The 47th
Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival will open on May 22nd 2015. Existing
in its present set-up since 1992, the festival, directed by Hanna Tzur, takes
place twice a year – during the Succoth and Shavuot holidays. Concerts are held
in the spacious Kiryat Ye’arim Church that graces the top of a hill and in the
intimate crypt of the 12th century Benedictine Crusader Church,
nestling in a peaceful, exotic garden. People from all over Israel attend the
festival, taking time out from the bustle of everyday life to immerse
themselves in good music, enjoy the views over the Judean Hills, to picnic and
browse the craft stalls.
This year’s
Shavuot festival will take place May 22nd, 23rd and 24th,
and will feature a good selection of Israeli artists in a wide variety of
events. The festive opening event will be “Cherubini - Requiem, Mendelssohn - Psalm
115” (Kiryat Ye’arim Church, June 22nd, 11:30) in which Maestro
Ronen Borshevsky will conduct the Israel Kibbutz Choir and the Israel Netanya
Kibbutz Orchestra. A rare treat at this concert will be Israeli composer Yoni
Rechter’s “Adorned is Your Forehead” (lyrics: Avraham Khalfi) for choir oboe
and piano (arr. Shaul Gilad). Soloists will be soprano Beata Lipska, tenor Boaz
Ben-Sira and baritone Jacob Basch.
People wishing
to indulge in the joys, roller-coaster emotions and vivid colors of Latin music
will be drawn to “Misa Criolla, Misa a Buenos Aires” (Kiryat Ye’arim Church, May
22nd, 15:00) to hear works of Ramirez, Piazzolla, Palmeri and more,
performed by the Kibbutz Artzi Choir, the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra and a Latino-America
Ensemble, under the baton of Yuval
Benozer; and, later that day, “Ramirez, Villa Lobos, Gilberto Gil, Caymmi”, a
rich variety of highlights from Brazil and Argentina, will be performed by
soprano Daniela Skorka and guitarist Eyal Leber (the Crypt, May 22nd,
16:15).
This Abu
Gosh Festival also offers an event for opera lovers. They will be able to enjoy
arias, duets and ensembles from a number of operas in “Rossini – The Barber of
Seville, the Italian in Algiers” (Kiryat Ye’arim Church, May 23rd,
15:00), performed by up-and-coming (and more veteran) singers from the Israeli
Opera’s Meitar Opera Studio, accompanied by pianist and musical director of the
studio, David Sebba.
Those with a
taste for American music are going to enjoy two special events: in “Homage to
Joan Baez – Her Loved and Renowned Songs” (the Crypt, May 22nd,
14:00), soprano Revital Raviv with guitarist Eyal Leber and Shaul Gross
(guitar, harmonica, mandolin) will bring back nostalgic memories to many of us
with American, Scottish and Irish folk songs, songs of Bob Dylan, Don Dilworth
and Dire Straits. From the finest of American musical theatre repertoire,
soprano Sharon Dvorin, mezzo-soprano Karin Shifrin and pianist Yoni Farhi will
present numbers from ”Porgy and Bess”,
“West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music” , topped off with songs from
Kurt Weill’s tragicomic evocation of decadence and vice in Germany of the late
1920s in his “Threepenny Opera” and
“Mahaggony” in the event titled “Gershwin, Bernstein, Hammerstein and Kurt
Weill” (the Crypt, May 23rd, 16:15).
The mandolin
will hold a unique place at this Shavuot’s Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival. In
“Maestro Vivaldi’s Mandolin” (Kiryat Ye’arim Church, May 23rd,
11:30) we will actually hear three mandolin artists – Shmuel Elbaz (soloist),
Jacob Reuven and Roy Dayan. In a program of works by Vivaldi, Ortelli and
Monteverdi, they will be joined by tenor Daniel Portnoy, countertenor Eliran
Dadosi, Amit Tiefenbrunn (viola da gamba), Yizhar Karshon (harpsichord),
Ma’ayan Beider-Jacobson (double bass) and the Shachar Choir under the direction
of Gila Brill. Totally different concert fare will be the order of the day in
“Shem Tov Levi – Singer, Composer, Musician” (the Crypt, May 23rd,
14:00), when Shem Tov Levi himself (b.1950), violinist Yael Barolsky, violist
Yael Patish-Comforty and ‘cellist Shira Mani-Sror will present Levi’s songs
alongside music of J.S.Bach and
Piazzolla in a curiously motley selection of works.
In addition
to the opening concert, sacred music, as always, will figure largely in this Shavuot’s
Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival. In addition to the much-loved “Fauré – Requiem for soloists, choir and orchestra” (Kiryat Ye’arim
Church, May 22nd, 18:00) the same concert will feature a lullaby by
Veljo Tormis, pieces of Benjamin Britten, the “Pie Jesu” from Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s “Requiem”, Yehezkel Braun’s lush arrangement of Naomi Shemer’s
“Jerusalem of Gold” and some French chansons, with Anat Morahg conducting an
instrumental ensemble and the Ma’ayan and Bat Kol Choirs; vocal soloists will
be soprano Shira Patshornik, alto Noga Morahg and baritone Guy Pelc. Marina
Ganshin will provide the poignant harp role so essential to the Fauré Requiem. “Händel – Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day”
(Kiryat Ye’arim Church, May 24th, 11:30) will be accompanied by an
impressive line-up of instrumentalists and feature soprano Yeela Avital, tenor
Assaf Kacholi and flautist Noam Buchman, with the Upper Galilee Choir,
conducted by Ron Zarhi. This will be followed by “Works by Bach, Mozart and
Liszt – Mass, Cantata, Vespers” (Kiryat Ye’arim Church, May 24th,
15:00) with soprano Shira Patshornik, organists Yizhar Karshon and Alexander
Wolch, the Barrocade Ensemble and the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir conducted by
Michael Shani. Not to be missed is the festival’s closing event, in which the Abu
Gosh Vocal Music Festival’s musical director Hanna Tzur will be conducting the
Ramat Gan Choir in “Rossini – Petite Messe Solenelle” (Kiryat Ye’arim Church, May
24th, 18:00), a convivial, colorful and somewhat enigmatic piece
(declared by Napoleon III as “neither small, solemn, nor especially liturgical
in spirit”). Soloists will be soprano Daniela Skorka, alto Sigal Haviv, tenor
Eitan Drori and baritone Alexey Kanonikov. Performed here in the composer’s
original chamber setting, this optimistic work is sure to emerge as more
personal and elegant, lending itself to live performance and constituting a fine
adieu to the upcoming Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival.
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