"Women in Music" - the Carmel Quartet (Israel) presents works by women composers and discusses three courageous women composers

 

Yoel Greenberg,Sarit Shley Zondiner,Tali Goldberg,Rachel Ringelstein,Tami Waterman (Courtesy Sarit Shley Zondiner)

Opening "Women in Music", Concert No.2 of the Carmel Quartet's 2023-2024 Strings and More series, Prof. Yoel Greenberg, the quartet's musical director and violist, spoke about brave women. The concert itself was dedicated to the memory of one such brave woman - Staff Sgt. Yam Glass, 20, an observation soldier in the Israeli Armed Forces, who was murdered on October 7 2023 at the outset of the current war. This writer attended the English-language presentation at the Jerusalem Music Centre, Mishkenot Shaananim, on January 17th, 2024.

 

The evening opened with much interesting information and the performance of works by three courageous women composers - composers of three different periods and from three different continents. The first movement of Maddalena Lombardini Sirman's Quartet Opus 3 No.2 was performed behind a screen, symbolizing the iron grate behind which the brilliant young women musicians of the Ospedale di San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti (one of four such music schools in Venice) were obliged to perform in the name of modesty. Lombardini (1745-1818), one of the school's most famous pupils, was a virtuoso violinist (a student of the great Tartini), a composer and, later on, a singer. She was the first woman to compose string quartets at a time when the genre was still extremely new and in its formal, experimental stage. Indeed, Prof. Greenberg referred to Lombardini Sirman as a "trailblazer for women". The Carmel Quartet's buoyant playing highlighted the slow–fast two-movement quartet's freshness, its geniality, variety of colours and richness of form.

 

It was only in the 1990s, when women musicians championed her work, that interest in American composer Amy Beach (1867-1944) led to a revisiting of her compositions and newfound respect for her achievements. A child prodigy, she became a virtuoso pianist, emerging as the most frequently performed composer of her generation and the first woman to succeed as a composer of large-scale symphonic music. Beach assumed many leadership positions, advancing the cause of American women composers and proving to be a stickler for authenticity in the quotation of folk themes. One instance of the latter is her Quartet in One Movement Op.89, through which are threaded three Eskimo (or Inuit) tunes. The Carmel players gave expression to the splendid writing of the tripartite piece, its beauty, lyricism and intensity and to the textures arising from its mix of dissonance, chromatics and irresolute tonality, presenting a fine example of American music of the time. 

 

And to a work of another go-ahead young woman composer. "Shira" for string quartet was written especially for this program by prominent Israeli composer Sarit Shley Zondiner (b.1984), today a faculty member of Haifa University. Shley Zondiner addresses the impact that background has on foreground, both musically and emotionally. "Shira" (Hebrew: song, singing), two movements written for string quartet and recorded electronic sound, takes the listener into a sound world of uncompromising timbres, otherworldly effects, engaging layering and intensity. Interesting music indeed, the melodic- and textural sentiments expressed in it certainly sounding indicative of these anguished times. The Carmel players' reading of this challenging piece was scholarly and detailed, but also decidedly insightful and compassionate. Of her music, the composer writes: " I create complex soundscapes, utilizing extended techniques and combining 'noise', rich harmonies and wide-ranging melodies."

 

The evening's subject matter - women's standing in music in the western world through the ages - was presented captivatingly by Prof. Greenberg (a native English speaker), with much interesting and amusing detail added (in fine English) by the three other Carmel Quartet members - Rachel Ringelstein and Tali Goldberg (violin) and 'cellist Tami Waterman. If "sexist" can be defined as "characterized by- or showing prejudice, stereotyping or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex" one must assume that the world of western music has been dominated and impeded by this attitude for a very long time.

