Performing Mahler and Schubert, New Zealand baritone Julien Van Mellaerts makes his debut with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem Orchestra

Photo:Diana Roberts

“Songs of a Wayfarer”, the Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s concert on May 4th 2019 in the Recanati Auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, was conducted by the Camerata’s music director Avner Biron. Soloists were baritone Julien Van Mellaerts (New Zealand) and Israeli horn players Alon Reuven and Ruti Rozman Varon.

 

The serenade - the late-18th-century "evening piece", music for entertainment on festive gatherings - was a genre that Wolfgang Mozart, who adored parties, found particularly congenial. Serenade No. 6 in D major, K. 239, "Serenata Notturna" (1776), its key being that which Mozart favoured for serenades and cassations, is scored for two small "orchestras," its form looking back to the Baroque concerto grosso, with all of the work’s three movements focusing on alternation and interchange of the solo concertino and the orchestra grosso. In a polished performance, the Camerata players highlighted the charm and humour of the three compact movements - the refined, joyful march (with a timpani solo!), the hearty, somewhat bucolic Minuetto, its Trio left to the concertino group alone, and the spirited Rondo, with its suspenseful transitions; violinist Natasha Sher ‘s playing had much presence.

 

Remaining in the Classical style, we heard Concerto for two horns and orchestra in E flat major, a work attributed to Joseph Haydn, with some postulations that it was composed by his younger brother Michael Haydn; however, certain historical and stylistic points suggest the composer to have been Francesco Antonio Rosetti (born Franz Anton Rösler). This is an attractive work, an agreeable concert piece abounding in a sense of well-being and offering some excellent writing for French horns; but what I found most impressive at the Tel Aviv concert was the commanding performance of Ruty Rozman Varon and Alon Reuven throughout, their precision, intonation, fine duetting and smooth, luxuriant tone addressing the work’s various gestures, its virtuoso moments and its moods. Indeed, we experienced the “real-life heroes of the orchestra” playing with apparent ease!

 

With the heyday of the serenade as an orchestral genre in the 18th century culminating in the works of Mozart, the late Romantics revived it, in their hands, revisiting the past but in the language of their own idiom. Referring to Antonin Dvorák's Serenade for wind instruments, ‘cello and double bass in D minor Op.44, Brahms wrote the following to violinist Joseph Joachim in 1879: “It would be difficult to discover a finer, more refreshing impression of really abundant and charming creative talent.” 18th-century wind music often included a double bass for harmonic support; here, Dvorák supports that practice, but with the addition of a ‘cello. It is not the norm to hear a wind ensemble work as part of an orchestral concert; Maestro Biran, however, is known for his resourceful programming. The performance was a real treat, with a fine line-up of wind players giving vibrant expression to the work’s somewhat whimsical salute to Classical forms (homage to Mozart) and its use of Czech folk dances - the (second movement) Minuetto indeed a sousedska (similar to the Austrian Ländler), with a furiant as its Trio, as well the polka-type theme in the fourth. Together with the ensemble’s articulate playing and warmth of timbre, expressive melodic playing was presented by Muki Zohar (oboe), Eli Eban (flute), Itamar Leshem (horn) and other players, not forgetting the strings.

 

Making his debut on the Israeli concert scene, baritone Julien Van Mellaerts (b.1988, New Zealand) opened with Gustav Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” (Songs of a Wayfarer), musical settings of four of  six poems written by Mahler himself following his failed romance with soprano Johanna Richter from the time he was working as a conductor in Kassel. The Camerata performed the work in Arnold Schoenberg’s chamber orchestra setting. Van Mellaerts’ singing gave genuine and fervent expression to the songs’ layers of meaning and key words, spotlighting moments of tenderness and those extolling the beauty of nature, as he undertook changes of both vocal colour and facial expression with each rising wave of despair. Take, for example, the end of the second song, its joy and nature imagery dissolving into dejection; or the contrasts between utter sadness alternating with outbursts of cascading anguish as in “I have a gleaming knife” (song no.3), the work concluding with the subdued, emotionally drained resolution expressed in the fourth song, its chromaticism and major-minor duality representing the journeyman’s love and sorrow now intertwined, as  

“...Under the linden tree

that snowed its blossoms onto me –

I did not know how life went on,

and all was well again!

