"Berlin-Tel Aviv", tenor Assaf Kacholi's first solo album

Photo:Yonatan Birenbaum

Tenor Assaf Kacholi’s solo repertoire spans several genres, from opera to oratorio, from Lieder to Israeli songs. cabaret music and Italian love songs. Born in Israel, Kacholi has been living in Berlin since 2002. In 2007, he joined the highly successful German classical-crossover “Adoro” Ensemble. “Berlin-Tel Aviv”, his first solo album, was released in September 2017 on the GEMA label. His own personal choice of pieces, the disc offers an assortment of songs covering a number of genres, each accompanied on either guitar or piano.

 

The earliest of the pieces on the CD is John Dowland’s lute ayre “Flow My Tears”, with Shani Inbar’s guitar accompaniment indeed a satisfactory substitute for the original lute and Kacholi reflecting Dowland’s gloom in such dejected and contradictory utterances as
“Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite”.

 

Two items of the disc provide an all-to-brief glimpse into a genre close to Kacholi’s heart and one that sits very well with his voice - the Romantic German Lied. In “Ständchen” (Serenade), dating from the last months of Schubert's life, Kacholi and pianist Efrat Levy take time to re-create the limpid music of yearning coloured with Schubert’s major/minor fragility, as the serenader invites her lover to join her on a nocturnal rendezvous. Kacholi’s reading of Clara Schumann’s “Die stille Lotosblume” (The Quiet Lotus Blossom), composed in 1842 (lyrics: Emanuel Geibel) is a beautifully controlled mood study, as the silvery, moonlit poem is presented with poetic lyricism. One senses that Kacholi is very comfortable with the German language. Moving with ease into the musical theatre mode of Kurt Weill, Kacholi strikes a fine balance between the bitter-sweet intimacy of a text telling of betrayal and the political message of “Wie lange noch?” (How long before it’s over?) to lyrics of Walter Mehring. And, on a different note, his debonair singing, evoking Berlin allure in the suave, leisurely foxtrot of “Berlin in Licht” (Berlin in Light).

 

The salon songs of Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) envelop the human voice with natural, Italian warmth, having been on the playlists of such opera singers as Nellie Melba and Enrico Caruso, as well as being an important part of Pavarotti’s repertoire. Kacholi’s singing of Tosti’s songs engages in their easeful melodiousness, their lush elegance and gentle sentimentality, as he conveys their ideal of love and its niche in our dreams. Especially evocative are his two reflective renditions of Nino Rota’s “What Is a Youth?”, to superbly played accompaniments - the first on guitar (Shani Inbar), with a second rendition together with Orit Wolf on piano -  the latter from a live performance. Wolf and Kacholi’s fine collaboration is also heard in George (and Ira) Gershwin’s “By Strauss”, their quick-witted and entertaining performance articulate, jaunty and certainly “light of foot”.

 

Assaf Kacholi’s ties with Israeli song repertoire, both emotional and profound, filter through generously in his singing of those on the disc. We hear: him and guitarist Yonatan Birenbaum’s exotic and velvet-like performance of Noam Sheriff’s “Thou art Beautiful” (Song of Songs) and their beautifully crafted and moving interpretation of  “My Little Bird” (lyrics: Pinchas Sadeh, music: Oded Lerer). The many facets and colours of Assaf Kacholi’s voice also play out effectively in his evocative and caressing performance of “Lullaby” (lyrics: Natan Alterman, music: Sasha Argov), all the more fetching for Orit Wolf’s poignant accompaniment:
“Now the road itself will sleep
For the end is near…
And the king has lost his crown
As the fools appear.
Rest your head, the boat, the brook,
Tranquil lies the Persian souk,
Turn down the lights, the dark is lush...
And quiet, quiet...hush…”                Translation: Achinoam Nini

 

In recording “Berlin-Tel Aviv”, Assaf Kacholi opens his personal music portfolio to us. His richly endowed voice and warmth of sound invite the listener to listen again, to connect with his musicality and sincerity. The disc is also a statement of personal conflict, a searching of identity, of Assaf Kacholi’s confidence to say: “These are my songs”.

