Yuval Rabin performs organ works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Lewandowski and Y.Rabin at a house concert in Jerusalem

 

Courtesy Terra Sancta Organ Festival

Among the instruments on view in the music room of Yuval Rabin's home in Jerusalem are an upright piano, a harpsichord, a clavichord, a pipe organ and a didgeridoo! The event we were attending was a house concert on November 5th 2024, performed by Dr. Rabin on the pipe organ, a German-built instrument boasting eleven registers and four basic timbres.

 

Leipzig Germany was the location of the program's first items, opening with J.S.Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, written some time between 1706 and 1713 when the composer was in his early twenties. Often heard played on large church organs that highlight the work's imposing majesty, it is conceivable that Bach might have written this piece with the pedal harpsichord in mind. Articulate, and sparingly embellished, Rabin's playing gave expression to the contrasts and variety of the Passacaglia's 21 variations, the Fugue building up to a massive climax of suspended harmonies and full instrumental sonority. Bach's Six Organ Trio Sonatas, representing a new organ genre established by the composer c.1727-1730, were written for his son Wilhelm Friedemann to study. These sonatas, attractive and immediately appealing to the listener, pose ferocious interpretive and technical demands for the player, requiring the right and left hand to play independent melodic lines on separate keyboards while the feet play the basso continuo. From the buoyant, good natured opening movement, through the gently undulating Siciliano, to the witty dialogue in bell-like timbres of the final Allegro, Yuval Rabin's performance of Sonata No.1 in E-flat major BWV 525 presented the piece's supremely Italianate character, as he chose to give each voice distinct tone colourings to allow Bach’s counterpoint to be heard clearly. 

 

J.S.Bach was a central figure in the music education of the prodigious young Felix Mendelssohn, the latter's versatile music career including organ recitals, in which he was known to be a fine improvisor. Both the counterpoint and the chorale movements of his organ sonatas reflect his lifelong immersion in the music of Bach. Mendelssohn reached new heights of awareness in his composition in the 1830s, as heard in his last and most significant works for the organ -  Six Sonatas Op.65. Especially fond of Mendelssohn's organ music, Rabin chose to perform Sonata No. 4 in B-flat major of the Op. 65 collection. The flamboyant, grand opening Allegro con brio, a toccata offering trumpet-like passages, was followed by an Andante religioso, its expressive melody reminiscent of Bach’s chorale movements. Another tranquil movement, a lyrical and charming Allegretto, its melody accompanied by an obbligato of continuous semi-quavers, gave no hint as to the tour de force to follow -  the Allegro maestoso e vivace, a majestic, ebullient fugue, its subject beginning with sixteenth notes in the pedals, book-ended by majestic opening and closing sections. Rabin's playing reflected the elegance and impetuous vitality which characterize Mendelssohn's music in general.

 

Moving to Berlin, we heard a short work by Polish-German composer Louis Lewandowski (1821–1894). Thanks to the support of Alexander Mendelssohn, a cousin of Felix Mendelssohn, Lewandowski was able to attend the Berlin Academy of  Music, an institution which did not admit Jewish students. Lewandowski was then to become one of the pioneers of the central European cantorial style.  Rabin performed one of the Fünf Fest-Präludien, Op. 37, written during Lewandowski's tenure as musical director at the Neue Synagoge in Berlin. Each of the Preludes relates to a specific Jewish holiday, each highly melodic, each composed in the strict four-part harmony of church music, with many of the pieces based on ancient cantorial modal melodies. The artist played Prelude No.2, based on the Kol Nidrei melody, sung on the eve of the Day of Atonement, the piece's opening evoking the momentousness and aura of the occasion, its musical quotations clearly emerging as they weave through the fabric of the piece.

 

The thread running through the program culminated in a composition of Yuval Rabin himself - "Hommage à Mendelssohn".  Based on "Yedid Nefesh" (Lover of my soul), a Sabbath melody, Rabin incorporates many musical turns of phrase from Mendelssohn's writing. Following statement of the melody itself, we hear four vivid and challenging variations inspired by Mendelssohn's stylish organ phraseology, the final variation an elaborate fugue. An impressive work, well handled.

 

Dr. Yuval Rabin serves as president of the Israel Organ Association.

