Moses Pergament: ”A Wagner of the Jews”

Moses  Pergament is a forgotten oddity in Finland’s musical history. In spite  of a publicly acclaimed composition concert debut in 1914 in Helsinki,  his colourful and cosmopolitan music has mostly remained unperformed in  his country of origin. One explanation is that Pergament during his  lifetime had to fight actively against the strong forces of  antisemitism; after having settled in Sweden in 1915, it would still  take him several decades before he was accepted in the Society of  Swedish Composers, and when Jean Sibelius discusses Pergament’s debut  concert in his diary entries, he expresses himself unabashedly  antisemitically. When the Swedish composer and music critic Wilhelm  Peterson-Berger called Pergament a “foreign parasite” in an interview,  Pergament traveled to Peterson-Berger’s home and delivered him a slap in  the face that made him famous overnight – though not as a composer. As  he was not a native Swede, and in addition to that was of Jewish  heritage, he had to wait until after World War 2 to become a member of  the Society of Swedish Composers.

After  having been unjustly neglected for so long, we now want to highlight  his music in a unique portrait concert – likely the first of its kind in  Finland since his debut over a hundred years ago. We discover a  composer of many stylistic shifts – from the late-Romantic early works  and the French-influenced violin sonata, via selections from The Jewish Song to the late, free-tonal works.

The  concert will be preceded by a panel discussion at 18.00 with music  writer Carl-Gunnar Åhlén and historian Henrik Rosengren, who both have  written books about Pergament. The talk will be introduced by professor  emeritus Eero Tarasti.