 

There was also talk of the concept of "masculine" and "feminine" types of music. Beethoven's music was considered "masculine". In 1927, French dramatist, novelist and mystic Romain Rolland proclaimed Beethoven's masculinity, rejecting the Romantics' association of the composer's music as having feminine qualities. The "Women in Music" event concluded with Ludwig Van Beethoven's Quartet Op.95 in F minor "Serioso" (1810). As to the quartet's opening, with the four instruments in unison pouring forth one of the composer's most violent statements, the first violin (Ringelstein) in wild octave leaps and the ensuing slashing scale passages, all these would suggest that the work reflects the composer's depth of despair at the time. The players' songful, questioning and reflective rendition of the ensuing Allegretto gave way to the strongly chiselled and propulsive Allegro, its intensity temporarily relieved by the hymn-like nature of the middle section. As to the final movement, following the tense, contemplative Larghetto opening, we meet Beethoven in a sudden surge of major-key good humour. Interestingly, Beethoven acknowledged the radical nature of the work when he wrote to Sir George Smart (a member of the Philharmonic Society, London) maintaining that the Op.95 Quartet had been "written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public". This request may have been made due to the work's prematurely experimental nature…not, I am sure, due to its masculinity.

 

 

The gala concert of the A-Cappella Jerusalem Vocal Ensemble draws a large audience. Conductor/music director: Judi Axelrod

Judi Axelrod (Rahel Sharon Jaskow)

 

Taking place on January 2nd 2024 in the Henry Crown auditorium of the Jerusalem Theatre, the gala concert of the A-Cappella Jerusalem Vocal Ensemble was a festive affair. The first thing one noticed was the choir's new, larger format. The concert was conducted by Judi Axelrod (conductor of the A-Cappella Singers as of 2003), who has been working with the newly-expanded ensemble for some nine months. A cooperative project of choral conductor Ms. Ronit Banit and Mr. Ofer Amsalem (CEO of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra), the singers were joined by a small ensemble of JSO players and by Netta Ladar (harpsichord/organ). There were also several vocal soloists.

 

The event opened with Antonio Vivaldi's Kyrie RV 587, a work scored for two choirs and two groups of stringed instruments in the Venetian antiphonal style of spatially divided musical groups. Despite the choral-instrumental groups not being placed separately, one was ever aware of the two groups' exchange of dialogue. The two forces progressed from agonizing painful clashes through the joyful duet to a masterful fugal finale, the JSO violinists offering a sparkling performance. In the second section of the Kyrie, soprano Yeela Avital and Rahel Jaskow (mezzo-soprano) were answered by the choir. 

 

Countertenor Alon Harari's performance of "Cum dederit" (Psalm 127, 2–3) from Vivaldi's "Nisi Dominus" emerged reverent and mellifluous as he gave expression to the aria's slow Siciliana style with its chromatically ascending lines, guiding the listener through the intense melodiousness of the movement.

 

Of particular interest was George Frideric Handel’s secular cantata "Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne" (HWV 74), scored for choir, orchestra and vocal soloists and featuring a significant obbligato role for the trumpet, here performed by Guy Sarig. The ode features a level of virtuosity for both soloists and instrumentalists and quite some complexity in the choral writing, the latter handled splendidly by the A-Cappella singers with clear English diction and by the JSO players' crisp instrumental playing in a performance articulate in its contrapuntal weave and contrasts. Soloists Alon Harari and Yeela Avital collaborated well, matching gestures and ornaments with precision.

 

Handel premiered his opera "Serse" on April 15th 1738 at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket in London. The composer had decided on a semi-historical plot involving the hot-blooded Persian tyrant Xerxes. The London audience, however, disliked it and the first production was a complete failure, the work becoming referred to as “one of the worst things Handel ever set to music.” As a result, it disappeared from the stage for almost two hundred years, to be revived only in 1924.The opera proper opens with a short- and rather strange aria “Ombra mai fù” (Never was a shade) a love song sung by Xerxes. The aria's rarefied atmosphere is meant ironically, as Xerxes sings of his profound, heartfelt love not for a woman, but for a tree!  Harari showed fine vocal control as he shaped the emotional and dynamic course of probably the most famous number from any of Handel's operas. 

 

Then to the choir's sensitive handling, superb choral colour and contemplative spirit in its performance of the unaccompanied devotional prayer "Yihyu lerazon" (Let the words of my mouth) from Ernest Bloch's "Avodath Hakodesh" (Sacred Service), the neo-Romantic work inviting the choir's subtle blend and ability for expressive phrasing. 

