Echoes from the Holocaust for oboe, viola, and piano (1993) opens with a tragic melody in the oboe, derived from two songs written by Holocaust victims.” The first song is Makh Tsu Di Eygelekh (Close Your Little Eyes) by David Beyglman who died in the gas chambers of Treblinka and the second Babi Yar by Riva Boyarsky, a Soviet Jew. (Both appear in We Are Here: Songs of the Holocaust, compiled by Eleanor Mlotek and Malke Gottlieb, with a foreword by Elie Wiesel, and published by The Workmen’s Circle.)
The opening song is followed by fourteen variations and a freer coda. Some short free extensions between variations help to articulate the outlines of a fast-slow-fast structure, which in turn is flanked by a slow introduction and coda. At the still center of the piece, the song becomes a slow, solemn chorale for the piano alone, followed by an ornamental variation in E minor. Finally, after a climax, fragments of the song die slowly into silence.
Echoes from The Holocaust was written for oboist Sarah Lambert Bloom.