All! All, love and sorrow

and world and dream!”

Performing “Songs of a Wayfarer” is no mean task for a young singer. Easily contending with the orchestra, Van Mellaerts’ voice is fresh, substantial and stable, his foray into higher registers (end of song no.2) pleasing. The Camerata instrumentalists merged the work’s folk-like simplicity and sophistication with exquisite utterances of timbral beauty.

 

Following the intermission, Julien Van Mellaerts returned to perform three of Max Reger’s orchestral arrangements of Schubert Lieder. Starting with an aethereal, gossamer-light reading of “An die Musik” (To Music), lyrics: Schober, he later gave a rapturous, subdued, somewhat passionate but no-less-controlled performance of “Du bist die Ruh’” (You are repose), lyrics: Rückert. As to Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig” (Elf King), the eighteen-year-old composer’s setting of a Goethe ballad -  four minutes of high drama involving three active players and a narrator - Van Mellaert’s singing of it was all energy, capturing the macabre aspects of the terrifying night ride and its sensationalist setting; voices representing the boy, the father, and the lurid Elf King himself could have emerged as more individual. Avner Biron’s treatment of Reger’s arrangements steered away from the leaden performance of them sometimes encountered in the concert hall.

 

Winner of the 2017 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition and the 2017 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Julien Van Mellaerts was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal on graduation from London’s Royal College of Music. His international performing repertoire includes oratorio, Lieder and opera, the latter including contemporary works. In April 2019, he toured with pianist James Baillieu for Chamber Music New Zealand; he will make his Wigmore Hall recital debut in 2020. Today, the singer resides in London. Julien Van Mellaerts is certainly an artist to watch!

 

The Stuttgart Chamber Choir, conducted by Frieder Bernius, opens the 52nd Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival

Photo: David Goland

Of the three visiting choirs to the October 2017 Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival, the Stuttgart Chamber Choir (Kammerchor Stuttgart), under its founder and musical director Frieder Bernius (no new face to the Israeli concert stage) performed a program of works of Bach and Romantic composers at the festival’s opening concert in the Kiryat Yearim Church on October 11th. Founded in 1968, the ensemble today comprises mostly young professional singers and is renowned for its high musical standards and stylistic flexibility.

 

The program opened with Felix Mendelssohn’s imposing “Te Deum” in D-major written for double choir, soloists and eight soloists. Written in 1826 for the opening of Berlin’s Singakademie building in 1827, Mendelssohn, a newly-baptised Christian, composed his first liturgical work. Although only 17 years old at the time, his complete mastery over every aspect of choral writing is  evident throughout the work. In twelve movements and using Baroque continuo concept, the work relies heavily on the musical language and scoring of the 17th and 18th centuries, producing an eclectic mix of styles. Bernius and his singers’ articulacy of musical expression and diction presented the work’s variety of colour, texture and dynamics. One highlight was the “Te aeternum patrem” (All the world doth worship thee) in which, one by one, each of the soloists commented on the text in ascending/descending patterns. The “Dignare, Domine” (Vouchsafe, O Lord), spiralling into a web of 16-part counterpoint, was also especially moving.

 

Then, to two solo songs of Gustav Mahler, arranged for a-cappella choir by German composer, conductor and musicologist Clytus Gottwald (b.1925). In “Um Mitternacht” (At Midnight) (Rückert) the singers created the haunting mood of the piece (reflecting the composer’s inner conflict in his moment of collapse some months previously), their melodic lines melting seamlessly into each other, here and there meeting in urgency and dissonance, Mahler’s message, though finally positive, tinged with the disturbing death knell. This was followed by “The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved”  from “Songs of a Wayfarer”, with Gottwald’s brilliant “orchestration” of the voices presented poignantly in subdued tones. Mahler’s moments of happiness are tinged with longing and sadness. Following the Mahler songs, we heard the Stuttgart Chamber Choir in another of Gottwald’s skillfully created arrangements - “Solveijg’s Song” (Peer Gynt), easily the most popular of Edvard Grieg’s 180 songs. The singers gave delicate contrast to the song’s two alternating melodies - the wistful, more nostalgic mood and the gently lilting folk dance-type refrain.