    

 

The Tel Aviv Wind Quintet hosts pianist Yaron Kohlberg in an opera-inspired program

Itamar Leshem,Roy Amotz,Danny Erdman,Yigal Kaminka,Nadav Cohen (photo:Dafna Gazit)

The Tel Aviv Wind Quintet is presently performing a series of concerts in various locations in Israel. This writer attended the concert on April 29^th 2017 at the Israel Conservatory of Music, Tel Aviv. For this series, TAWQ members Roy Amotz (flute), Yigal Kaminka (oboe), Danny Erdman (clarinet), Itamar Leshem (horn) and Nadav Cohen (bassoon) were joined by guest pianist Yaron Kohlberg. Established in 2007, the Tel Aviv Wind Quintet’s aims are to perform existing repertoire and commission new works, with an emphasis of performing and recording works of Israeli composers. The TAWQ’s debut album (2016) includes works of Bach and Beethoven and Piazzolla, also the world premiere of a work by Israeli composer Ari Ben-Shabetai.

The Tel Aviv program opened with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet in E-flat major for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon K.452, written in 1784, the composer’s only piano quintet, and premiered the same year with Mozart himself at the piano. Its scoring rendering it a ground-breaking work when it was written, the K.452 quintet is still a work to keep audiences at the edge of their seats. With its abundance of solo statements, conversational duo banter, trio-, quartet- and quintet textures, the players incorporated Mozart’s sense of well-being, joy and thoughtful moments, their buoyant, vibrant mix of individual timbres coming together in suave shaping, incisive playing, articulate Classical balance and single-mindedness. Nadav
Cohen's burnished-, cantabile- and naturally shaped lines were evident, with Yaron Kohlberg’s crisp, clean passagework, never marred by excessive use of the sustaining pedal and never thick, giving freshness to the performance.

Those of us familiar with music of Luciano Berio (1925-2003) are acquainted with his Sinfonia, his solo Sequenza series and the wonderfully evocative “Folk Songs” (1964); we associate him with Darmstadt and serial music. The TAWQ chose to familiarize its audience with one of the Italian composer’s early works – Opus Number Zoo – a play for children, written before Berio’s move to the USA and dedicated to Aaron Copland on his 70^th birthday. Composed in 1951 and revised in 1970, the work comprises four movements, each corresponding to a text recited by the musicians, solo or together, and woven in and out of the musical text. The four poems, written by Rhoda Levine, have been translated into Hebrew rhyme by Elisha Shefi, to which members of the TLWQ have made a few changes. Ari Teperberg did the stage direction. The work, their succinct movements titled “Barn Dance”, “The Fawn”, “The Grey Mouse” and “Tom Cats”, are neo-Classical in style; they are tightly constructed, with musical- and verbal phrases tossed (often mid-way) from one artist to another. Making full use of stage, the TAWQ players delivered both music and repartee in a masterly, brisk and polished manner...and with gusto! The poems, although folksy in tone, are, however, overlayered with adult cynicism and seriousness, with anti-war messages (“The Fawn”, “Tomcats”), references to the inevitability of old age (“The Grey Mouse”), etc. “Barn Dance” is a bouncy and catchy number, but the other three poems carry an ominous undercurrent. Yet, with the five artists investing energy, humor and precision in the performance, the stage of the Israel Music Conservatory’s auditorium took on an air of drollery and of the unexpected. The audience was well amused.

Gioachino Rossini’s wind quartets are actually arrangements of the string quartets he composed in 1804, when he was all of twelve years of age. They were arranged for wind quartet (flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon) by renowned clarinetist and teacher Frédéric Berr, a contemporary of Rossini.  Berr’s voicing of the wind instruments is not only idiomatic and convincing, it ties in with Rossini’s own style of writing for these instruments. There is no doubt that Amotz, Erdman, Leshem and Cohen’s playing of the work added the extra attraction of timbral variety to the fruits of Rossini’s precocious imagination. The artists indeed captured the Rossini soundscape, as the work showcased each of these fine players in its gamut of melodies, jocularity, elegance and vivacity. Solos were accompanied with elegance. Especially notable were Roy Amotz’ finely chiseled melodic phrases and radiant passagework, his transitions and ornamenting, and Itamar Leshem’s handling of the challenging horn role in a work that foresees Rossini’s future as a great opera composer.

