At its annual spring concerts March 26-27, the Orchestra at Temple Square marked its 10th anniversary year with "A Classical Music Bouquet" dedicated to victims of genocide and persecution.
Pieces selected by conductor Igor Gruppman evoked emotions ranging from despair to optimism, including the world premiere of "Black Flowers: 12 Songs for Soprano and Orchestra" by Dutch composer Josef Makin and Dimitry Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.
"I cannot believe how time flies," exclaimed Brother Gruppman to the audience in reference to the orchestra's decennial anniversary. He congratulated the professional musicians who, like their sister organization, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, perform without pay as Church service and wished them many more years.
Regarding the program for the concert, he said it was dedicated in particular to victims of the Jewish Holocaust and to victims of atrocities all over the world.
Brother Gruppman, a convert to the Church from Ukraine who is of Jewish heritage himself, said the music performed bespeaks the conditions of suffering, hope and redemption.
The Malkin composition is a setting for 12 poems written by Ida Vos, a Dutch poet and author of children's books. She and her family were living in Rotterdam during the German bombardment of the city in May 1940. During the war, the family went into hiding.
The poems are a remembrance of the Holocaust and reflect fear, anger, mourning, loss and guilt that she was spared and her friends were not.
Performing the soprano solos was the composer's own daughter, Channa Malkin, 18, who studies at the Conservatory of Utrecht.
The emotion of hope was evoked by Vesna Gruppman's viola solo on "Kol nidrei" by composer Max Bruch. An accomplished soloist and chamber musician in her own right with a doctorate in performance and pedagogy from the Moscow Conservatory, she is the wife of Brother Gruppman.
Beginning the program was Overture to Orchestral Suite no. 2 by Johann Sebastian Bach, featuring flutist Jennifer Gremillion as soloist.
The second half of the program featured "Adagio" by Samuel Barber and Symphony No. 5 in D minor by Dmitri Shostakovich. The latter, Brother Gruppman told the audience, was written in 1937, which will live in memory when millions of people died in the gulags under the regime of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Formed in 1999 as part of the restructuring of musical organizations on Temple Square, the orchestra performs frequently with the Tabernacle Choir and gives solo concerts twice a year.
