The JFSS remained a force until the outbreak of World War I. Engel headed the Moscow Branch.
After the Russian Revolution and World War I brought the society to a close, Engel moved to Berlin where he founded the Juwal-Verlag Publishing Company and organized concerts of Jewish music. In 1924, he moved to Palestine. There, in the struggling Yishuv, he taught composition and piano at the Shulamith Conservatory in Tel Aviv and wrote songs about the life of the emerging nation. Tel Aviv’s Engel Prize for serious composers continues until today. The most recent award was given in 2025 to the Tel Aviv-born composer, Lior Navok.
Salomon Rosowsky (1878-1962), the son of the foremost cantor of Riga, Latvia, was a founding member of the Jewish Folk Song Society and a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
His major influence was Ashkenazic synagogue music. He served as Music Director of the Jewish Chamber Theater in St. Petersburg, then returned to Riga to found a Jewish Conservatory before following Engel to Palestine in 1925.
There, he headed the School for Cantors and wrote the seminal volume, still used today, The Music of the Pentateuch: Analysis of the Biblical Trope. In 1947, he moved to the United States, where he lectured at the rabbinical schools and several universities. He even spent one summer with Max Helfman at the Brandeis Summer Institute in Simi Valley.
His Rhapsody for violin and piano will represent his music, performed by Schiff and Grant.
Alexander Krein (1883-1951), the son of a klezmer violinist, was born in Novgarod and remained in Russia, studying cello and composition at the Moscow Conservatory and becoming an active member of the Moscow branch of the JFSS. In 1934, Krein was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the Soviet Union. As late as 1941, he composed music for productions of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater along with his Second Symphony (1945), a meditation on the historic sufferings of the Jewish people from ancient times through the Holocaust. We will hear Ornaments for viola and piano by Krein, performed by violist Tabea Zimmermann and pianist Jascha Nemtsov.
Mikhael Gnessin (1883-1957) also remained in Russia, although he visited Palestine in 1921. The son of a rabbi and grandson of a cantor, he studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He taught at Moscow’s Gnessin Conservatory, founded by his sisters, and one of his famous students was Aram Katchaturian, whose violin concerto was performed this season with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Gnessin’s Shpielmanslied for viola and piano is on the playlist, performed by Zimmermann and Nemtsov.
Joseph Achron (1886-1943) was a violin student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and performed frequently in JFSS concerts. He visited Palestine the same year Joseph Engel moved there, but he soon moved to the United States to join his brother, Isadore, who served at the time as the piano collaborator for Jascha Heifetz, considered the greatest violinist of the 20th century. Achron’s music was often played by Heifetz. We will hear Achron’s Hebrew Melody played by Heifetz’s student, Zina Schiff, with pianist Cameron Grant.
Lazare Saminsky (1882-1959), another founding member of the JFSS and student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, collected religious and folk music from the Jews of Turkey and Yemen. In 1920, he fled to the United States and became Director of Music at New York’s Temple Emanu-El, organizing festivals of Jewish Music that promoted the works by his colleagues from the JFSS. We will hear Saminsky’s Chassidic Dance for violin and piano performed by Schiff and Grant.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), was born in Warsaw, Poland. His father was the Music Director at the Warsaw Yiddish Theater. At Germany’s invasion of Poland, Weinberg was able to flee to Minsk where he enrolled in the Minsk Conservatory. Vasily Zolatarov, his teacher, was a disciple of Rimsky-Korsakov’s and influenced Weinberg to turn to Jewish motifs for his inspiration. Weinberg was considered by many to be of the stature of Prokofief and Schostakovitch. Excerpts from his piano quintet and his cantata will be heard and Ilana Shapiro will be speaking about this composer, whose work, Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes was recently performed during the La Jolla Music Society’s Summerfest.
Gradually, some of Weinberg’s works may be becoming more familiar outside of the Soviet Union, and, through the work of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of Jewish American Experience at UCLA, those JFSS members who migrated to the United States are also being recorded and heard.
But only in Israel does one still hear the name, Yoel Engel and find, in Tel Aviv, a street named in his honor, Yoel Engel, the prime mover of the Jewish Folk Song Society.
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Eileen Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.