The Suite from Kurt Weill’s “Threepenny Opera” takes the listener into a very different world, both musically and socially, with the Brecht/Weill collaboration presenting a modern rethinking of the 1728 stage piece of John Gay and Johann Christian Pepusch on London’s low life in a musical theatre piece celebrating crooks and gangsters. With the strident, jagged opening chords of the Overture setting the scene, the TAWQ players launch into the bittersweet music, their sophisticated interpretational skills giving expression to the raw, rhythmically nervous, jazz-tinged cabaret style of Berlin of the 1920s. Sardonic, tragic, at times tender (some nostalgic moments beautifully conveyed by Kaminka) the quintet’s substantial, richly spiced joint sound gave fine representation to the work’s revolutionary satire, musical profanity and social criticism. The arrangement for wind quintet was by distinguished New York clarinetist Alan R. Kay.

The program concluded with Berlin-based composer/flautist Aaron Dan’s 2011 piano and wind quintet arrangement of Richard Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” op.28 (1895). Written in a loose rondo form, the work is scored for large orchestra, calling for a great number of wind instruments and percussion.  The tone poem was inspired by the ancient German legend of Till Eulenspiegel, a mischievous trickster who became known in folkloric stories as a sort of con artist meets jester. His legend plays largely upon the common man’s belief that avarice can be found behind every pillar in the halls of the entitled and that it is the gift of the good-hearted, witty fool to expose them. A true program work, the high-paced romp begins with the piano (violins in the original) in a “One upon a time” gesture, with the horn then playing the triumphant/somewhat mocking Till Eulenspiegel theme, a motif which becomes threaded throughout the work, with Danny Erdman playing the clarinet theme representing Till's laughter. A challenging work to play, the TAWQ and Kohlberg’s performance of it was strategically timed, finely coordinated, colourful, dynamic and decidedly whimsical.  Following his life of tricks and social destruction, Till is brought before a judge and condemned to the gallows, his last mocking phrase cut short suddenly and dramatically. But, before the storybook is closed, the six players’ last musical gestures remind us that Till Eulenspiegel was a lovable fellow and that his story lives on.

With no possibility here to go into the biographies of the five wind players, it must be said that each member of the Tel Aviv Wind Quintet is a unique artist and soloist on the international scene. Their joint signature sound bristles with supple energy.  Yaron Kohlberg, today residing in China, appears solo and in collaboration with other artists, holds master classes and serves as jury member in international competitions. Six outstanding, home-grown musicians, fine programming and deep enquiry into each work made for an evening of high quality performance and pure enjoyment.

 

Yaron Kohlberg (Rinat Aldema)

 

The Young Symphonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar on tour in Israel in its third concert season

Maestro Michael Sanderling (snipview.com)

The Young Symphonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar, consisting of students from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and from the Franz Liszt University of Music, Weimar, gave its first performances in the summer of 2011. In addition to mainstream orchestral repertoire, the orchestra plays European music of the Holocaust period, offering the German and Israeli concert-going public another chance to hear these works, many of them forgotten, others recently rediscovered. In August 2015 the orchestra played in Berlin for the opening of the “Young Euro Classic”, then at the Chorin Music Summer Festival, the Weimarhalle and the Wolfsburg CongressPark, prior to its October Israeli tour. This writer attended the Jerusalem Weimar Orchestra’s concert on October 23^rd 2015 in the Henry Crown Auditorium of the Jerusalem Theatre. The concert was conducted by Berlin-born and educated Maestro Michael Sanderling, one of the most celebrated conductors of his generation; for Sanderling, working with young people is an integral part of his professional life.