 

The concert concluded with “Jesu, meine Freude” (Jesu, My Joy) BWV 227, J.S.Bach’s longest and most complex motet, written some time between 1723 and 1727 for St. Thomas’ Church, Leipzig, where Bach was director of music. It uses as its basis the eponymous chorale by Johann Crüger (words by Johann Franck), but includes passages from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. One fascinating aspect of the a-cappella work is its virtually palindromic form, Bach’s experimenting with structure and balance tying in with how the composer augments the four-part chorale settings with movements of both five and three voices and with its message. What characterized this performance was the choir’s means of displaying the work’s stark contrasts - heaven and hell, joy and suffering - achieved in the more vehement, anguished sections through the abrasive use of consonants and detached textures. And, in contrast, for example, how tender and lyrical the 6th section was, the work’s centrepiece double fugue, finally taken to its confident conclusion. The keyword to Bernius’ reading of the work was “clarity”, offering the audience the opportunity to follow all melodic lines, even in the densest contrapuntal moments. A work with a large dramatic range, it is the final chorale, in its directness, returning to simplicity of setting following its copious transfigurations, that leaves the audience humbled and moved.

 

For its encores, the choir performed two Israeli songs, much to the delight of the audience.

 

Concert at the Austrian Hospice, Jerusalem, in memory of journalist Ari Rath

Ari Rath (photo: Jana Liptáková)

A concert in memory of Ari Rath was held at the Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem on January 21^st 2017. At short notice, alto Veronika Dünser (Austria) and pianist Eloïse Bella Kohn (France) put together a varied program of traditional- and classical music. Markus Bugnar, rector of the Austrian Hospice, for whom Ari Rath had been an influential figure, spoke of how important it was to host the concert at the Austrian Hospice. Ms. Petra Klose, director of K und K Wien, spoke of Ari Rath as a charming, generous man, someone who loved music, and the honour that it was for her to organize the concert.

Austrian-Israeli journalist and writer Ari Rath (1925-2017) was born in Vienna, arriving in Mandate Palestine at age 13. He became editor of the Jerusalem Post in 1975 and editor-in-chief in 1979. After leaving the newspaper in 1985, he worked as a freelance writer, taught at the University of Potsdam and was news editor for the on-line journal Partners for Peace. In 2005, he received a Special Prize in the British House of Lords from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting in recognition for his tireless work for rapprochement and peace. Ten years ago, Ari Rath returned to live in Vienna. He died there January 13^th   2017 at age 92.

The program opened with three Jewish songs, first a somewhat formal reading of the traditional Hassidic melody “Y’varech’cha” (The Lord bless thee out of Zion). This was followed by a Yiddish song “Hobn mir a Nigendl” (We have a song) in which Veronika Dünser’s sensitive and flexible singing captured the mix of joy and sorrow of this genre. Then to a rich and emotional rendering of David Zehavi’s setting of “Eli, Eli”, a poem written in 1942 by young Hungarian resistance fighter Hannah Senesz:

‘My God, my God
May these never end…
The sand and the sea,
The rustle of the waters,
The lightning of the heavens,
The prayer of man.’

We then heard Eloïse Bella Kohn’s performance of W.A.Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.8 in A-minor K.310, a work written in the early summer of 1778. Mozart, 22 at the time, was in Paris tending to his ailing mother. She would die there on July 3^rd. If one considers the scarcity of minor keys in Mozart works (there is only one other piano sonata in the minor) it seems he reserved this mode for his most vehement outpourings. The A-minor sonata must have surely been the product of the composer’s dark mood of that time. Kohn did not “soft-pedal” in the opening Allegro maestoso, its drama and outbursts leaning more towards the frenzied and less to its “maestoso” marking. For the pensive Andante cantabile movement, now in the more tranquil setting of F-major, Kohn’s playing was nuanced and finely crafted, her use of textures adding to the beauty of this mood piece. The Presto takes artist and listener back to the setting of despair, its flashes of optimism swept aside by the sense of urgency pervading the movement.  Although heavy at times, Kohn’s playing of the sonata was as clean as it was brilliant. In a letter to his father, informing him of his mother’s death, Mozart wrote: “I have indeed wept and suffered enough – but what did it avail?” Here was a young contemporary artist connecting with the desperation of the young composer.