 

Another a-cappella piece heard at the concert, "Eshet Khayil'' (A Woman of Worth), by Israeli composer Mordecai Seter, is based on a Bratslav Hasidic melody for the Friday evening recitation (Proverbs 31). Judi Axelrod led her singers through a precise, articulate performance of it, the piece's clusters emerging in lush, shimmering textures. 

 

Naomi Shemer was hailed as the "first lady of Israeli song and poetry". "Giora” expresses the nation's shared grief at the loss of its children most persuasively as it remembers "B'khol Shanah Bastav Giora" (Every Year in Autumn, Giora) in this elegy to Giora Shoham, a young victim of the Yom Kippur War. The melody almost takes on the character of an art song, waxing and waning in plangent gestures, sounding unmistakably like a tender prayer. Axelrod's outstanding a-cappella arrangement of the song brims with musical elements in a rich arrangement of layers, giving the stage to the vocal expression and independent abilities of her singers.

 

Then, to a total shift of scene with a concert performance of Act 2 of Johann Strauss' "Die Fledermaus" (The Bat), the performance deftly reflecting the work's mid-European mentality with its irreverent humour and exciting music, its plot one of mistaken identities, scandalous love interests, absolute chaos and hysterical outcomes. On one side of the stage, we see and hear young promising singers Roi Witz, Eran Margalit and Dimitri Negrinovski; on the other, Yeela Avital (Rosalinde), Nadezhda Gaidukova and Tali Ketzef. Ketzef, always at home on stage, made for a coquettish, risqué Adele, with mezzo-soprano Nadezhda Gaidukova (en travesti) playing a cunning, whimsical Prince Orlofsky, her young voice powerful and of a unique, penetrating colour. Axelrod's direction of "Die Fledermaus" was savvy, as she gave the stage to the operetta's drollery, its vocal elements and its splendid music, the latter replete with numerous catchy waltz- and polka themes. 

 

Indeed, an impressive gala concert with interesting, well-balanced programming. Axelrod's careful approach to the singing voice was apparent throughout, making for fine-spun-, well-blended choral timbres. Following the evening of fine entertainment, we were reminded of the reality of these times with the orchestra and choir's subdued and moving performance of Judi Axelrod's re-arrangement of "Bring Him Home" ("Les Misérables"), the words here changed to "Bring them home" (in Hebrew and English), a fervent plea to bring the Israeli hostages back from Gaza.

The 2023 Jerusalem International YMCA's Christmas concert features the Israel Camerata Jerusalem (conductor: Avner Biron). Soloists Rachel Frenkel (mezzo-soprano), Muki Zohar (oboe)

 

Greeting guests to the Jerusalem International YMCA on December 24th 2023 were the many lights illuminating the impressive historic building and the large, brightly lit Christmas tree, always a focal feature of Jerusalem's King David St. during the festive season. Ringing out into the crisp evening air were the festive sounds of Christmas carols played on the YMCA's bell carillon, the only instrument of its kind in the entire Middle East. Jerusalem residents, guests and tourists filled the auditorium to celebrate Christmas eve with a concert performed by the Israel Camerata Jerusalem conducted by its musical director Prof. Avner Biron. Soloists were Rachel Frenkel (mezzo-soprano) and Muki Zohar (oboe.)

 

Welcoming the audience, Mr. Fadi Suidan, CEO of the Jerusalem International YMCA, spoke of the YMCA as a beacon of unity and peace, of its purpose and mission, its message of hope and as a place bringing together people of different backgrounds.

