The Background to Zimro

In the year 1917 a group of Russian Jewish musicians set out from St Petersburg. They were called ‘Zimro’ (meaning singer) and toured for three years arriving in America in 1919. ‘Zimro’, a group of six musicians - string quartet, clarinet and piano, was formed by one of the foremost clarinettists in Russia at this time, Simeon Bellison, in order to support the creation of a state of Palestine and to collect funds for a music conservatoire there. They travelled throughout Eastern Europe and the Far East ending up in the States, where they persuaded Prokofiev who had arrived just a year or so earlier to write a work based on Jewish folk melodies, the Overture on Jewish Themes. 

Zimro’s newly commissioned work from Prokofiev was based on two Jewish melodies taken from one of Simeon Bellison’s personal notebooks in which he had written a collection of Jewish melodies. Bellison had been active in the Jewish folk music movement in Russia from as early as 1906. 

From Prokofiev’s Diaries:

2 February 1920

…the Bohemian Club, a club of musicians, who had organised a reception for me on the occasion of the first performance of my  "Overture on Jewish Themes".  It was a closed event, members only, about 80 people.…then our "Zimro" lot performed the Brahms clarinet quintet, which was serious and boring;variations by Gnessin, which were the same  and my "Overture". The "Overture" sounded really fine, sometimes a bit shrill (for future performers: the clarinet shouldn't shriek and the piano shouldn't hammer), but after the previous dead numbers, however good quality they were, [my piece sounded] so lively and fresh that the auditorium came to life and gave me a vociferous ovation. The "Overture" was encored, after which I played the 3rd sonata as an extra to the programme.

(extract kindly found and translated by Gerard McBurney)