Soothing the Soul with Music on 9/11 Anniversary

Music is said to soothe the soul and on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, many New Yorkers opted to attend musical performances scheduled for the day of remembrance. 

At the Dr. S. Stevan Dweck Center at the , The Sherman Chamber Ensemble played a program of elegiac music by 18th and 19th century composers, including Gabriel Fauré, Felix Mendelssohn, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

“I didn’t want it to be all lugubrious. I wanted to combine memory with works of mourning and rebirth,” said Eliot T. Bailen, co-founder of the ensemble and cellist. 

Bailen and his wife, flutist Susan Rothholtz, founded the Sherman Chamber Ensemble in 1983. They perform nearly two-dozen concerts a year, including a subscription series in Sherman and Kent, Connecticut.

To prepare for the concert, Bailen listened to radio interviews with survivors and family members who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks.

“I tried to keep my focus on the day and the meaning of it,” he said.

Probably the most unusual piece on the program was the “Piano Trio” by Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884), a Czech composer who was championed by Franz Lizst. Introducing the piece, Bailen told the audience “to listen to the contours of the music and the way that it alternates between beautiful melodies and turbulence.”

Smetana’s composition, he explained, was written after the death of the composer’s 4-year-old daughter. 

“It was very specifically written after tragedy and that is why it is appropriate for today,” Bailen explained.

The performance of this piece with Bailen on cello, Michael Roth on violin and Margaret Kampmeier on piano, was virtuosic and highly emotionally as it sonically conveyed what Bailen called “the incomprehensible train of thought between anger and beauty and the heroic aspect of dying.”

The audience seemed moved by the music and cheered for the performers who appeared equally exhausted and exhilarated.

A woman sitting next to me said that she worked in the financial district on September 11, 2011 and knew that listening to music would be a “healing” way to spend the day.

“I listened to the names this morning, but I wanted to spend the afternoon listening to music,” she explained.

After the show, Bailen commented on whether or not music has a healing power. “For some people it does. It takes things we can’t explain or resolve on our own and creates a framework to re-experience it.”

To illustrate this, Bailen said that he made a mistake while playing the first piece of the program, “Elegie Op 24” for cello and piano.

“Sitting in the front row I watched a man grab his companion’s hand during the piece and that moved me,” he said. The emotion he experienced caused him to drop a note, something he rarely does.

When Jay Kaplan, director of programs & exhibitions at the Brooklyn Public Library decided he wanted to present a special program to honor September 11, he tapped Peter Weitzner, curator and host of the BPL Chamber Players in Residence, to produce it on short notice.

“I knew I wanted to get the Sherman Chamber Ensemble and that Eliot Bailen would put together something very special for the occasion,” Kaplan said.