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Nizza
Thobi – A Suitcase Talks A Review by
Claire Hors |
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This
piece of art is not an ordinary CD. In fact it is a Gesamtkunstwerk” (synthesis
of arts), because the booklet also contains various drawings of the
artist Malva Schalek, photos and an extensive body of texts of and about
the displayed artists. The title is thus very appropriate: Like a suitcase that is taken along during an escape, the album is crammed with mementos on Jewish artists who played once a great part in the cultural life of Europe. Nizza Thobi sings their texts partly in relation to her own compositions. Nizza
Thobi was born in Israel and has been living in Germany for 30 years. At
first she sang and arranged mainly songs of Eastern European Jews, and
her latest album in particular features texts
of German-speaking Jews. The “suitcase” is
thereby the leitmotif that links all texts. The titular poem of Ilse
Weber talks about the suitcase “from Frankfurt am Main” that
misses his owner: “He carried a star and was old and blind / And he
held me tight as if I were his child.” As is perceptible from the accompanying text, Ilse Weber was a poetess and an author of children's books, who worked for the Czech radio. She looked after a group of children and was murdered in Auschwitz together with the children and her son. This text is illustrated with two drawings by Malva Schalek. The Austrian-born Schalek, whose drawings appear everywhere in the booklet, was interned in Theresienstadt in 1942. During this time she made more than 140 works and these are a precise testimony of the life in the camps. For refusing to portrait a fellow inmate, who was a Nazi collaborator, she was deported to Auschwitz and died there in 1944. Another artist who nearly fell into oblivion is the Czech painter and diary writer Petr Ginz. His name was brought back into the public consciousness, after his drawing “Moon landscape” was found in the debris of the crashed space shuttle Columbia. The Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon had taken it with him—in order to remember his mother who survived Auschwitz. Ginz was gassed there. For
all these people Thobi builds up a monument and thus saves them from
oblivion. Petr
Ginz composes: “Today even our maid knows, who is an Aryan and who
is a Jew. A Jew –it should be said immediately– Must carry a star on
his coat.” Within this poem he enumerates all forbiddances that
affected the Jewish population and he ends with the cynical lines: “Once
also a human wreck could own a suitcase, a basket or a bag. Of those
things he does not even have a pale light, but, nevertheless, a Jew
never gets angry. According to the rules he lives by, thus it goes, His
contentment is complete.” Congenially Nizza Thobi arranges the
music to this kind of texts, the sorrow behind the lines, the yearning
for normality and one can hear it in every note. Sometimes the sadness
is nearly impossible to sustain – Nizza Thobi's throaty voice
tangibly expresses the deep desperation and melancholy. All texts are printed in English and German language – some of them are also sung in Hebrew or Yiddish. As a “guest star” Thobi’s father, Shlomo Thobi appears, singing the “Poetry for David” in Hebrew – the psalm that is sung on Shabbat. AVIVA-Tip: The diverse mixture of songs highlights again the important part Jewish artists once played in the European, and especially the German cultural life. Through Thobi’s rich vocal variation one can hear her examination of the stories behind the texts–she interprets the texts with much spiritual depth. Peter Wegele’s piano accompaniment and Dina Leini’s violin are coherent and sensitive. The booklet is not easy to follow, but one acquires the taste to look for further information about the presented persons. Nizza
Thobi in the web: www.nizza-thobi.com
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