Trio Noga performs works of women composers at the Felicja Blumental Music Center, Tel Aviv

Trio Noga’s recent intensive concert tour of Israel presented works of women composers. Interestingly, all three artists of Trio Noga – flautist Idit Shemer, ‘cellist Orit Messer-Jacobi and pianist Maggie Cole (UK, USA) – are well-known performers on today’s Baroque music scene; Trio Noga, however, sees them performing music from the Classical period and up to the most contemporary of works. This writer attended “Celebrating Women in Music”, the second concert in the chamber music series of the Israeli Women Composers and Performers Forum at the Felicja Blumental Music Center, Tel Aviv, on June 12^th 2016.  Representing the Forum, recorder player Inbar Soloman offered words of welcome.

 The program opened with Trio Sonata No.1 by Marion Bauer. Born in Washington to a French Jewish family, composer, teacher, writer and critic Marion Eugénie Bauer (1882-1955) was something of a Renaissance woman. Professor Bauer was especially supportive of American music and modern composers, she was the first woman on the Music Faculty of New York University, with affiliations with the Juilliard School and other educational institutions; she spent 12 summers in the creative environment of MacDowell Colony for composers, artists and writers. Her prolific writing on music addressed both specialists and general readers and she was the author of five books. Despite brief forays into 12-tone music in the 1940s and 1950s, Bauer’s music did not plumb the depths of atonality, rather focusing on the mix of coloristic harmony and gentle dissonance. The opening movement of Trio Sonata No.1 was coloured with Impressionistic musical language, its second movement was eloquent and touching, to then be followed by a playful third movement (Vivace e giocoso).

 Most of the works of French Romantic composer and pianist Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) were published during her lifetime. Primarily a concert pianist, she wrote over 100 piano works and toured the world performing them with great success. In 1901, she was one of the first pianists to record for the gramophone, with seven sides of her works, and she was the first woman composer to become a member of the French Légion d’Honneur. Like Marion Bauer, however, she also suffered from criticism based on gender prejudice. On hearing an orchestral work written by Chaminade at age 18, composer Ambrose Thomas remarked: “This is no woman composer, this is a composer who happens to be a woman.” Chaminade composed Trio No.1 opus 11 in g-minor opus 11 (the flute part played by Idit Shemer originally written for violin) at age 23. The Trio Noga artists gave expression to the composer’s compositional prowess, the piece’s charming Gallic flavour and the influence of Romantic composers on its style – Brahms, possibly Schumann, and others.  Following their intense and emotional reading of the Allegro movement and the lyrical, almost vocal Andante, the rondo constituting the third movement (Presto), bristling with thirty-second notes and cross rhythms, was performed with buoyant optimism as each instrument presented its own agenda. The final movement, classically oriented, nevertheless takes the listener through some late-Romantic harmonic twists. With the piano part illustrative of Chaminade’s own piano mastery, the ‘cello here initiated many of the melodies. With “salon music” viewed as third class entertainment, Chaminade’s music has been sadly ignored. Capturing the work’s moods, melodic richness and elegance, Trio Noga has proved what a misjudgement this was.

 Making the concert an especially auspicious event was the premiere of a work by Israeli composer Hagar Kadima. “By a Doorway” (2016) was commissioned by Trio Noga. A winner of the 2003 Prime Minister’s Award for Composers, Hagar Kadima (b.1957) was the first Israeli woman to earn a PhD in Composition. A professor at the Levinsky College of Education (Tel Aviv), she has spent many years teaching young composers and has been dedicated to collaboration between Arab and Jewish women musicians. In 2000, Dr. Kadima founded the Israeli Women Composers’ Forum, serving as its first chairperson, continuing to devote time and effort in supporting women composers and integrating them into the Israeli musical scene. At the Blumental Center Concert, she talked about the new piece, its genesis being the interval of a minor third – viewing it from all angles – as the piece moves between states of chaos and order. Another element making up the work is Israeli composer Yohanan Zarai’s setting of Avraham Halfi’s “The Ballad of Three Cats” (a nonsense poem whose subtler meaning touches on the subject of loneliness), the song itself announced by the flute, its melody also beginning with a minor third.  Listening to Kadima’s work, Trio Noga’s reading of the work created a sense of curiosity, guiding the listener into closely following the course of the various sections, each different in mood and intensity, each inspired by the simple, unadulterated minor third, always to return to it only to find a new path of departure.  The three instruments, though engaging in much imitation, seemed to have their own agendas as the artists gave a dedicated reading of the piece. Hagar Kadima spoke of her search for simplicity in music. Clarity would certainly run a close second!

