Carolyn Enger Offers Musical Relief From New Jersey Lawn

Englewood, NJ – The Covid-19 pandemic has been a tough time for performing artists who thrive on realtime audience response, and concert pianist Carolyn Enger is no exception. Stay-at-home precautions have meant much of her time over the last few months has been spent alone honing her solo piano repertoire. On August 23rd at 3 pm, Ms. Enger will finally offer a socially distanced lawn concert for local friends and fans, to share some of her favorite uplifting music and offer a respite from the stress of the last few months.

Listeners should bring a chair and enjoy the resonance of Ms. Enger’s piano from her open window. For those who aren’t local, the concert will also be broadcast as a livestream on her Facebook page. If you would like to attend, send an email via Ms. Enger’s contact page for location details.

Ms. Enger’s program will include:

J.S. Bach: Prelude in C major

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, Op. 28

I. Allegro

lV. Rondo: Allegro, ma non troppo

Philip Glass: Etude No. 2

Edvard Grieg: Arietta

Franz Schubert: Moments Musicaux Nos. 2 & 6

Arvo Pärt: Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata Pathétique, Op. 13

II. Adagio Cantabile

Franz Schubert: Impromptu in A-flat Major, Op. 142, No. 1

Claude Debussy: Revêrie 

Carolyn Enger, concert pianist and speaker, has gained critical acclaim for her deeply felt performances and her thoughtful programs informed by a keen sense of history, identity, and personal connection. Ms. Enger has enjoyed remarkable success as a recording artist: The New York Times selected her Naxos recording of intimate Ned Rorem miniatures, Piano Album I & Six Friends, as one of the newspaper’s “Best In Classical Recordings” for that year, writing “Among the 90th-birthday tributes this year to the essential American composer Ned Rorem, this recording especially stands out,” while Gramophone declared, “Enger raises the miniatures to a higher level.” 

Ms. Enger’s touring schedule has brought her to venues throughout the United States and beyond, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, The National Gallery of Art in D.C., Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Nantucket Musical Arts Society, The Kosciuszko Foundation, and the National Gallery in Oslo. Deepening her commitment to multimedia collaborations, Ms. Enger was part of renowned illustrator and writer Maira Kalman’s exhibit “Maira Kalman Selects” at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and her recording of Arvo Pärt’s music was featured in conceptual artist Mischa Kuball’s sound and light exhibit “res.o.nant” at the Jewish Museum Berlin. Recent and upcoming highlights include concerts at the White Stork Synagogue in Wroclaw; the German Consulate General in New York; the Bach-Festival in Arnstadt; the Portuguese Synagogue’s Candlelight Concert series in Amsterdam; concerts at Michaeliskirche in Erfurt, Germany; Nikolaisaal Potsdam; KunstForum Gotha; Steinway galleries throughout North America; and a number of recitals in the greater New York area, including a celebration of the work of Ned Rorem at Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium.

Focusing on the era of World War II, her multimedia project The Mischlinge Exposé combines music, literature, and images that evoke the haunting memories of the Mischlinge – half-Jews and German-Jewish converts in Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust – events reflected in Ms. Enger’s own experience as the child of a Holocaust survivor. Ms. Enger’s project seeks to expand knowledge about the Mischlinge, and deals with her own conversions, issues of “racial purity” and identity, and how crippling discrimination is, societally and personally. Over the past seven years, Ms. Enger has presented this concert-lecture throughout the United States and Europe, at venues including the University of Arizona, Middle Tennessee State University, Bristol Community College, Ramapo College, Rowan University, the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center in Providence, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC, Savannah Jewish Federation, the Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts initiative in Texas, and the White Stork Synagogue through the Bente Kahan Foundation in Poland, as well as at dozens of libraries, Jewish community centers, and senior homes. Ms. Enger has contributed a chapter for the forthcoming book Women Defying Hitler: Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Dominated Europe, 1933-1945.