SIS Welcomes Back Amit Peled, Cello, with Pianist Martin Labazevitch

Sounds in the Sanctuary is made possible by the work of Ed Clark, Co-Artistic Director; Martin Kessel, Director Emeritis; Gail Robinson, Reception Director; and Anna McClennen, Co-Artistic Director.

The final concert of the 2025 season was powerful and moving. Peled and Labazevitch opened with the three short movements that comprise Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life. Peled frequently performs this piece, but as he explained, to play it in the sanctuary of a synagogue was as meaningful to the performers as it was to the audience. The concert continued with Mieczysław Weinberg's Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 63. This work was composed in 1959 at the request of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Peled provided an excellent introduction, from which we learned that the sonata chronicles Weinberg’s experiences as a child during the Holocaust: living in fear of the S.S. knocking on the door, being sent to flee with his sister, and reaching the border only to have her turn back as he went on.

The concert concluded with Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G minor, one of his rare works for an instrument other than piano and the last of his compositions published during his lifetime. This sonata is a poignant and bittersweet final statement from a composer whose life and health were in decline, and Peled and Labazevitch evoked that in their rendition.

They politely refused to perform an encore, begging off on the grounds that they were exhausted from playing such demanding pieces, and they instead offered to answer questions from the audience, which led to a lively and informative discussion.

Photos by Ed Clark and Jacki Katzman