The third Joel Engel Festival takes place at the Jerusalem music Centre

Shirelle Dashevsky (photo: Sergey Reutsky)

The third concert of the second joel Engel Festival took place at the Jerusalem Music centre, Mishkenot Sha’ananim on April 30th 2018. In an ongoing project initiated by David Ben Gershon and endorsed by the work of soprano Shirelle Dashevsky, artistic director of the festival, this was another event reintroducing the significant body of music from the St. Petersburg- and Moscow schools of Jewish music of the early 20th century to the concert stage and to public awareness. In close collaboration with Ben Gershon, soprano Shirelle Dashevsky and fellow musicians have performed and recorded some of this repertoire. At the Jerusalem concert, dashevsky was once again at the helm, directing the choir of twelve professional singers. Speaking in Russian, David Ben Gershon spoke about the composers, their works, times and lives.  Pianist Haim Tukachinsky, who accompanied most beautifully throughout the evening, translated the information into Hebrew for non-Russian-speaking audience members. 

The program opened with  Lazare Saminsky’s choral  “Ya’aleh” (May it rise) from the Day of Atonement service. In Saminsky’s “By the River of Babylon” (Psalm 137), Dashevsky’s solo utterances were answered by the choir, the picturesque song abounding in 4th harmonies, drama, with the dream of Jerusalem effectively evoked in pastel sounds, also in the piano accompaniment.  With many Jews studying at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, it was Rimsky Korsakov who urged them to write in their natural, folk style. Following “Louder than a lark singing” Rimsky Korsakov,(text: Tolstoy; soloist: Oxana Dorfman), we heard soprano Natalia Haimova in the delicate atmospheric and virtuosic demands of  “Oriental Romance”.

In his obituary to Joseph Achron, his friend Arnold Schoenberg described Achron  as "one of the most underrated modern composers". Joseph Achron, who joined the Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1911, from then occupying himself in theory and practice with the Jewish music tradition. We heard ‘cellist Hodaya Weltz and Tukachinsky in an evocative, songful and richly-coloured reading of Achron’s “Mystic Fragment”. This was followed by two choral arrangements of Yiddish songs by Achron, the first lilting and humorous, the second ““In Zaltsikn Yam” (In the Salty Sea), a Yiddish workers’ song, to a poem of S. An-sky, more dramatic and intense.

An especially moving moment moment of the evening was Dashevsky, Weltz and Tukachinsky’s profound and expressive performance of Ephraim Shklar’s setting of Yehuda Halevi’s “Yafeh Nof”, also known as “Jerusalem”. Shklar was one of the young composers who founded the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1908. On a lighter note, the choir performed  Shklar’s setting of the Yiddish “Alte Kashe” (Old Riddle), a song both philosophical and humorous, light, illusive and dancelike, the singers’ use of consonants giving its melodies much life and shape. Shklar died in the Riga Ghetto.

Of Moshe Milner’s repertoire of Yiddish songs, we heard soprano Natalia Haimova in poignant singing of  “Der Foygel” (The Bird) from his collection of songs for children titled “Zehn Kinderlider fun Y.L. Perets” for voice and piano (1922), poetic settings of children’s poems by the Polish-Jewish poet Yitschak Leyb Perets.

Joel Engel (1868-1927), a Jewish composer, critic and ethnographer known as “The Father of Jewish Music,” began arranging Jewish folk melodies in the 1890s.  His lectures and compositions were a major inspiration to younger musicians to compose their own classical works inspired by Eastern European Jewish folk music. “Agvania” (Tomato), an early Israeli agricultural song by Engel, was given a jaunty, almost jazzy interpretation, with tenor Uri Elkayam singing the solo. The concert continued with some sections of the first Hebrew-language opera “HaHalutzim” (The Pioneers) composed by Jacob Weinberg in Palestine ( Israel) in 1924. The opera is written as a dramatic, comic piece, its plot including a love story. It expresses Zionism in its purest and most romantic form. Its last performance took place in Carnegie Hall in 1949 before receiving new life in Israel at the 2nd Joel Engel Festival, but the complete opera has yet to be staged in Israel. Ben Gershon and Dashevsky have plans for that. Shirelle Dashevsky’s  wholehearted, theatrical and expressive rendering of Leah’s Aria (text: Song of Songs) reflected all the strong emotions of the opera, with Tukachinsky’s accompaniment highlighting the opera’s full, at times, oriental canvas.  The choir followed with the “Sabbath Song’ and “Hymn to Eretz Israel” choruses.