 

The evening's program opened with Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8 by Arcangelo Corelli. Published posthumously in 1714, one of Corelli's 12 Concerti Grossi Op. 6, it bears the inscription "Fatto per la notte di Natale" (made for the night of Christmas.)  The Camerata performance unveiled the work's subtlety and cantabile expressiveness, as the players leaned into the dissonances of the noble, reflective slower movements, setting them against the buoyancy and joy of the faster sections, the final Allegro segueing into the graceful Pastorale so gently evocative of the flocks near Bethlehem in the Christmas scene. From J.S.Bach’s Orchestral Suite No.3 BWV 1068, composed for his patron Prince Leopold of Anhalt, comes the much-loved Air on the G string. It was thus titled after violinist August Wilhelm's late 19th century arrangement of the Air for violin and piano. (Transposing the key from its original D major to C major and taking the melody down an octave, Wilhelm was able to play the piece on only one string of his violin, the G string.) Maestro Biron and the Camerata players gave a beautifully poised reading of the piece reflecting how elegantly Bach's density of material is lodged in the finespun interweave of inner lines over a walking bass line. One could not object to listeners at the YMCA event gently humming along with the melody of possibly one of the most famous single movements in Bach’s output!

 

An enigmatic item on the program, however, was "Three Pieces in the Old Style'' by eminent Polish composer Krysztof Penderecki (1933-2020), a composer whose works from the 1960s placed him firmly in the avant-garde scene, with music of sheer emotive power using new notation methods, aggressive glissandi, massive tonal clusters and innovative vocal and instrumental techniques. On the podium, Penderecki was an imposing figure who conducted with sweeping gestures befitting his herculean music. His "Three Pieces in the Old Style'' for string orchestra were commissioned for the soundtrack for "The Saragossa Manuscript" (director: Wojciech Jerzy), where they accompany scenes of a Baroque- or even Rococo-like atmosphere. At the Christmas concert, the beautiful, yet sad Aria (Lento) and two charming Minuets (all pieces unexpectedly pleasing to the most conservative of audiences) were given a performance that was refined, understated and unmannered. I imagine Penderecki's "Three Pieces in the Old Style '' must have shocked listeners when they first appeared in 1963. They certainly took the YMCA audience by surprise! It is a fact that the composer only released them for publication in 1989.

 

One of the principal Italian composers of comic operas Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) did not write an oboe concerto: It was Australian-born composer Arthur Benjamin who adapted four of the thirty-two keyboard sonatas Cimarosa wrote after the style of Domenico Scarlatti, scoring them for oboe and string orchestra, retaining most of the melody in the solo voice. First oboe of the Israel Camerata Jerusalem Muki Zohar (b. 1973 Tel Aviv) soloed in a pleasing, effortless performance of this much-loved work, giving expression to its warm melodiousness, grace and plangent moments, also bringing attention to its playful and good-naturedly cheeky elements, the latter making reference to the exuberance and wit present in many of Cimarosa’s operas. Orchestra and soloist discoursed splendidly, making for a sparkling performance.

 

Israeli-born mezzo-soprano Rachel Frenkel enjoys an international career on both opera- and concert stages. The Christmas program included Frenkel's performance of three of the most prominent Baroque arias. Her stable, resonant and substantial voice endorsed the soaring curve of the “Et exultavit spiritus meus” (And my spirit rejoices) from J.S.Bach's "Magnificat", as she carried the jubilation through the entire movement. Singing "Erbarme dich, mein Gott" (Have mercy Lord, My God, for the sake of my tears) from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, she gave expression to the aria's aching beauty and profound sadness, the lamenting solo violin obligato expressively interwoven by Camerata concertmaster Matan Dagan. And finally, Frenkel's communicative performance of the virtuosic aria, “But who may abide/For He is like a refiner’s fire” from Handel's Messiah, its two contrasting sections addressed skilfully and meaningfully, as in her treatment of the bravura runs and also in the dramatic expression given to the ominous passages that precede them. 

 

Concluding the evening of high-quality musical performance and true enjoyment, the Jerusalem YMCA's 2023 Christmas concert presented Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in a suave, stylish rendition of Nemanja Marković's arrangement for string orchestra. 

The opening concert of the 2023 Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival features works of Brahms, Mahler and Mieczyslaw Weinberg

Elena Bashkirova (Courtesy JICMF)

 

Established in 1998 by pianist Elena Bashkirova and Adv. Yehezkel Beinisch, the annual Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival features renowned musicians together with outstanding upcoming younger artists performing in diverse combinations of instruments. This writer attended the 2023 festival’s opening event on September 5^th at the Jerusalem International YMCA. With each festival choosing a theme, that of the 2023 event (September 5th to 10th) focused on migrant composers. The displacement of composers in the 20th century, prompted by such constraints as antisemitism or political persecution, with other composers seeking work or financial security, has given rise to new styles in the language of musical repertoire. 

