A Jewish Composer No Longer “Under The Radar”

We are thrilled to invite our community to a musical celebration of the work of Mieczysław Weinberg, a once-neglected Jewish composer whose talent and compositions are now being recognized around the world.

Weinberg’s work, a reflection of his troubled life in twentieth century Poland and Russia, explores the afflictions of war and Jewish suffering through music. We will unveil his legacy with a striking concerto from Calgary Philharmonic Concertmaster Diana Cohen, who will share the evening with us at Beth Tzedec before her live rendition and Canadian premiere of Weinberg’s Violin Concerto at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.

Diana will be joined by her husband, internationally renowned concert pianist Roman Rabinovich, and by composer and genre-crossing pianist Mark Limacher. Together, they will delve into this monumental work, playing live with excerpts from the concerto and taking us through a journey of discovery and wonder. 

This unique performance is co-sponsored by Beth Tzedec Congregation and Temple B’nai Tikvah. Following the presentation, refreshments will be served and attendees will have an opportunity to speak with Cohen and Rabinovich about Weinberg, his legacy, and their upcoming performance with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.

Click here to learn more about the performers for the evening.

Performers

Diana Cohen is the Concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic and Founder and Artistic Director of the acclaimed music festival ChamberFest Cleveland. 

Last July, Diana and her husband, pianist Roman Rabinovich launched ChamberFest West (chamberfestwest.com), an annual international summer chamber music festival bringing the most exciting musicians from around the globe to Calgary. Cohen has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras, has performed at some of the most prestigious festivals, and collaborated with renowned artists, including Garrick Ohlsson, Mitsuko Uchida, Jonathan Biss, and members of the Juilliard, Dover, Miro, and Parker string quartets. Cohen has toured and recorded with the Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and performed with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. A Cleveland Institute of Music graduate, she studied with Donald Weilerstein and received the Jerome Gross Prize. In 2022, Diana received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Cohen’s father, Franklin, was longtime Principal Clarinet of the Cleveland Orchestra, and her brother Alexander is Principal Timpani for the Calgary Phil. Her late mother, Lynette Diers Cohen, was an esteemed bassoonist. Cohen lives in Calgary with her husband and her three-year-old, Noa Lynette, who sings and dances all day long. 

Roman Rabinovich won the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2008. His subsequent career has led him to perform throughout Europe and the USA in venues as Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Cité de la Musique in Paris and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. He has appeared with orchestras including Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Meininger Hofkapelle, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, KBS Symphony, Prague Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic and all the major Israeli orchestras and collaborated with conductors such as and Sir Roger Norrington, Zubin Mehta, Ludovic Morlot, Kristjan Järvi, Gerard Schwarz and Joseph Swensen. At the opening of this season, Roman Rabinovich made his Carnegie Hall Concerto Debut, stepping in at 24-hours’ notice with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Mozart’s Concerto K. 271. Other highlights of the season include the Tchaikovsky Concerto no. 1 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot, the Greig Concerto with Edmonton Symphony and Michael Stern, Bach’s d minor Concerto with the NFM Leopoldinum and Joseph Swensen, the Schubert/Liszt ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy with Israel Symphony and Christoph Koenig, Rachmaninov Concerto no. 2 with Punta Gorda Symphony and Mozart’s Concerto K. 488 with Helena Symphony. This season’s recital engagements include Portland Piano International, the Steinway Series at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Philip Lorenz Memorial Piano Series, Maverick Concerts and Music at MoCA Concert Series. Together with his wife, violinist Diana Cohen, Roman Rabinovich is co-director of ChamberFest Cleveland as well as the newly inaugurated ChamberFest West festival in Calgary. During the 2020-21 global pandemic, the pair gave a very successful series of free weekly concerts from their front yard in Calgary, Canada. 

Mark Limacher is a composer, improviser, arranger, and genre-crossing pianist currently based in Calgary. He is a graduate of New School University in New York City, and has studied privately with composers Linda Catlin Smith (Toronto) and Laurence Crane (London, UK). In 2013 he served as apprentice to composer Bunita Marcus in Brooklyn, NY. 

In 2022 he was invited to be an Artist in Residence for the Festival of the Sound’s Music Scores 2022, featured by the National Arts Centre as part of their Music Alive program. His arrangements and orchestrations have been heard in collaboration with vocalists Ellen Doty, vocalist & playwright Allison Lynch, Kensington Sinfonia, Theater Calgary, and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.  

As a pianist and keyboard player he has performed with a wide range of artists including Juno-winning vocalist Caity Gyorgy, Grammy-winning saxophonist Ted Nash, and techno artist Corinthian, with whom he recorded an album in 2018,  Disappearance Exhibitions.  Other areas of interest include Italian opera, music of the early 20th Century, Psychoanalysis, and contemporary philosophy. In 2016 he co-founded the NCRA award winning radio program Unprocessed with violinist and long-time collaborator, Laura Reid. He currently hosts the podcast Things that Seemed Important at the Time.