 In 1839, Clara Schumann wrote: “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose…” One of the 19^th century’s most outstanding and influential musicians, she would go on to compose over 30 works – character pieces for piano, a concerto, Lieder and three romances for violin and piano. (In the 40 years she outlived her husband, she hardly composed, focusing more on family and her performing career.) Her only chamber work, the Piano Trio in g-minor opus 17, however, composed in 1846 when she was 27, showing the influences of Robert Schumann and Mendelssohn as well as her in-depth study of Bach counterpoint, is considered her finest work. With the flute (Idit Shemer) taking the place of the original violin part, the Noga Trio artists gave full expression to the work’s mid-century Romantic style texture with its interweaving of lines and sweeping ardent melodies, its coquettish Scherzo, its emotional agenda and the fugal writing in the final movement, their playing a careful balancing of forces, their textures never turgid or in excess, as they highlighted Clara Schumann’s skilful writing and ingenuity and the intimate nature of chamber music.

 A concert of fine performance introducing the Israeli concert-goer to works not generally heard and a new work of an Israeli woman composer.

 

 

 

"Modern Music for Recorder and Piano" - a disc recorded by Leora Vinik and Liora Ziv-Li

“Modern Music for Recorder and Piano” is a selection of pieces by 20th century composers, a disc recorded in 2008 by two Israeli artists – recorder-player Leora Vinik and pianist Liora Ziv-Li. The 20th century has seen renewed interest in early music and its performance practice, one result being the recorder’s reinstatement as a solo- and ensemble instrument, another being the creating of a new and varied modern repertoire of works for the instrument. “Modern Music for Recorder and Piano” presents works of varying styles from different countries in Europe, plus one Israeli work, the technical- and musical demands on each instrument being equally challenging.

Israeli-born recorder player Leora Vinik received a B.A. with honors in Music and Bible Studies from Tel Aviv University, continuing her studies in recorder with Marion Verbruggen (Holland) to graduate with an Artist’s Diploma in Performance. Vinik divides her time between solo performance, recording, instructing music students and teachers, tutoring adults in recorder ensembles and much work in the field of music education for children in Israel. She has also been involved in the writing of performance practice manuals and of guided listening texts to accompany the Youth Concert Series of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In “Modern Music for Recorder and Piano” Vinik plays on a Moeck Rottenburgh model soprano recorder and a boxwood alto recorder made by Israeli recorder-builder Yoav Ran.

Pianist Liora Ziv-Li, born in Israel, graduated from the Tel Aviv Academy of Music (piano, harpsichord) proceeding to studies at the Royal College of Music (London). She is the recipient of a number of awards, winning prizes in international competitions. Ziv-Li’s professional engagements include performing with orchestras and recitals; she has played on radio and television in Israel and overseas.

Flautist Marta Klempner began her studies in Israel, receiving Bachelor and Masters degrees in Performance (modern flute and Baroque flute) and Musicology from Indiana University, Bloomington, continuing her studies at the Royal College of Music (London). Since returning to Israel, Klempner has played with orchestras and performed in chamber music concerts.

Hans Gal (1890-1987) was born near Vienna but fled to Britain in 1938, where he eventually took up a lectureship at the University of Edinburgh. His Three Intermezzi opus 103 (1974) are a set of mood pieces of transparent, delicate textures, a fine mix of contrapuntal- and harmonic interest, humor and gentle mood changes. Vinik and Ziv-Li’s reading of them is attentive and interesting in its fine detail, their playing in keeping with Gal’s unflagging sense of good taste. Hans Ulrich Staeps’ (1909-1988) Sonata in E flat major for Recorder and Piano strikes a very different note. This is the Austrian educator and performer’s first composition. Staeps’ work, somewhat reminiscent of Hindemith’s style, defies bar-lines and tonal stability and presents a feisty canvas of long, inventive melodic lines, jaunty rhythmical ideas and provocative textural motifs which, as in the sonata’s third movement, then transcend into lyrical, intimate moments. Ziv-Li and Vinik take on board the many challenging facets of this work, handling its technical challenges and tricky temperament with aplomb.

German conductor, flautist and baritone Hans-Martin Linde, (b.Germany, 1930) has spent much of his professional life teaching in the Music Academy of Basel; he, himself, is a virtuoso player on both recorder and flute. His Trio for Alto Recorder, Flute and Piano (1960) balances and juxtaposes the timbres of recorder, flute and piano in five short, sinewy movements. Joining Vinik and Ziv-Li is outstanding flautist Marta Klempner. Linde creates a fine blend of timbres from this blatantly unconventional scoring; the three artists’ thorough reading of the musical text, together with their accuracy and purposefulness, makes for high quality performance.