 

Following words of welcome from Yehezkel Beinisch (chairman, JICMF board), the festival took off on a stellar start with Gustav Mahler's Piano Quartet in A minor, the work comprising only the first movement of an abandoned piano quartet written by Mahler when a student at the Vienna Conservatory, this piece ending up as the composer's sole surviving instrumental chamber work. The artists (violinist Clara-Jumi Kang, violist Adrien La Marca, 'cellist Tim Park, pianist Yulianna Avdeeva) gave insight into the creative processes of the 16-year-old Mahler, as they wholeheartedly addressed his early encounter with matters of musical form and texture. They probed the work's lush, singing beauty, its uneven phrases, complex dissonances and mood changes, inviting its ominous and foreboding moments and passionately rhapsodic character to dictate tempo flexibility. Kang led masterfully and expressively, with Avdeeva subtly endorsing the piece’s dramatic intensity and disquiet via the piano's lower harmonies. In 1907, Mahler migrated to America, hopeful of a new phase in his career, attracted by a lighter conducting schedule, more time to compose and lavish monetary earnings. 

 

In 1850, Johannes Brahms met the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi, then to accompany him in a number of recitals over the next few years. This was the composer’s introduction to gypsy-style music, which was later to inspire his most lucrative and popular compositions - the two sets of "Hungarian Dances" (pub.1869, 1880). Playing a selection of Book 1 WoO1, a true festival treat was provided by French-born Nathalia Milstein and Russian-born Yulianna Avdeeva. Performing the pieces in their original setting (4 hands, 1 piano) the young artists captured the spontaneity and passion of Hungarian gypsy music in playing that was clean, fresh, nuanced, at times majestic, at others, poignant, with much dancelike joy and a touch of whimsy. Their playing took on board the timbral variety and rich "orchestration" of the 4-hand piano genre, as they contrasted intimate, pared-down moments with exhilarating tutti, to the enjoyment of the audience.

 

And to the very different “mise en scene” of Violin Sonata No.4, Op.39, by Polish-born Jewish composer/pianist Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–96). Weinberg’s flight from Nazi-occupied Europe was rather different from the customary exile to the West. His move to the Soviet Union in 1939 meant a second period of threat and discrimination under Stalin. He was to live out the rest of his days in Russia, first unjustly neglected but eventually enjoying considerable success as one of his adopted country’s most celebrated and frequently performed composers, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. At the Jerusalem concert, Weinberg's Violin Sonata No.4 (1947) was played by German-born Clara-Jumi Kang and Nathalia Milstein. Alternately sombre and hectic, Weinberg's musical idiom stylistically mixes traditional- and contemporary forms, combining a freely tonal, individual language (inspired by Shostakovich) with ethnic (Jewish, Polish, Moldovan) influences and a unique sense of form, harmony and colour. Performing with unstinting discipline and dedication, Kang's playing produced pure, unforced sounds at all levels of dynamics, with breathtaking virtuosity in the fast perpetuum mobile section of the central movement. Milstein proved to be the ideal partner, both in approach and ability. Their performance of Weinberg’s slow-fast-slow structure gave a transparent reading of the composer’s ideas, highlighting the substantial solo sections for each instrument.

 

Mahler's 1901-2 settings of five poems of Romantic German poet Friedrich Rückert, composed in one of the happiest periods of the composer's life, do not constitute a song cycle. In fact, deciding the order they are to be performed is left to the artists. At the Jerusalem concert, we heard the songs sung by German soprano Dorothea Röschmann, with Elena Bashkirova at the piano. The artists' mutual engagement, their focus on the texts and on the distinctively otherworldly atmosphere permeating the "Rückert-Lieder" emerged via the transparency, fragility, understatement and the sensitive pacing of each song. As they conjured up sensations of love, scents, night ponderings, indeed, "the feeling that fills us right up to our lips but does not pass them” (in Mahler's own words) Röschmann used the sounds and shapes of words to endorse their meaning.

