Hitting the high notes

Marco Uccellini, Giacobo Basevi Cervetto and M. Mani are by no means household names, but if Pro Musica Hebraica had its way, they would be. Jewish musicians and composers who came of age in 17th and 18th century Europe, they contributed mightily to the repertoire of Baroque music, extending its range, enlarging its sound and holding out the possibility of finding common ground through melody, rhythm and song.

Popular and esteemed in their time, their compositions -- cantatas, oratorios and sonatas -- fell prey first to the vagaries of changing musical taste and then to the degradations of the Nazis, who confiscated the contents of the Amsterdam community’s Etz-Haim Library, which housed them.

Although history has not been kind to Messrs. Mani, Uccellini and Cerveto and their respective musical contributions, two contemporary organizations, Pro Musica Hebraica and the Apollo Ensemble, have had great success of late in redressing the situation. Working together, they have sought, as Robyn Krauthammer, the chief executive officer of Pro Musica Hebraica, put it so eloquently, to “free this music from time.”

Last Monday night, May 13th, the Apollo Ensemble performed at the Kennedy Center, bringing this member of the audience to tears more than once. The group’s bravura musicianship had something to do with my heightened emotional state, as did the beauty of the music. Digital projections of the musical compositions, some bearing the cameo-like stamp of the Etz-Hayim Library, also tugged at my heart-strings, while the incisive program notes composed by Professor James Loeffler of the University of Virginia made me want to learn more.

But what really struck me -- and hard -- was the sense that this particular concert was itself a composition of layers, whose structure was built on the multiple strands that make up the Jewish experience: Creative energy, loss, rediscovery, preservation, translation, reinterpretation and the prospect of renewal.