Shirelle Dashevsky’s plan was to end with another choral setting of “Ya’aleh”, this time by Joel Engel. It was a treat to hear a chamber choir of such a superb standard and some very fine soloists. David Ben Gershon and Shirelle Dashevsky are engaged in an important project, guaranteeing that these composers’ legacy will not sink into oblivion.

 

David Ben Gershon (photo: Sergey Reutsky)

Music of the school of National Jewish Art Music performed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

On November 24th 2015, “Hymn to a Poet”, the first of three concerts of works by composers of the Jewish Art Music Movement, took place in the National Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was organized by the “Joel Engel Nigunim La’ad (Melody Forever) Organization”, established in 2012 by Shirelle Dashevsky, with the aim of promoting Jewish art music and encouraging the composition of Jewish works. Holding concerts in various parts of Israel, the organization has three ensembles: a vocal ensemble, a chamber ensemble and an ensemble specializing in the performance of Jewish instrumental-vocal music in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. Most of the artists in these ensembles are immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. Announcing and explaining the evening’s program was Dr. Gila Flam, director of the Music Department (Hebrew University) and the National Sound Archives of the National Library of Israel; she has helped to make this project a reality, making library funds available to include an exhibition of historic scores. The concept is that of Dr. David Ben-Gershon, who has done much research on the composers, on defining the selection of music, obtaining scores, and more. Soprano Shirelle Dashevsky is the program director, selecting and inviting artists, constructing programs and transforming the chosen scores into actual music. The program we heard offered a representative selection of works by several of the key figures of the Jewish Art Music Movement.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a new school of modern Jewish composers took to the European stage. Coming from the great Russian conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, these young composers drew their inspiration from both the current styles of Russian music and from secular Jewish Nationalism. Encouraged by such key musical figures as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Scriabin, Joel Engel, Alexander Krein, Joseph Achron, Mikhail Gnessin, Leo Zeitlin and Lazare Saminsky and other Jewish composers took it upon themselves to create a new modern style of Jewish art music, shaping it for concert rendition. In doing so, they researched and collected early Jewish liturgical chant, secular folk songs and instrumental melodies, the result being a new fusion of Jewish traditional music and European classical styles. There were several elements influencing the movement - the awakening of a national awareness, the revival of Hebrew, an interest in secular Hebrew- and Yiddish literature, Zionism and what was referred to by them as the ‘Haskala’ – the Jewish ‘Enlightenment’.

As a composer, Alexander Krein (1883-1951) was a major figure in the emerging school of Jewish national music, being an active member of the Moscow branch of the Society of Jewish Folk Music and the Society for Jewish music. He composed instrumental music and much music for theatre. His father was a folk violinist; Alexander spent much of his childhood playing klezmer music in his father’s band. His own individual style combines the harmonic language of Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin, together with the lyrical melodies and modes of Jewish music. Opening the concert a vivid performance of Krein’s “Ornament” opus 42 no.1 (Uri Brener-piano, Dina Guyfleg-violin) set the scene with music of a distinctly Jewish yet eclectic nature – eastern European synagogue music, with its spirit of improvisation. In one of the composer’s autumnal “Three Songs from the Ghetto” (1918) Krein’s delicate, reflective vocal line paired well with an evocative piano part, making for interesting listening.