 

In the 1880s, when in his mid-fifties, Brahms retired from composing, believing he had exhausted his creative powers. However, it was hearing performances of clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld (1856-1907) in the Meiningen Court Orchestra that inspired him to resume composing. The Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op.115, written in the twilight of his career, concluded the 2023 Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival's opening concert, the performance bringing together five artists from different corners of Europe: clarinettist Pablo Barragán, violinists Rainer Honeck and Maria Ioudenitch, violist Adrien La Marca and 'cellist Ivan Karizna. Drawing attention to its dark tonal hues, lush textures and sweeping, cantabile vocal lines, the virtuosic "gypsy" section (2nd movement) and to the brilliant variations of the fourth movement, the artists gave expression to the quintet's poetic beauty, deep introspection, yearning, and melancholy as well as to Brahms' consummate writing for the clarinet and chamber ensemble medium. Young Pablo Barragán's playing underscored the piece's underlying depth of sadness, also celebrating its moments of rhapsodic, wild gestures and flickering textures.

 

This was an evening of excellent programming, matched by outstanding performance!

 

The Sounding Jerusalem Festival concludes with a concert of oriental instrumental and vocal music directed by Mahran Morab. Vocal soloist - Lamar Mireb

 

Mahran Moreb (Courtesy Sounding Jerusalem 2023)

Lamar Mireb (Courtesy Sounding Jerusalem 2023)

The evening of August 10th was balmy, ideal for a zesty concert in the medieval courtyard of the Lutheran Redeemer Church in Jerusalem's Old City, a magical venue offering fine acoustics and enhanced by lush foliage descending from the upper balconies. The event was the final concert of the 2023 Sounding Jerusalem Festival. The Right Rev. Joachim Lenz (Redeemer Church) opened the event, mentioning the Redeemer Church as being in the heart of the Jerusalem soundscape, the sounds heard there evident of the three religions represented in close proximity. He referred to the concert of local oriental music as "music of the land". Sounding Jerusalem founder and director Austrian 'cellist Erich Oskar Hutter spoke of the intensive week of festival concerts as having been a "beautiful journey", creating a "musical family" and always attracting a good mix of people. He stressed the importance of the discussions following each concert. Huetter thanked all the festival's partners, both local and from overseas. He alluded to the various concert venues of this year's festival as "special, hidden, spiritual places", settings that give rise to magical moments.

 

The closing concert mostly comprised works by composer/arranger and educationalist Mahran Moreb - instrumental pieces, classical Arabic songs, with some influence of Iraqi and Syrian folklore and the occasional reference to western-style music - performed by 13 musicians, including a small chorus and the ensemble of instrumentalists playing bowed-, plucked-, percussion instruments and keyboard, with vocalist Lamar Mireb presenting the songs. All on stage were led by Mahran Moreb himself on qanun (a type of large zither with a thin trapezoidal soundboard, having a distinctive, melodramatic timbre). Explaining the program, Moreb (with double bass player Eleni Mustaklem translating his words into English) spoke of the concert as being a "musical journey", many of the songs speaking of love (and its complications) and the fleeting nature of life.    

 

With no further ado, the ensemble launched into the music, sweeping the audience into its candid, highly-coloured, robustly-textured and forthright presentation, its accessible and sensitively-shaped melodic content and its compelling, foot-tapping rhythms. Her voice stable, powerful and well anchored, Lamar Mireb's singing of the songs was convincing and passionate. Although we non-Arabic speakers were at a slight disadvantage as to the content of the vocal material, Mireb, supported by the small chorus of singers, conveyed the emotions to the audience. Under the watchful eye of Moreb, the artists presented us with an evening of highly polished performance. Most delectable were the several instrumental solos performed by ensemble members and by Moreb himself, these wonderful moments highlighting the individual players' fine musicianship, virtuosity and invention.

 

Sounding Jerusalem 2023 signed out on a high note!

