By Daniel Buckwalter

Without memory, there is no culture, and among ethnic and religious communities, the people of the Jewish faith certainly understand this.

From the ancient teachings of the Tanach to historical writings, film and, of course music, the Jewish culture (and by turns, all of us) are enriched. I, for one, cannot think of faith-based communities without a special nod to the people of the Jewish faith and all it has endured with the Holocaust and beyond.

All of this was made poignant in Delgani String Quartet’s Jewish Memory program, which had a five-stop tour in Salem, Corvallis, Portland and, Jan. 25 and 26, two concerts in Eugene at the Christian Science Church.

The concert — featuring violinists Anthea Kreston and Jannie Wei, violist Amanda Grimm and cellist Eric Alterman — was prayerfully heavy, with a short encore dance piece.

There were two short spiritual pieces to open the concert — Niggunin, arranged by Alterman — which, as Alterman explained, are designed to take prayer out of the head and into the heart. They are beautiful.

There also was Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s six-movement String Quartet No, 6 in E Minor, composed in 1946. Weinberg was a Jew who escaped Poland, settled in the Soviet Union, and was a prolific composer of string quartets until his death in 1996. It is beautiful and intense.

The piece that particularly tugged at the heart, however, was Shulamit Ran’s String Quartet No. 3 (“Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory”).

It’s a profound and haunting four-movement piece by Ran inspired by the surrealist paintings of artist Felix Nussbaum, who was killed at Auschwitz in 1944. Many, if not all, of his last works dealt with the Holocaust.

Ran’s composition takes the listener through an introduction (“That which happened”) and accelerates to the chaos of the camps and the descent into madness. The quartet ends with the hollow, deep despair of the cello and the wailing pleas from the violins in the sparse and destitute landscape. It was eerie listening to the sounds of death. I could almost smell it.

If any local ensemble can explore with tender hands the dark corners of history and enrich the mind and soul of its listeners at the same time, it is Delgani String Quartet. I’ve heard it before from Delgani with music that lent vivid images of the soul-crushing consequences of war in Japan and Vietnam.

Delgani gives artistry to the nobility in us in times of suffering, and if you have the chance, go to delgani.org to watch the Eugene performances. It is worth it.