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Notes for Nine-Eleven Commemoration New York
Centennial Memorial Temple, The Salvation Army
09/11/2026 -
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Recordare from Requiem, K.636
Antonín Dvorák: Goin’ Home (Theme from Symphony Nr.9 (Arranged by Williams Arms Fisher) – My Country Tis of Thee (Newly found arrangement, re-arranged by J. Frederick Haight)
Johannes Brahms: Nänie, opus 82
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony Nr.9 in D minor, Opus 125
Lori Philips (Soprano), Mary Phillips (Mezzo soprano), Everett Suttle, Frank Mathis(Tenors), Kevin Thompson (Bass), Dura Jin-Jones (Pianist), Jungwon Yoon, Kae Nakano (Violins), Jin Young Park, Jaewong Chung (Violas), Sam Chung (Cello)
Schiller NYC Chorus, John Sigerson, Nancy Guise (Conductors of Chorus and Orchestra)
Special Guests: Fire Department Colorguard; Gary Marlon Gere (Photographer/Playwright, Fire Department New York Honorary Battalion Chief)
J. Sigerson, Schiller Institute NYC Chorus (© Schiller NYC Chorus)
“Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there, a hammer dropped.”
Artist John Ruskin
“At a certain place in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
Last night, the 25th year of the Massacre on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a remote Pennsylvania forest was Immortalized with grandeur in a most unexpected venue.
The site for this concert was the grandiose Salvation Army Auditorium (about 1,300 seats), with sounds to match. The major performers, the Schiller Institute Chorus, was an equally grand 150‑ odd singers with voices, both hushed and thunderous.
Add to this an opening prayer, a Color Guard by members of the New York Fire Department, a film and remembrance by actor/poet Gary Marlon Gere and a finale of the most memorable epic music in history.
And one had a serious sobering extravaganza.
Serious but only vaguely familiar. In fact, some of the choices were confusing.
Johannes Brahms wrote one of his most sheerly beautiful choral works to Schiller’s poem Nänie. Unfortunately, the words were translated. And while the Schiller chorus was ravishing, only the erudite knew that Schiller was referring to Orpheus (unnamed), Aphrodite and “that beautiful boy” Adonis, and finally Thetis trying to save her son Achilles.
Nobody stood up to say, “What the hell was that all about?”
Equally confusing was a “new” My Country Tis of Thee, for chorus (good) and a string quintet. The Dvorák version was based on his own chamber composition, and arranged here by J. Frederick Haight.
It was lovely–-but in such a solemn opening half, I, for one, would have liked a few measures of ribaldry. Namely Charles Ives’ satirical Variations on “America”. Dvorák, though, was hardly ever wrong. And while the choral words were familiar, the string quintet interludes were perhaps puzzling.
Tenor Everett Suttle was impressive enough with his unfamiliar “Negro” spirituals, as well as Dvorák’s tune later given ersatz “negro” lyrics as Goin’ Home. (The composer was influenced by his African-American student, but the juvenile melody was by the Czech master himself.)
The second half had started with Nänie, yet the continuation was unfortunately Beethoven’s final symphony. True, the program’s subtitle “A Pathway Out of War” was outlandish enough. Yet both Friedrich Schiller and the composer broke the usual shackles of German anti‑Semitism. They were both lodestones of the Central European Enlightenment. And they collaborated on the subject of world-wide brotherhood.
More essential, as conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler noted, the Ninth starts one minute before those dropping fifths.
Nothing of Faith or God or creation. Simply Stephen Hawking’s “Something created from Nothing”.
Conductor John Sigerson, whose usual podium is with the Schiller Chorus, here had to deal with a pit orchestra which, alas, sounded under rehearsed, a stolid sound next to the finale poetry sung so well by the Chorus.
One didn’t expect a Karajan or Bernstein or Abbado Ninth. But this was an ensemble (not even given a name). Mr. Sigerson a was precise, careful, meticulous leader. And his experience led the final movement chorale, even the–oh Mandami! Islamic! Terrorist!!–Ottoman band music to be a happy Beethoven addition.
Yet he worked with a pickup orchestra. And it sounded that way.
No, I won’t continue with that. The full house (with a few dozen who left after the Adagio) gave Mr. Sigerson a standing ovation. To them, and with a finale, to me was an Ode to Musical Joy.
True, one does not “celebrate” September 11. (Or as Trump called it the preceding night “Seven Eleven”). But one commemorates that day. This observance was musically questionable. But was offered with stolidity and seriousness. And that, perhaps, was sufficient.
Harry Rolnick
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