Photo: Peter Tilley

The 2023 Sounding Jerusalem Festival opens at the Redeemer Church (Jerusalem) with a concert of works of Richard Strauss, Gideon Klein and Tchaikovsky

Erich Oskar Huetter (trashPHOTOGRAPHY)

 

Taking place on August 3rd at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem's Old City, "Capriccio" launched the 2023 Sounding Jerusalem Festival with exhilaration, creating interest in events in the week to follow. Sounding Jerusalem was established in 2006 by Austrian 'cellist Erich Oskar, who continues to direct the annual festival. The artists include established musicians as well as gifted younger players, together exploring a diverse range of European classical repertoire, but also jazz and local ethnic music. The Right Rev. Joachim Lenz (Redeemer Church) opened the event by reminding the audience in these turbulent times that beautiful music in beautiful places brings people together. Maestro Huetter added that it was an honour and a privilege to be back making music in Jerusalem.

 

Performing this concert were Austrian violinists Eszter Haffner and Johannes Meissl, violists Anna Brugger (Switzerland/Germany) and Patrick Jüdt (Switzerland) and 'cellists Matthias Johansen (Germany) and Erich Oskar Huetter. The program opened with the Sextet that forms the Overture to "Capriccio" (1942), Richard Strauss' last stage work, an opera on the subject of opera, dealing with the age-old question about the opera genre: which is more important, the words or the music? The Sextet is frequently heard as a stand-alone work; in fact, it was first performed before the premiere of the opera itself! Richard Strauss is writing in the post-Wagnerian late Romantic style of extended tonality. Binding the piece together is the recurring melodic motive announced by the 1st violin in the opening bars. Led manifestly by Meissl, the artists' playing of the Sextet was imaginative, fresh, lush and empathic, at times reflecting the score’s unsettled moods, as they probed the music's gestures and emotions with both involvement and subtlety. Their performance invited the audience to delight in the radiant brightness of tone, the silken luminosity inherent in Strauss’ six-string writing. 

 

We then heard Haffner, Brugger and Huetter in a performance of Gideon Klein's Trio for violin, viola and 'cello. Moravian-born Jewish pianist/composer/arranger/accompanist and repairer of instruments Gideon Klein was a pivotal figure in the cultural life of the Terezin prison camp and ghetto. The String Trio, his final composition (and probably the last major work to be composed by anyone in Terezín) was completed in October 1944, ten days before Klein's deportation to Auschwitz. He was murdered at age 25 in the Fürstengrube camp. Many of his compositions were entrusted to a fellow prisoner who survived, later to pass them onto Klein’s sister, pianist Eliška (Lisa) Kleinová. Vigorous and articulate, the Sounding Jerusalem artists' playing of the work highlighted Klein's harmonic sophistication and rhythmic dynamism, the brief outer movements emerging intense, vivid, fsounding in almost neoclassical transparency and brimming with lively rhythms and melodies evoking Czech folk dances. The players' committed and eloquent performance of the middle movement, a set of variations on "The Kneždub Tower", a folksong from Klein’s native Moravia (its text symbolically telling of a wild goose flying up into a high tower), presented a wide range of emotions - from deep sorrow to occasional moments of whimsy. Here was a fine opportunity to hear one of Klein's most ambitious, comprehensive and extraordinary pieces, a work that has remained central to the string trio repertoire.

 

Following his disastrous three-month marriage with a former student of the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky travelled to Italy, spending a winter in Florence to enjoy some peace of mind and to put thoughts on his own life into perspective. There, he worked on a draft of his opera "The Queen of Spades"; his ballet "The Sleeping Beauty" was being premiered there. With Eszter Haffner taking the 1st violin role, the opening Sounding Jerusalem concert concluded with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's spirited sextet "Souvenir de Florence" in D minor. Conceived in part during the composer's Florence sojourn, some of this last chamber music composition of his sings the praises of Italian lyricism, the  second movement, in partictular, on whose score the composer stipulated that the melody that has become referred to as the "Souvenir de Florence" theme should sound “sweet and singing”. Italianate but inescapably Russian, indeed, evoking much of the flavour of Slavic traditional music, this is a splendid and vivid concert piece. The artists gave it an ebullient and wholehearted rendition, addressing its sweeping phrases, finespun bel canto melodies and sensitively-shaped poignant tunes, its variety of string textures, its dialogues, driving rhythms, its sophisticated contrapuntal writing and (as Tchaikovsky mentioned in a letter to his brother) the proposition of juxtaposing “six independent and at the same time homogeneous voices".