 

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor: Lahav Shani, performs a concert of the Hatikva Project in Jerusalem. Soloists: Shay Bloch, Dmitry Ratush

 

Courtesy Miri Shamir

Offering 18 concerts in 13 cities throughout Israel over the course of five days, the Hatikva Project was conceived by Sharon Azrieli (chair of the advisory council of the Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre) for the Azrieli Foundation in collaboration with Israel's professional- and youth orchestras. With "Music heals community" as its slogan, the project's goal was to spread new hope across the nation. ("Hatikva", the title of Israel's national anthem, translates into English as "hope".) All the concert programs featured, among other works, compositions of Israeli composers, as well as Jewish sacred music. This writer attended a concert of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by its music director Lahav Shani, at the Jerusalem Theatre on November 3rd, 2024. Soloists were Dmitry Ratush (viola) and Shay Bloch (mezzo-soprano).

 

The program opened with "Therefore Choose Life" by Boris Pigovat (b.1953, Odessa, USSR), who immigrated to Israel in 1990. "Therefore Choose Life" (Deuteronomy 30:19), premiered September 2017, is tonal in concept, the work's opening's intense, foreboding message glazed with dissonances, indeed, with some clusters. To the listener's surprise, the foreboding dark sound world gives way to sounds of hope, the latter free of dissonances, the new musical agenda brightened with the timbral lustre of harp, xylophones and celesta, the tutti now bringing a new message. A winsome folk-like melody pervades the final part of the work. This fine piece is well suited to the IPO's forces - to its marvellous tutti playing, but also to the poignant soloing on the part of its players. Of "Therefore Choose Life", Pigovat writes: "...I tried to express my feeling that life (with all its pain, suffering and tragedies) is meant to be filled with beauty, hope, light and love." A work of profound humanity that rings applicable to our times.

 

Two works on the program featured Shay Bloch. Her performance of Maurice Ravel's "Two Hebrew Melodies" for voice and orchestra (originally for voice and piano in 1914, orchestrated by the composer in 1919) brought out the melismatic, unhurried, spontaneous manner and deep, emotional mystique of the "Kaddish" prayer (sung in Aramaic), its tragic pathos followed by the whimsical, cynical melancholy of "The Eternal Riddle" (sung in Yiddish), with its defiantly repetitive accompaniment. The IPO's attentive, subtle realization of the instrumental score endorsed the meaning of both movements. Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No.1, "Jeremiah" (1942), a remarkably challenging, imaginative and spiritual work to emerge from the pen of a 24-year-old composer, proved to be a prediction not only of his future success but also of the tragedy that would befall his own people. His astonishing mastery in depicting of the "intensity of the prophet’s pleas with his people" (the composer's own words) in "Prophecy" (1st movement) and of the "destruction and chaos brought on by the pagan corruption within the priesthood and the people" in "Profanation" (2nd movement) took shape as vivid, dazzling canvases, attesting to the IPO's forces, its rich array of orchestral colours and timbres and to the players' precision, their dynamic- and expressive command. Joining the orchestra in "Lamentation", the final movement, with texts (in Hebrew) from the Book of Lamentations, Bloch's performance was gripping and sensitive, her voice substantial, resonant and mellow, as she fervently evoked Jeremiah's mourning over his beloved Jerusalem. The vocal line was punctuated by elegantly-shaped orchestral interludes.

 

The program's Israeli content was provided by two short instrumental works. In "Tefillah" for string orchestra (1961), Tzvi Avni takes the listener through a generous sweep of emotions, from introspective-, inward-looking-, even whispy,otherworldly moments, to extravagant, breathless dance-like rhythms, the sections' contrasting agendas proceeding seamlessly by virtue of the composer's large palette of melodic ideas, combinations and textures. Fine concert fare! Principal violist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1938-1956) Oedoen Partos composed "Yizkor" (In Memoriam) for viola and string orchestra in 1946 to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Current IPO principal violist Dmitry Ratush gave an outstanding performance of this modal tone poem, his playing meticulously shaped, introspective and expressive, yet restrained, inviting the music itself to communicate its tragic message to the listener.

 

 Maestro Shani led the orchestra and soloists with eloquence.