John Zorn’s live performance of his visceral suite “Kristallnacht”, depicting a timeline surrounding the Nazi pogrom against Jewish sites and businesses on 9-10 November 1938, had a shocking effect on audiences in Munich and New York.
The New York Times offered this review of the 1992 performance at the Knitting Factory:
“Kristallnacht,” John Zorn’s suite about the “night of broken glass” in 1938 that inaugurated Nazi terror against the Jews, may be his most literal-minded composition. Mr. Zorn has always been fascinated by and suspicious of music’s ability to suggest mood; most of his pieces jump from texture to texture, idiom to idiom, almost as soon as each one registers, as if refusing to manipulate the listener. But Mr. Zorn has also composed atmospheric pieces like “Spillane,” a soundtrack without a detective movie. The six sections of “Kristallnacht” use both fragmentation and longer dramatic arcs, yet with a pervasive mood of mourning and determination.
Before the performance there were recordings of bouncy 1930’s cabaret songs and then, for about 15 minutes, the sounds of a train journey; standing in the dark, packed Knitting Factory on Wednesday night, it was easy to recognize an allusion to the sealed trains that carried people to concentration camps. When the seven musicians arrived on stage, wearing yellow six-pointed stars, the first movement, “Shtetl (Ghetto Life)” was a montage with phrases of klezmer music (from Frank London on trumpet, Mark Feldman on violin and David Krakauer on clarinet) — the echoes of a vanished community — amid glassy guitar sounds (Marc Ribot) and droning bass (Mark Dresser).
The second section, “Never Again,” used the sampled crash of breaking glass in a passage of anti-rhythmic percussion that deliberately stretched to excruciating length, punctuated by recorded shouts of “Sieg Heil!” “Gahelet (Embers)” was a short, elegiac movement, with tentative violin phrases and the sound of a plaintive old record. The more bouyant “Tikkun (Rectification),” featuring violin and percussion (William Winant), gradually subsided to the quiet, ominous ticking of a woodblock. Later, a segment called “Barzel (Iron Fists)” used crashes, rumbles and a trumpet hooting like a train whistle.
“Tzfia (Looking Ahead)” was a series of improvisational segments, from a playful duet for clarinet and huffing bass to plinking repeated notes on vibraphone and other instruments, to harsh, assaultive keyboard dissonances from Anthony Coleman; it, too, gave way to crashes and “Sieg Heil” shouts. And the finale, “Gariin (Nucleus — the New Settlement)” placed aggressive rock guitar — the next generation’s instrument — atop unswerving drum and cymbal patterns.
At times “Kristallnacht” succumbed to the imitative fallacy, assaulting listeners to commemorate the assault on the Jews. But most of Mr. Zorn’s act of remembrance was tautly timed and carefully thought through, from its improvisational details to its overall structure. Without losing its self-consciousness, the music was unafraid to move listeners.
Delìrivm Còrdia 