'Defiant Requiem,' a tribute to courage during the Holocaust, to be performed in Bismarck

Born of a chance discovery at a Minneapolis sidewalk book sale in the mid-1990s, Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin, which honors courageous prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp, will be performed Oct. 20 and 21 by the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra in Bismarck, N.D.

Composer/conductor Murry Sidlin, a former faculty member at the University of Minnesota, found deep meaning in the old book he happened upon, Joza Karas’ Music in Terezin, 1941-1945 — especially the chapter on young Czech musician Rafael Schächter. It detailed Schächter’s efforts to lead his fellow prisoners at the Terezin camp in 16 performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, including for an audience of their captors.

“We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them,” Schächter is said to have told his choir members, whose ranks slowly and ominously dwindled.

Sidlin’s interpretation, which he terms a “concert-drama,” is a complete performance of the Requiem interspersed with film, survivor testimony and narration. At the time of its creation in 2002, the New York Times called it a “poignant multimedia tribute” to Schächter.

And how did the work come to Bismarck? The orchestra’s music director, Beverly Everett, who also serves as a narrator for the piece, explained.

“As a conducting student of Murry’s during Defiant Requiem’s inception, I have been moved and influenced by it for a very long time,” she said. “… It was my dream to share it with the communities in which I work because of its powerful message of how music literally saves people’s lives.”

About 12 years ago, she brought it to the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra, for which she also is music director, and had wanted to bring it to Bismarck ever since.

“It is especially poignant to perform here, as Bismarck was the site of a Japanese internment camp during World War II,” she said. “Those same grounds now serve as the Pow Wow grounds for our United Tribes College.”

Sidlin himself will lead the Bismarck performance in a special chamber arrangement. It will feature soprano Korliss Uecker, mezzo-soprano Tammy Hensrud, tenor Emerson Eads and bass Jason Thoms; the Bismarck-Mandan Civic Chorus, led by Tom Porter; pianist Arlene Shrut, violinist Maureen Murch and cellist Abbie Eads; plus Everett and actor Dan Bielinski in speaking roles.

“I can think of no more important works than these to be presenting to the world right now,” Everett said. “As Leonard Bernstein put it best, ‘This will be our reply to violence — to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.’“

In conjunction with the performances, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas is bringing to Bismarck “Transfer of Memory,” a touring exhibit of portraits and stories of Minnesota Holocaust survivors. And the documentary Defiant Requiem, which delves deeper into Schächter’s story, will be screened Oct. 17.

More info: Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 20 and 21, Belle Mehus Auditorium, 201 N. 6th St., Bismarck, N.D. Tickets: $18-$44.