Peter Farago’s (b.1932) Hommage a Bela Bartok – Rondo for Soprano Recorder and Piano was composed in 1989. Farago, born in Germany, moved to Hungary with his family in 1935. Constructed from short, varied sections, this piece is peppered with Hungarian-style folk dances and songs, tempo changes, eastern European modes and asymmetrical rhythmic motifs. Ziv-Li and Vinik meet the technical and stylistic challenges of the piece, resulting in the use of energy and color that make for interesting listening.

One of the highlights of the disc is surely British composer John Graves’ (1916-1997) Divertimento, with the dedication “For Fiona”, for alto recorder and piano. Composed in 1964, this small gem, created in five short movements, boasts superb writing for both recorder and piano, opening with the Prelude with its vivacious onset, rapid harmonic changes and rhythmic displacements, then moving into the wistful, songful Air, sketched in autumnal hues and more securely anchored in stable tonality. The third movement – Festivo – suggesting a jolly country celebration complete with little dances, in which the recorder adds small comments, is charming, whereas, in the Soliloquy, the recorder adopts a pensive, soul-searching mood. The coquettish Finale ends the work with a dash of good humour. Vinik and Ziv-Li’s playing certainly does justice to the musical text.

And to the 21st century. Dr. Hagar Kadima’s (b.Israel, 1957) chamber works have been performed internationally in concerts and festivals. She is the founder of the Israel Women Composer’s forum and teaches in Tel Aviv. “Glimpse of a Question from a Distant Desert” (2007) ties in with the composer’s fascination for desert landscapes and is in keeping with the musical direction in which Kadima’s writing has been taking her over recent years. Clear in form, the work is built around a tonal centre – moving away to view it from afar and eventually returning to it; the score demands enormous dynamic change on the part of the recorder, certainly a tall order from an early instrument. Opening with a section wherein piano and recorder pace together, the piece takes the listener off into the measureless distance of the desert and of one’s mind. Ziv-Li and Vinik have read deeply into the layers of the piece, producing an impressive, thought-provoking and moving performance.

Vinik and Ziv-Li’s collaboration has produced a disc that will interest the music-loving public and recorder players in particular. The two artists’ working of each style and piece has been painstaking and profound. This is performance at its best.

The disc comes with a highly informative and detailed disc sleeve. Included in the box is a DVD created by Leora Vinik, beautifully filmed by Avny Manes (ARTV Communications Ltd., Tel Aviv) and edited by Orit Dembsky, in which five of the works on the disc are joined by other art forms. We are witness to artist Mirjam Walter’s painting of an abstract canvas to Vinik’s performance of Hans Ulrich Staeps’ Sonata in E flat major. Soothing blues and burnished reds prevail. Each movement begins with a short viewing of the written text; the visual play of both Vinik’s- and Walter’s hands is an interesting one. The opening scene for the Pastorale from Hans-Martin Linde’s Trio for Alto Recorder, Flute and Piano is an azure sky, soon to be alive with the movement and poetry of formation of storks and water.

Hagar Kadima’s Glimpse of a Question from a Distant Desert joins the hands of potter Talma Tamari, in which the mesmerizing spinning of the potter’s wheel is initially shown in grays and beiges, with some superimposed images of desert, birds and camels. Only at the end does the scene take on a brighter, pastel coloring.

The Air from John Graves’ Divertimento is the inspiration for a scene depicting the sound and movement of the sea, whereas the Soliloquy features dancer Shimrit Golan hazily and subtly moving in and out of a leafy background.

A collage of the people and inner life of Jerusalem’s Old City is viewed together with Peter Farago’s Hommage a Bela Bartok. Artistically photographed, the film shows the skyline, colors, the Jerusalem stone and the birds of the Old City depicted together with the vibrant activity and spiritual traditions of all three monotheistic faiths represented within its walls. This piece carries a significant message from Vinik.

The question of how connected or relevant the visual- and musical aspects in this DVD presentation are to each other is left to the viewer to answer. Do you focus on the visuals or is your ear busy with the sound? Do they become one multi-faceted art form or does each hold onto its identity? Much thought has been invested into these pieces and they definitely throw light on the many possibilities offered within the milieu of multi-media.

To order the CD:vinik@Netvision.net.il