Following words of welcome from Israeli President Mr. Reuven Rivlin, the program opened with the Israeli premiere of LINKS.METAMORPHOSES by composer, conductor, arranger and pianist Ziv Cojocaru. Born in Beer-Sheba in 1977, Cojocaru is a cross-over musician, spanning the fields of classical-, contemporary- and popular music. A work endeavoring to portray human connections and relationships, LINKS.METAMORPHOSES is dedicated to the ideals of learning, aesthetics, expression and humanism, as demonstrated in the joint Weimar-Jerusalem project. Fine fare for a large orchestra, the work bristles with active washes of sound, fine homophonic tutti and interesting and evocative timbres, enchanting moments, excitement and drama. This was followed by Kurt Weill’s Symphony No.2, a work completed in Paris 1933-1934, where the composer sought asylum after he was forced to emigrate from Germany when the National Socialists took over and before he finally settled in the USA. A fine work, neglected in today’s concert repertoire, there has been much discussion as to how programmatic Weill’s Symphony No.2 is, despite the fact that it has no explicit program. Sanderling and the orchestra nevertheless recreated the melancholic climate and dark clouds of impending doom hanging over Europe in the 1930s and of Weill’s cabaret style in particular, from the first sultry trumpet solo (and plenty more fine solo passagework) bitter-sweet melodies and the composer’s typical appealingly  sentimental musical language with its underlying tragedy. Watching the young players’ expressions, it was clear that this music is so enjoyable to perform, with its bold approach, melodiousness, wit and accessibility.

Alexey Stadler, today a student at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar, was the soloist in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra No.1 in E-flat major opus 107.  At 24, the Russian ‘cellist is already a seasoned performer and has won numerous prizes. Stadler’s performance of the concerto was serious, single-minded and intense, setting the scene in the first movement with feisty vitality and addressing the second movement with exquisite delicacy and expressiveness, its bare, disturbing conclusion speaking of Shostakovich’s personal pessimism. After careful pacing of the third movement – Cadenza – with its gloomy musings on the second movement, the Allegro con moto was played with intelligence, precision and virtuosity. The prominent horn role, woven throughout the concerto, was tackled courageously by one of the German students, no easy task for young horn players.

Concluding the program, Michael Sanderling and the orchestra performed Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture “Romeo and Juliet”, in which Shakespeare’s tragedy and the composer’s tortured personal life merge to produce a masterpiece that alternates between oppressively dramatic moments and those describing the rapturous love of the young couple. Opening with the delightful gentle clarinet and bassoon chorale, conductor and orchestra presented the descriptive, richly timbred work, its beauty and emotion, in polished and well-coordinated playing, bringing to an end a concert of high-level, dedicated and finely crafted playing.

Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung (USA) and Elena Bashkirova in recital at the 2015 Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival

A unique event of the 18^th Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, taking place at the Jerusalem International YMCA from September 3^rd to 12^th 2015, was a recital of mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung (USA) with the festival’s music director Elena Bashkirova at the piano on September 5th.

 The artists opened the festive Saturday morning event with three Brahms Lieder. In the first “Von ewiger Liebe” op.43/1 (Of Everlasting Love) DeYoung’s richly endowed lower register well described the scene of two lovers meeting in a forest, the dark, the silence and the anxiety of  the young man;  the scene lightened up with the girl’s confirmation of how strong their love was. Then, an unhurried, tranquil reading of “Dein blaues Auge” op.59/8 (Your Blue Eyes), followed by the effusive vigor and nature metaphors of love described in “Meine Liebe ist Grün” op.63/5 (My love is as green as the lilac bush) to a text of Felix Schumann (Robert and Clara Schumann’s youngest child; Brahms was his godfather.) With just three songs, the two artists took the audience into the emotional world of Brahms in performance that was deeply felt, vibrant and wonderfully satisfying.

