Soprano Channa Malkin is nominated for the GrachtenfestivalPrijs 2020. Together with cellist Maya Fridman and pianist Slava Poprugin, Channa made a wonderful programme in which motherhood is at the heart. Channa about the concert:
'Few things in life are as drastic as having a child. The sleepless nights, but also "Few things in life are as drastic as having a child. The sleepless nights, but also the immeasurable love and primal power that you suddenly appear to possess as a new-born parent. During one of those sleepless nights, I found the song cycle When I rock this child asleep by Mcieslaw Weinberg, on poems by the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. These songs expressed exactly my feelings as a mother.
Parenting brings you back to your own childhood, while at the same time the confrontation with your mortality. In his Children's Room, Mussorgsky humorously portrays the child's clever, inventive and mischievous spirit. On the other side is John Tavener, the 20th-century British composer who was inspired by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. She sees death as a ship in a turbulent sea, a cabin waiting for her, and the inevitable, painful farewell to her motherland.
Intertwined throughout the program are the songs of my father, Josef Malkin, which also combine childhood and mortality. In Pis'mo a little girl writes a letter full of mistakes to her grandmother. In The Fortune Teller, a gypsy predicts to the young poet Boris Ryzhy he will die of: guilt".