Born in Crimea, Russia, composer, critic and scholar Joel Engel has been referred to as the “father of modern Jewish music”. He published Russian-style song romances and arrangements of Jewish folk songs as well as a collection of Yiddish folk songs. In his mission of revealing the artistic potential of Jewish music to both Russian- and Russian-Jewish composers, he was seen as the founder of the modern school of Jewish national art music, taking a leading role in the Society for Jewish Folk Music, also collecting and recording music from and undertaking the transcription and field recording of Jewish music in the shtetls (villages of Eastern Europe). Giving the program its name, Engel’s “Hymn to a Poet” (lyrics: S. Schneur) in celebration of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s 50th birthday, was performed in Hebrew by soprano Shirelle Dashevsky and tenor Konstantin Kotelnikov (piano: Uri Brener); “Two Letters”, performed by the three and sung in Yiddish, created the emotion and drama of Jewish life of the time. Lazare Saminsky (1882-1969), co-founder of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music, was especially involved in the importance of early synagogue music. His “Song of Songs” opus 13 no.1, to a poem of Pushkin, was sung in Russian by Kotelnikov. Also instrumental in the founding of the Society for Jewish Folk Music and director of the Jewish Art Theater, Solomon Rosowsky (1878-1962) went to Palestine in 1925, where he, among other activities, researched Lithuanian biblical cantillation. In “A-Wieg Lied” (Lullaby) opus 4 no.2, one of his Yiddish art songs, the picture emerging from Dashevsky’s contrasting dynamics and well-controlled piano and Brener’s magical and evocative playing was that the lullaby’s message was not all soothing gestures. Violinist Dina Goyfeld-Zemtsova and Uri Brener’s vibrant playing of Michael Gnessin’s (1883-1957) “Song of the Wandering Knight” for ‘cello or violin and piano (1921) highlighted the piece’s interest, temperament and its playfulness, also drawing attention to Gnessin’s fine compositional technique.

A major section of the concert focused on the music of Joseph Achron (1888-1943). Representing Achron the composer and consummate violinist, we heard Goyfeld-Zemtsova and Brener in a sophisticated performance of “Scher” opus 42 (1917), with the violin repeating its traditional klezmer-style dance melody over increasingly more complex and daring, experimental piano textures. The traditionally eastern European Jewish melody of Achron’s Canzonetta opus 52 no.2 (1923), taking its lyrics from a poem by Hebrew poet Avraham Ben Yitzhak, its form strophic but with variety, was performed by Dashevsky, Goyfeld and Brener. Dashevsky and Brener’s presentation of “A dove passed by my face” opus 53 no.2 (1923) delighted in its descriptiveness, with its fluttering of wings, coloristic use of the sustaining pedal and the singer’s easeful communication with the audience.

One of the highlights of the program was all four artists’ moving reading Hirsh Kopit’s “Wos wet sajn mit Reb Isroel dem frumen”, its bittersweet Jewish melodiousness set off by a fragile and reticent - almost dancelike - refrain. The program concluded with all four musicians in a concert version of three movements from Jacob Weinberg’s 1924 opera “Chalutzim” (Pioneers), the lyrics of which were also written by the composer. The first Zionist opera, it focuses on the lives of pioneers on a kibbutz in Mandate Palestine. Having escaped the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the kibbutzniks are now enthusiastic about dedicating their lives to the rebuilding of Israel. The work, which includes a love story, recreates the atmosphere of the times, with dances and songs reflecting the style developing in Israeli music. (Jacob Weinberg lived in Palestine from 1921 to 1925, before leaving for the USA.) In music that might today been viewed as dated, sentimental and naïve, it is nevertheless rich in content and drama. The artists gave it their all, conveying the climate and excitement of this chapter of Israeli history that is sinking into oblivion.

Shirelle Dashevsky’s work on this project is of much value. Her selection of fine artists, her own informed performance and their collaborative high quality of musicianship are bringing back to life a substantial and significant body of Jewish music and recounting a chapter of the history of Jewish music that must be told.