Hoffman:
Zapyškis

Shostakovich:
Sonate

Ustvolskaya:
Grand Duet

Šenderovas:
Four Miniatures

“Resistance,” the debut album of cellist Natania Hoffman and pianist Monika Dars, examines the charged feelings provoked by four complex, painfully strong, and deeply human pieces written by 20th-century composers living in the Soviet Union and Third Reich; it also examines 21st-century reactions and resistance to that very music, revisiting one work in the form of a new composition. Engaging with conflict in all its complexity, the album grapples with the question at the core of modern discourse about art: should the art of an invading country be banned to send an unequivocal message, or can art speak for its own sake and tell a story rich with its own meaning? And could the suppression of art based on nation of origin endanger freedom of thought, just as populism and extreme nationalism endanger democracy and human rights? On a musical level, each piece includes jarring, violent, and confrontational passages contrasted moments of timeless beauty, vulnerability, and even inner peace. Conflict and ambiguity are woven into the texture of the album; famously, Galina Ustwolskaya refused a marriage proposal by Dmitri Shostakovich, calling their relationship “one of the worst things that ever happened to me.” This album places their beautiful, albeit strikingly different cello-piano music side by side. A satiric song by Mordechai Gebirtig, the most prominent musical voice of the Krakow ghetto, interrupts Joel Hoffman’s “Zapyškis,” a work named after an idyllic Lithuanian village where Hoffman’s Jewish ancestors once lived. This album aims to channel the idea that resistance can be used as the entryway into something deep, instigating discussion and marking the interesting, the unexplored, the revelatory through a cathartic program marked by moments of both desperate struggle and ineffable beauty.