A tribute to Leonard Bernstein - Stanley Sperber conducts the Chamber Choir of the Jerusalem Academy of Music at the 53rd Abu Gosh Festival

Photo: Rochelle Elbaz

The Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival takes place twice a year in and around Abu Gosh, a town located 16 kilometers west of Jerusalem on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. The 53rd Abu Gosh Festival (May 18th-20th, 2018) opened with “Angels Singing” at the Church of Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant on May 18th. Performed by the Chamber Choir of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance under its director Stanley Sperber, the concert commemorated 100 years of the birth of Leonard Bernstein.

 

The program included some short works of Israeli composers. With the choir members standing in the two side aisles, the program opened with Israeli composer Paul Ben Haim’s choral setting of Psalm 121, its autumnal harmonies splendidly woven into a sensitive reading of the piece. Matityahu Shalem’s arrangement of “Simchu-Na” (Rejoice) for choir and piano (Irina Lunkevich) took one back to the early Israeli kibbutz-oriented hora repertoire, largely forgotten in today’s choral repertoire. In Yehezkel Braun’s playful a-cappella setting for men’s voices of “Vayimalet Cain” (Then Cain Fled) (text: Yaakov Shabtai), the singers presented the piece’s narrative in an engaging and vivid manner. Especially appealing were the “comments” of tenor soloist Michael Bachner.

 

The program also included four sections from Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols”. Scored for three-part boys’ (or women’s) choir, soloist and harp, Britten wrote the Christmas work during World War II on a perilous journey crossing the Atlantic in 1942 aboard a cargo ship. Some of the carols are in Latin and some, in Middle English, are based on poems from the 15th and 16th centuries. The ladies of the Academy Choir produced the appropriate bright, pure vocal timbres Britten would have envisaged when writing for boys’ voices, from the forthright strident gestures of “Wolcom Yole”, to their tranquil and tender treatment of “There is no rose”, to Inbal Brill’s poignant singing in the major-minor “Balulalow” lullaby, to the urgency and triumphant singing of the canonic “This little babe”. Maria Golberg’s playing of the splendid harp role was supportive, spirited and satisfying.

 

Then to works of Leonard Bernstein, the first of which being the entertaining “Warm-Up” (1970), a jaunty round for mixed choir used in Bernstein's Mass. The choir also performed some numbers from “West Side Story”: a delicate reading of “Somewhere”, its lush harmonies sprinkled with the occasional Bernstein dissonance, to “Tonight”, its hearty text coloured with just a hint of melancholy, the buoyant, carefree and breezy singing of “I feel Pretty” and an effervescent, upbeat performance of “America”, whose solos were suitably imbued with a South American twang.

 

Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” (1964) strike a very different chord. A commission for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival (UK) from such an eclectic composer as Bernstein, it is not surprising that its definite modernist techniques mingle with the composer’s signature popular sounds in an ode to diverse influences. The work incorporates Jewish biblical verses (Psalms sung in the Hebrew language) into a work inspired by Christian choral tradition and singing conventions, setting originally secular Broadway melodies to sacred texts. Sperber and his singers presented the work’s complexity and intensity on a confrontational, uncompromising and vigorous canvas. Making clear its background of personal struggle, the work’s powerful but undeniably optimistic message is ever present. 14-year-old Nimrod Werber, joined by harp in the second movement, showed fine musicality, excellent intonation and also poise on stage. The performance left the listener deep in his own thoughts as the serene finale, closing the work with the concept of mankind living in harmony - “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” concluded with an almost-whispered Amen, its final “n” nevertheless rendered sonorous.

 

The Academy Chamber Choir’s polished rendition of two spirituals (soloists: Maria Liubman, Michal Tamari) was yet another reminder of the ensemble’s musicality, fine diction, precision and attention to detail, all contributing to music-making of an outstanding quality, and with much joy, under the guidance of Maestro Stanley Sperber.

 

 

The Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir at Christ Church, Jerusalem

The Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir performed its final concert for the 2012-2013 season at Christ Church in Jerusalem’s Old City. Completing his first year as full-time musical director of the ensemble, Ofer dal Lal conducted the singers in the concert, with Dror Schweid at the piano. The 30-member Chamber Choir is the representative ensemble of the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir, regularly performing in churches and concert venues in Israel and overseas. The Jerusalem Oratorio Choir is supported by the Israeli Ministry of Culture and the Jerusalem Municipality.

Ofer dal Lal is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where he studied choral conducting with Professor Stanley Sperber, orchestral conducting with Professor Eitan Globerson and composition with Professor Menachem Zur. He is presently taking graduate studies in choral conducting with Mr. Ronen Borshevsky and orchestral conducting with Mr. Yi-An Xu at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv. Dal Lal has long served as assistant to both Professor Sperber and Mr, Ronen Borshevsky and conducted the premiere of "Loquimini Veritatem" by Israeli composer Sarah Shoham in 2012.

