An interview with
Misha and Cipa Dichter

Classical Domain:    How did you hear about the project

Misha Dichter: Stephen Vann called us in July asking if we'd be interested in performing the premiere of the Shostakovich two piano arrangement of Babi Yar. But he said: “First, the concert is less than two months away and second, we don't have the music yet.

That two-part proposition took us a back a little bit. Stephen was extremely organized. I told him that we were very touched by being offered the project.

In full disclosure neither of us had heard the Shostakovich's 13th Symphony before the project started. There was a bit of familiarization that had to take place. Stephen found a one piano version of the work. We listened to the orchestral version and the one piano version gave us an idea of what to expect for the two-piano part.

So lo and behold, in the third week of August, the day before we were going to Colorado for the Aspen Festival — there was the two piano version delivered from Moscow.

Cipa Dichter: And I also think the context of this moment in history, it's so important for the museum to exist. It's a difficult moment. I think for Jews in general, to keep hold of what the work is about.

Classical Domain:    Shostakovich originally thought of Babi Yar as a cantata, but the he expanded it, with other Yevgeny Yevtushenko poems to comment on a broader range of Soviet life.

I don't know if you're aware that the two piano piece was created to see if the symphony could pass the Soviet censors. It was something that Shostakovich was always subjected to. But he was going out (further) on a limb with the 13th Symphony.

MD:    That's an amazing point. I was talking to someone recently and he was talking about the traditional reason composers allow piano transcriptions of their works is because they want a wider audience for their music. But I told him that Shostakovich wrote the arrangement and he never released it. So what you said makes sense.

Classical Domain:    It was written specifically for some one to pass judgment on it.

CD:    Also we read that the authorities made Yevgeny Yevtushenko add a few lines about how Russians were killed at Babi Yar, taking the focus away from the Jews. And we know that the massacre was 100% Jews, so when they added the lines Shostakovich then had to take them out. Probably not the safest thing to do.

Also since we started doing this, we have been getting all this information. My cousin went back to visit the village where his father came from — this is just the way the Nazi's did it. Babi Yar was just the largest site of a massacre 30,000 initially, but eventually 100,000. In my cousin's village they marched people off to a ravine and killed 2500.

This bit of history would have disappeared if it were not for this poem.

Classical Domain:    The Soviets would have been happy to have it disappear. I was talking to David Marwell, Director of The Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, about the Russian's complicity in the killing.

MD:    Of course.   My parents, who are now gone, were sat down about sixteen years ago by a cousins on our visiting them in California. This cousin set up a tripod and video camera on my parents. That was the first time I heard their story of escaping Poland.

The Ukraine came up as one of the areas through which they had to flee on their way to China. There was a particular moment were my father was hiding under a bed in a farmhouse there they were being protected. A Ukrainian came in and saw my mother and thinking she looked Russian left them alone. I do remember their saying that the Ukrainians were only too happy to hand over Jews, who were residents or intransigents, over to authority.

CD:    My parents story is a little different from Misha's they left earlier, my father went to Brazil. He lost his parents and his younger siblings. He brought as many as he could over, but he was poor so he could not bring everybody.

Classical Domain:    I read that you work separately, have you had time to hear the piece together?

MD:    We only received the score a few weeks ago and it is only in the last few days that we have head the piece together.

CD:    It was helpful learning the one piano, it made all the difference.

Classical Domain:    It's a very loud and dynamic piece, how is that carried over into the piano?

MD:    With a lot of clusters in the bass to conjure up gongs, and percussion. Tremolos....

Classical Domain:    Is there interplay between the two pianos?

MD:    It's pretty evenly divided, along the orchestral parts, its not an exchange in the way traditional chamber music is.

Classical Domain:    Shostakovich to me is a little like James Joyce, I know that I am not getting many of the musical or extra-musical quotes and associations. So generally I'm not confident that I understand personal illusions or references to earlier work that are buried in the score.

But there's in a moment in Babi Yar where Shostakovich meets me half way with a quote from (Stravinsky's) Petrushka.

MD:    In the pogrom section?

CD:    Yes.... (sings quote)

Classical Domain:    It's when the boy's mother is being beaten. There's an image of her being shaken like a puppet.

Since the Petrushka piano version is pretty well l known, I wonder if it will be more prominent coming for the two piano arrangement?

MD:    It could be, I've played the version of Petrushka for solo piano, there isn't a four and version, its only four notes then it goes off on it's own. Just that bit of the theme.

Classical Domain:    I'm sure that the audience for the symphony would catch the illusion, I wonder if the initial audience for the two piano preview would?

MD:    Probably not in the Politburo. (laughs)

In our last visit to Israel we went to the Diaspora museum in Tel Aviv. My father's old village of Valderiz and Cipa's father's village of Bailystock was just a name to her. But there on a map were the two cities and in fact they are just four miles apart. It shows how similar our backgrounds were. Yet because of the twentieth century being what it was, her family went to Rio de Genera and mine to China and eventually Los Angeles.

Babi Yar is a microcosm of an ongoing problem, the world isn't over the problem. From the relative comfort of New York I have no patience with a simplistic attitude from people who have no feeling of what it's like to be personally threatened simply for being Jewish.

I have to say that it can be difficult discussing what has happened in the last months between Israel and Lebanon. I'm not going to be so glib as to say that “anti-Semitism” is the cause of all the problems, there are more than enough reasons.

I think you have to take everything in context, it's a long history, so when I hear a non-Jew say “Don't you think Israel over reacted” again, I have absolutely no patience with it. I would not be so bold as to say no I don't think Israel over reacted. I would not because there are too many complicated issues. But on the other hand, from the relative comfort of New York I can't stand a simplistic attitude from people who have no feeling of what it's like to be personally threatened simply for being Jewish.

CD:    I think every Jewish person has a connection with Israel, every one has relative who went, many know people who have been killed. It's been very difficult these last couple of months. There is real anti-Semitic behavior, the behavior of governments you see it in books and in the media in different parts of the world.

MD:    It's important, in our time to realize that this history isn't over. Until all the problems with Israel arose, not just recently but over the last decade, I always saw my parents' plight as an ugly part of human history, but now I see how it can happen. I am seeing Europe's reaction is to condemn Israel first... well....

CD:    So the concert is very relevant for us.

Classical Domain:    It could be we now need a new stanza for Babi Yar. We need to remember what the stakes are. I appreciate you time, and I look forward to seeing you again at the concert.