With each passing year, under Perelstein’s guidance, the boys attracted more international acclaim. In 1976, Ąžuoliukas was invited to give a concert in the White House for the bicentenary of the United States, an honour that the singers from Vilnius were denied by officials in Moscow, who had also cancelled their tours in France and Belgium.
In his everyday life, Perelstein had to deal with the jealousy of his colleagues, one of whom was once frank enough to declare that a Jew should not lead Lithuania’s best choir. Others did their best to exclude the beloved teacher of choir conducting from attaining even the lowest academic grade at the Vilnius Conservatoire.
Unsurprisingly, exhausted by the almost daily stress, and following the insistent invitations from his brother, in early 1979, Perelstein decided to leave Lithuania for the United States. He worked as a teacher in several schools and universities in New York, and conducted a boys’ choir he founded, in an apparent attempt to replicate his earlier self. This soon proved too difficult, as did finding trustworthy friends and forming deep relationships.
Today Ąžuoliukas, his lifelong passion and only true love, is still a distinguished musical force in Lithuania. The choir has sung music of almost all major genres, from Renaissance motets and Baroque oratorios to jazz and contemporary choral pieces. Although it never paid much attention to participating in competitions, Ąžuoliukas has nonetheless won a number of prizes in Europe’s leading contests. The choir has toured Japan, the United States, Canada, and two dozen European countries.
It all began in Vilnius in the autumn of 1959, when Herman Perelstein, who was then 36 years old, brought together a handful of boys for their first rehearsal, after hand-picking them from various schools across the city. Even the first name of the choir has an undeniably poetic ring to it: the Boys’ Choir of the Club of the Automatic Telephone Station in Vilnius.
Darius Krasauskas
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