 Gustav Mahler chose five of the 428 poems of Friedrich Rückert’s “Kindertotenlieder” (Songs on the Death of Children) for his own work of the same name and subject (both he and Rückert had lost children) composed between 1901 and 1904 for voice and chamber orchestra. The piano-vocal version is not an arrangement of the orchestral version but a true alternative version, having been played, for example, by the composer himself to accompany baritone Johannes Messchaert in 1907, and used till today. DeYoung and Bashkirova’s approach to the work was reflective, fragile, acutely sensitive yet controlled, the songs imbued with a sense of the pain, fate, courage and empathy as guided by attention to the text. DeYoung highlights key words with eloquent shaping, with Bashkirova making use of dissonances to affect and highlight the subject. And how effective their performance was of the third song “Wenn dein Mütterlein” (When your dear mother comes through the door) its duet comprising two separate musical agendas, its childlike naivety woven round a sense of tragedy, the short dramatic final section ending on a note of dejection. From the fine tuning of wispy-fine textures from the first piece, the artists’ interpretive capabilities and articulacy held the listener suspended in the fragile  void between life and death right up to the fifth song, the eerie atmosphere suddenly swept away by Bashkirova’s intense, horror-stricken introduction to the fifth song “In diesem Wetter” (In this weather, in this bluster, I never would have sent the children out), its waves of sound rising and falling gusts and squalls in the internal storm as in the storm raging outside. Bashkirova reminds us throughout that Mahler’s accompaniment and voice are equal forces. With the anger of the storm past, the artists shape the work’s final moments with tender, warm thoughts of the children in the next world, Bashkirova taking time to place each and every final almost-inaudible sound into the sound world of distant memory, of comfort. DeYoung and Bashkirova’s performance was a rare, memorable performance.

 One of the two central themes of the 2015 Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival focuses on works of European composers who settled in the United States (the other focuses on Beethoven’s quartets and piano trios) hence the performance of two of Arnold Schoenberg’s eight Brettl Lieder from a collection titled “Deutsche Chansons”, written in the composer’s yet  tonal language during the first years of the 20^th century, when he worked as a conductor at the Überbrettl, a literary cabaret in Berlin. “Galathea” (text: Franz Wedekind) exploits the narrator’s infatuation of a man for a woman. Against Schoenberg’s richly textured and vibrant piano setting, the artists pulled out the plugs to express the song’s sparkling, saucy and energetic text (Wedekind was considered one of the most promiscuous poets of his time) the poem’s moral then to be revealed in the song’s conclusion:

‘But to my kisses, darling maiden
Revealed your lips should never be
For the fullness of their charms
Are only found in fantasy.’

In “Mahnung” (Warning), DeYoung and Bashkirova communicate the home truths and advice of Gustav Hochstetter’s lyrics to beautiful young women on how to conduct themselves, conveying words and music with a lighthearted touch of theatre and whimsy, DeYoung’s facial expressions as telling as some of the composer’s piano gestures. Behind their seductive and satirical facade, these Schoenberg songs have some serious messages, speaking of the polarities in Viennese society.

 DeYoung and Bashkirova concluded with two Kurt Weill songs, their gently lilting, sentimental and tasteful reading of the texts referring to the transience of love in “September Song” (from the operetta “Knickerbocker Holiday, text: Maxwell Anderson), its minor-major mood changes affecting and nostalgic, to be followed by the same theme and thoughts on growing old in so sensitively lush and soulful a manner in “Speak Low” (lyrics: Ogden Nash), sending the audience home moved and thoughtful.
'We’re late darling, we’re late,
The curtain descends, ev’rything ends
Too soon, too soon,
I wait darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me,
Speak love to me and soon.’

 

Michelle DeYoung’s voice moves seamlessly through its registers in singing that feels natural and effortless, her beautiful diction and range of color and inflection making for singing that is inspiring, fresh and always meaningful. She and Elena Bashkirova perform hand-in-glove, balancing ideas and collaborating on a number of levels. Bashkirova is an outstanding accompanist, sometimes using just a few delicate pianistic brushstrokes or more intensely orchestrated textures to set a scene, to comment, to present feeling, meeting DeYoung at eye level in performance that is gripping and thrilling.

 

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