Works performed in the evening’s program spanned the 15^th to 20^th centuries. The concert opened with Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Dufay’s (1400-1474) Marian antiphon “Ave Maris Stella” (Hail, Star of the Sea), the chant setting we heard performed cleanly and with elegance; vocal parts were clearly delineated, with the plainchant melody remaining audible. This was followed by the somewhat enigmatic English composer Richard Nicholson’s (1570-1639) setting of “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem”, an anthem highlighting “sound” and melody, but constructed with rather static harmonies. More interesting was Ofer dal Lal’s 5-voiced vocal setting of John Dowland’s “Flow My Tears”, a lute song reworked several times by the composer himself, by Byrd, Morley, Farnaby and others, also cited by poets and playwrights. Dal Lal’s reading of it drew attention to the poem and its key words (“happy” for example in this gloomy setting!), an emphasis practised by Dowland’s contemporaries in light of the enriched beauty of Elizabethan language. In a lighter vein, there was a pleasing, dynamic performance of Dowland’s whimsical madrigal “Come Away”, its double-entendres amusing, at the same time enumerating a lady’s disdain and rejection.

Two late sacred works by W.A.Mozart (1756-1791) constituted a major section of the concert. In lieu of a string orchestra, Dror Schweid accompanied the singers on the (unfortunately out-of-tune) piano. The first was Mozart’s exquisitely simple and compact “Ave Verum Corpus” K.618 (Hail, true Body), with dal Lal and his singers bringing out the piece’s meditational, tranquil, otherworldly mood. We then heard selected movements from Mozart’s Requiem Mass in d minor K.626. Soloist was soprano Noga Shahar.  The performance addressed the work’s sacred agenda, its drama and its pathos (the more relaxed sections sometimes a little behind the beat) in an expansive range of dynamic changes. The Requiem’s arcane counterpoint and evocation of strange liturgical archaism came together in a performance that could indeed be described as majestic and impassioned. Schweid dealt courageously with the role of evoking Mozart’s full orchestral score. 

We heard the Oratorio Chamber Choir in Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s 1843 setting of Psalm 43 “Richte mich, Gott” (Do me justice, o God), a work for eight voices but not scored as two equal choirs – rather, in gender groups. Opening with imposing singing of the lower voice motif, the various different sections of the piece contrasted well, moving into the imposing and rousing final section. The choir’s German pronunciation needs some work.

Moving into the 20^th century and back to a cappella singing, we heard Benjamin Britten’s (1913-1976) “A Hymn to the Virgin” for two choirs, composed (in 1930, revised 1934) to an anonymous text. The ensemble gave a convincing performance of the piece, addressing its beauty of line and spare clarity of texture. With the first choir singing the text in English, the second – Naomi Brill Engel, Orna Harari, Shlomo Tirosh and Benny Schwarzwald, placed in the balcony – responded in Latin, creating a concept close to the format of traditional English devotional music.

With events in Israel currently celebrating composer Tzvi Avni’s 85^th birthday, it was indeed fitting that the Oratorio Chamber Choir should perform a work of his. Avni’s “Piyutim LeShabbat” (Sabbath Melodies), a work composed in 1971 and based on Babylonian Jewish Melodies, constitutes one of several works in which Avni (b. 1927, Germany) has created an individual synthesis of oriental elements with his own personal musical language. A work of delicate textures and gentle dissonances, the ensemble gave Avni’s articulate choral writing and simple melodies that merge in flowing lines a pleasing reading. Shira Cohen was soloist.

The ensemble performed three Afro-American spirituals with infectious enjoyment. The members’ singing was confident and well-shaped, their English pronunciation suitably leaning towards the American. Elia Talbar Reznik’s earthy, well-endowed voice made for a fine and spirited solo in “Daniel”.

The program concluded with a work by one of today’s most important British composers of church music - organist, choral conductor and composer Colin Mawby (b.1936). In an interview with Kevin Mayhew, Mawby was quoted as saying “My composition is instinctive and I take no notice of musical fashion which, I feel militates against the sense of the spiritual…I try and write music that speaks to people’s souls, music that listeners can respond to emotionally and spiritually”. His “Ave Verum Corpus”, composed in 1978 for eight voices and organ (or orchestra) ended the concert on a tranquil and devotional note. Ofer dal Lal and his singers gave expression to the work’s stately, contemplative mood, its lush, sonorous texture of autumnal harmonies, set off by splendid melodiousness.

With much fine singing and a strong sense of collaboration between conductor and singers, the Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir gave the audience a rich sampling of the many styles of music in its repertoire and what we may expect in the future.