In a moodscape no less doleful, Dünser and Kohn performed “Das irdische Leben” (The Earthly Life) one of the 22 songs from Gustav Mahler’s collection “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (The Youth’s Magic Horn), poems taken from an anthology of over 700 German poems compiled and revised from 1805 to 1808 by two young, early Romantic poets – Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano.  With its archaic naivete, its German heritage and variety of texts, this collection was to become a major inspiration on the composer’s creative work. It would tie in with his love of folk poetry and music, his sense of fate and with his own eventual suffering from personal tragedy.  “Das irdische Leben” tells of a mother watching her child starve to death as he waits for her to finish baking bread. Dünser’s vocal and emotional resources made for a gripping, convincing and real interpretation of the song. Kohn, also delving into the text, highlighted the most subtle details of the generously furnished piano role.

The program concluded with songs from Johannes Brahms’ “Zigeunerlieder” (Gypsy Songs) Op.203. Composed in 1887 for vocal quartet and piano, Brahms published eight of the songs for solo voice and piano in 1889. The work represents an important episode of the composer’s life. He had accompanied Hungarian-born violinist Eduard Hoffmann on a concert tour, learning to play “alla zingara” - in the gypsy style. He had also studied the 1887 anthology of original gypsy melodies compiled by Zoltan Nagy. Brahms, however, used none of the authentic gypsy modes in the songs, although he does address rhythmic concerns of setting Hungarian texts to music, despite that fact that the songs had been translated from the Hungarian into German by Hugo Conrat. In splendid collaboration, Dünser and Kohn present small pictures of gypsy courtship, love and heartbreak, Dünser’s easeful and honeyed singing in all registers and musical- and facial expression revealing moments of passion, sorrow, light-heartedness, joy and disappointment. How poignant and bathed in warmth was “Lieber Gott, Du weiss” (Dear God, you know how often I have regretted) about a young woman’s cherished memory of her lover’s first kiss, to be followed by the carefree joy of “Brauner Bursche führt zum Tanze” (A swarthy lad leads his lovely blue-eyed lass to the dance) as a young man takes his girl to a dance.  In “Röslein dreie in der Reihe” (Three little red roses bloom side by side), opening with its delicate depiction of courtship, Dünser’s facial expression and vocal timbre then reveal an element of doubt as fear of remaining single creeps in. An experienced and attentive accompanist, Kohn collaborates with Dünser all the way, contending splendidly with Brahms’ full-blooded, almost orchestral piano settings.

The event was indeed a fitting tribute to Ari Rath, a man who loved Mozart and song.

 

 

 

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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Michael Sanderling conducts the Young Symphonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar

The Young Symphonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar recently completed a concert tour of Germany and Israel, the final concert taking place in the Henry Crown Symphony Hall of the Jerusalem Theatre on October 3rd 2013. This concerts series was directed by Michael Sanderling. Established in 2011, the orchestra selects its players from outstanding young musicians from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and the Liszt School of Music in Weimar. Rehearsing, performing and celebrating together, the orchestra provides the young musicians with the opportunity to meet in dialogue, musical and otherwise, based on the understanding of the Holocaust, of friendship and the strength of human encounter. The members meet on the basis of music as the platform of attentive listening, intuitive understanding and community. In addition to general orchestral repertoire, the Young Symphonic Orchestra’s programs always include works of Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust and by some who survived it. The newly opened Weimar Archives are a source of new musical- and other material that will serve as a reminder of the German Jews’ extraordinary contribution to cultural life in Germany before the Holocaust.

The Jerusalem concert began with the national anthems of both Israel and Germany and words of welcome by Mr. Shimon Peres - President of Israel, by Prof. Yinam Leef – President of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and by Member of Knesset Mr. Reuven Rivlin. Reuven Rivlin praised Prof. Michael Wolpe, of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, for his energy and vision in establishing the orchestra, and spoke of the real value of music as forming a bridge of hope between both cities and two peoples.

‘Cellist and conductor Michael Sanderling was born and educated in Berlin. His career as ‘cellist has included teaching, principal roles in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, solo performances and chamber music. Today he has a busy international career as a conductor.