 

It was an evening of fine festival fare and excellent musicianship.  

Leonard Sanderman (UK) performs English organ repertoire and an original work at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem's Old City

 

© 2022 Leonard Sanderman 

It is rare to hear English organ music of the late 19th century-early 20th century on these shores. In his recital on July 23rd 2023 in the Jerusalem Lutheran Church of the Redeemer's annual July International Organ Festival, Leonard Sanderman (UK) presented works of this very repertoire together with a work of his own. The Right Rev. Joachim Lenz of the Redeemer Church welcomed the audience, commenting on the fact that the evening's program would be well suited to the church's Karl Schuke organ.

 

Prof. Sanderman spoke of English organ music as having gone through periods of popularity and times when it was less so. He spoke of the late 19th century as having produced a surge of organ music in Britain - not necessarily church music, but several ceremonial works and those written for entertainment. Opening the program with "Marche Héroïque" (1915) by Gloucester Cathedral organist Sir Alfred Herbert Brewer (1865-1928), Sanderman gave bold expression to the composer's most highly-favoured organ piece (possibly written as wartime propaganda!), its forthright opening section giving way to attractive cantabile moments, as the artist highlighted the work's antiphonal effects and Brewer's rich use of harmony. Although Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) had a lifelong love of the organ, an instrument he had played from childhood, his most significant solo organ works for the instrument were written in the last few years of his life. Parry's most substantial organ work, the Toccata and Fugue "The Wanderer" (1912), of which we heard the Toccata at the Jerusalem concert, was named by Parry after his yacht. Sanderman's playing of the piece gave prominence to the work's  rich "orchestration" and sudden changes of mood and texture, indeed, to music suggesting the unsettled nature of wandering. It was also a reminder of the beauty, power and emotional content this forgotten English Romantic composer had incorporated into his fine compositional style. And to the opening Allegro Maestoso movement of Organ Sonata in G (1895) of Sir Edward William Elgar (1857-1934), a work that has been referred to as one of the most outstanding works of English Romantic organ repertoire. Sanderman met the high challenges of the piece, his performance not only portraying its vivid canvas and the scale and dexterity of the pipe organ, but also offering touching moments in his playing of its finely-shaped high-register personal melodic utterances. A felicitous opportunity to hear a movement of this far too-little-known masterpiece.

 

Moving into the 21st century for a short hiatus, the program included a composition of the artist himself - "An Harrogate Fanfare" for organ solo (2014) - commissioned and published by De Orgelvriend, a Dutch journal. Brimming with radiant organ timbres, this hearty, tonal piece spoke of joy and positive energy.

 

Of the program's works of a decidedly light-hearted nature, we heard A.H.Brewer's appealing and delicate (at times mysterious) arrangement of the Prelude to Act 3 of Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan's incidental music to Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Composed when Sullivan was 20, his Op.1 a set of movements for the play, its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in England. The name Berthold Tours (1838-1897) does not ring British. The Netherlands-born violinist/organist and music editor, however, moved to London in 1861. Sanderman bedecked the various sections of Tours' charming, up-beat "Allegretto Grazioso" with a variety of delectable timbral hues. Originally written for piano and violin, Elgar's "Chanson de Matin" was arranged for organ by Herbert Brewer. Sanderman's uncluttered reading of it was sensitive, beautifully contrasted and poetic. For an encore, the artist played a delightful improvisation in appreciation of the young woman who was his page-turner at the recital!

 

Initially taught the organ by his father, Leonard Sanderman (Holland, 1991) performs internationally. He is a prize-winning, commissioned composer and a published author on church music and the organ. His PhD focuses on issues in the historiography and canonisation of liturgical music in high church parishes between 1827 and 1914. A senior lecturer in Organ and Historical Musicology at Leeds Conservatoire, he also teaches Harmony and Counterpoint at the University of York. This was Prof. Sanderman's second visit to perform at the Jerusalem Redeemer Church.

 

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