The concert opened with the “Passacaglia for Orchestra” opus 4 by Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996). Born in Hamburg, Goldschmidt enjoyed a successful career as pianist, composer and conductor in Germany. He fled to England in 1935 but, despite remaining there for the rest of his life, he, tragically, never managed to become well assimilated in England and it was only towards the end of his life there that he received recognition for the uniqueness and high quality of his music. The opus 4 Passacaglia (1925) is an early work and the first to win Goldschmidt acclaim in Germany. In a sense, it is his graduation piece from when he was studying Composition under Franz Schreker; the work won him the Mendelssohn Composition Prize. After its premiere, Goldschmidt sent the manuscript to his publisher, Universal Edition, and forgot about it. The work was discovered in the UE archives in 1994. Although an early work, it displays musical maturity and confidence. Sanderling and the Young Symphony Orchestra presented the essentially Romantic work in all its fine orchestration - from its mysterious low string melodies to powerful expression of a large orchestral sound – its mood remaining serious throughout.

We then heard Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s (1609-1847) Violin Concerto in e minor opus 64, with Yuval Herz as soloist. Born in 1989 in Jerusalem, Yuval Herz began playing the violin at age six. Today he enjoys an international performing career as a soloist and chamber musician, is the recipient of many prizes and has been supported by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation since 2003. A graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Herz is currently studying for a Performance Diploma at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. He plays on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin, an instrument on loan to him from the America-Israel Foundation. Although the violin concerto was Mendelssohn’s last orchestral work, it is known that he had made sketches for it much earlier. Playing the work has brought fame to many a young virtuoso. Yuval Herz gave poignant expression to its melodic beauty, lending temperament and spontaneity to cadenzas, yet standing back to present Mendelssohn’s innate charm, modesty and taking on the work’s technical demands with total ease and brilliance. There was a sense that the young orchestral players were listening intently; they never covered violin solo sections and their playing was fresh and alive as they created rich, Mendelssohn-type orchestral timbres. Throughout the concert, the wind sections proved themselves commendably.

Gustav Mahler’s (1860-1911) “The Youth’s Magic Horn” – a cornucopia of songs - is based on anonymous poems collected by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. The Mahler settings are written for voice and orchestra. In this concert, baritone Guy Pelc sang four songs from the collection. Born in Israel in 1992, Guy Pelc has soloed much in Baroque works, in operas and with several of the Israeli Baroque Ensembles. He sang the role of Apollo in “Orfeo” of Monteverdi in a recording under Andrew Parrott and with the Taverner Consort. At the present, Pelc is studying voice with Marina Levit and Ido Ariel and orchestral conducting with Evgeny Zirlin. In a performance that was well balanced, profound, touching and finely detailed, Pelc and Sanderling’s players conjured up a detailed and evocative Mahlerian canvas, on which man and idyllic nature intermingle with birdsongs, marches, bugles and dances. Together they presented the composer’s complex human mix of tragedy, humor, melancholy, pathos, joy, strength, bitterness and self-mocking irony. Pelc has poise and quiet confidence. He showed awareness of the dramatic complexity and intensity of these songs. He sings German well, highlighting words to give emotional meaning to, as in “St. Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fish” a word like “glänzen”, (gleam) adding almost visual shine to the somewhat cynical scene taking place at a river. Pelc contended well with the orchestra, his upper register bright and powerful. The orchestra explored its rich palette of colors and with involvement and delicacy.

The concert concluded with Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906-1975) Symphony no.9 in b minor opus 54 (1939). Calling for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, three clarinets (one doubling E-flat clarinet) and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, military drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, harp and strings, here was a work to celebrate the extensive resources of this orchestra. Composed in 1939, the symphony draws attention to the dramatic polarity of Shostakovich’s nature, this producing music unusually rich and complex, beginning with a large, somber first movement, followed by a light-hearted Scherzo and then a high-energy, whimsical Presto movement. The meditative first movement indeed reflects the mood of anxiety and desolation of the time it was composed. Sanderling’s reading of the work bristled with cantabile playing, nostalgia, fragility and dark and haunting moments juxtaposed with strident, confrontational sections. This is excellent orchestral fare and it was heightened by clean playing and some wonderful solos – many played by the orchestra’s fine flautists. The audience was delighted with the high standard of musicianship of Young Symphonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar and with Michael Sanderling’s communicative and elegant conducting.