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| Photo: Janna Menhel |
The Meitar Ensemble’s recent concert at the Chamber Music Centre (direction and production: Dr. Raz Binyamini) of the Israel Conservatory Tel Aviv on
April 13th 2019 was proof yet again that no two concerts of this group are
alike or predictable. Established in 2004 by pianist Amit Dolberg and
based in Tel Aviv, the Meitar Ensemble consists of a group of virtuosic young
Israeli musicians specializing in contemporary music; it has commissioned and
premiered over 200 new works to date. Appearing at some of the most prestigious
venues and festivals worldwide, the group is also the ensemble-in-residence of
the Israel Conservatory of Music, Tel Aviv. Acclaimed for its significant
contribution to the development of Israeli culture and music, the ensemble has
initiated a number of major educational projects.
The program spanned a number of genres - ballet, opera, stage music, radio
and video art - including such elements as jazz, folk music and children’s
songs. Two of the works were accompanied by video films produced by students of
the Sapir College’s School Department of Media and Communication. Off to a
surprisingly Classical start, the concert opened with ‘cellist Yoni
Gotlibovich’s arrangement of the Overture to W.A.Mozart’s “Magic Flute”, a
lush, well-grounded and festive offering.
A substantial part of the program focused on European works of the first
half of the 20th century, its times and influences, repertoire often neglected
into today’s programming. Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite, five tableaus
inspired by ancient French fairy tales, originally written for piano duet (1910)
and orchestrated by the composer In 1911, was heard here in the Meitar
Ensemble’s own arrangement, based on that of David Walter. The players’
detailed and delicate shaping of phrases and exquisite mix of timbres gave
vivid musical elucidation to each tableau - the Pavan danced around a sleeping
princess, Tom Thumb’s disheartening wanderings through the woods depicted by
seemingly endless phrases and meter changes, to the exotic colours depicting
the Empress of the Pagodas in turn-of-the-century orientalism styled by
pentatonic scales, to their articulate depiction of the characters and touching
dialogues in “Beauty and the Beast” with their poignant solos and with their
sense of mystery, magic and fantasy, to conclude with serene, almost beatific, calm
and delicate sonority celebrating all that is good and beautiful in “The
Enchanted Garden”. The student video film shown simultaneously, depicting a
young woman meeting a friend, dancing, then covering her clothes and herself
from head to toe in thick paint, “providing new realistic levels connecting
Ravel’s work to a contemporary, locational experience” (program notes) seemed a
poor, uninformed and irrelevant interpretation of the beguiling innocence and
imagination of Ravel’s “cinq pièces enfantines,” as he himself called these
magical vignettes.
With his use of music constituting a didactic synthesis of the tumultuous
times and the very contradictions in which he lived and worked, composer Hanns
Eisler’s Septet No.1 Op.92a ("Variations on American Children's
Songs") (1941) for flute, clarinet, bassoon, and string quartet,
represents the composer’s search for a new simplicity with new resources.
Septet No.1 is a fine vehicle for the Meitar players: its canvas rich in
sophisticated scoring is largely atonal, with the charming (tonal) children’s
songs threaded into the weave one by one. Articulate and transparent, the
members’ performance bristled with humour, vibrancy and nostalgia, their solos
and duets played with fastidious, delicate shaping and expression, forming an
auspicious meeting-point of compositional savoir faire and the wide-eyed world
of children’s song.
With the 1920s being radio days, Paul Hindemith believed in a strong link
between music and social needs, regarding the composer as a craftsman, as
someone who could provide for those needs. Thus, he composed several pieces for
the emergent radio, his style of writing adhering to the confines of recording
restrictions of the time. “Drei Anekdoten für Radio” (1925), scored for violin,
double bass, piano, trumpet and clarinet, bears the stamp of his unconventional
and eclectic chamber music, tonal but not devoid of dissonances. The artists
gave succinct and characterful expression to each of the three miniatures: the
whimsical Scherzando with its jazzy tonings, followed by “Langsame Achtel’
(slow eighth-notes) its melancholic scene set by the violin (Moshe Aharonov)
with clarinet (Gilad Harel), a muted trumpet (Yuval Shapiro) and a sizable
piano section (Amit Dolberg), to burgeon into a stylish mood piece of many
strands, with the playful, forthright canvas of “Lebhafte Halbe” (Lively
half-notes) forming the last movement..
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s 1927 jazz ballet “La Revue de Cuisine”
(Kitchen Review), consists of ten movements for violin, cello, clarinet,
bassoon, trumpet and piano, in which the composer demonstrates the
possibilities of jazz in a chamber setting without percussion. With
jazz all the rage in Paris at the time, the war and its aftermath brought
American dance bands to Europe. Incorporating such popular dances as the Charleston,
tango and the foxtrot dances into the unlikely tale of a kitchen utensil
love-triangle, Martinů’s work was premiered in Paris in 1930. The Meitar
artists’ vivid reading of it breezed through its very complicated time schemes
with ease, displaying the whimsy and temperament of Martinů’s writing as heard
in the soloistic banter (such as coquettish bassoon utterances - Nadav Cohen)
between instruments and highlighting the jazz influence through such features
as the Dixie-style clarinet writing, the shifting meters of the piano’s
rhythmic role and the jazz band timbre of the muted trumpet.
Israeli composer Erel Paz (b.1974) composed “A Happy Song?” in 2006 for the
Meitar Ensemble. Based on an Eastern European children’s song (originally sung
in Yiddish) the composer remembers its “Israeli form” from his childhood.
In the program notes, the composer writes that the song text is both
jolly and cheeky, its minor tonality, however, making reference to some
underlying sadness, hence the question mark in the title. Paz also explains
that his piece is made up of elements broken down from the song melody, meaning
that there is no longer any possibility of recognizing the song itself.
Conducted by flautist Hagar Shahal at the Tel Aviv concert, the listener became
aware of recurring elements such as a drone or descending glissandos and also
of rapid movement as opposed to time more static. Complementing the musical
work, Noa Dolberg and Tamar Tal’s video film, with its relentless
black-and-white erratic, hurtling flight through skies and forests contrasted
by serene scenes, such as the face of a sleeping woman, reflected both the
music’s duality and its somewhat disquieting essence, both music and visuals to
conclude with the tranquillity of a pine forest scene.
An evening of the fine performance quality that comes of profound scrutiny
of works and styles and sensitive collaboration. Taking part were: Hagar
Shahal-flute, Gilad Harel-clarinet, Nadav Cohen-bassoon, Yuval Shapiro-trumpet,
Moshe Aharonov, Noam Lilior Gal-violins, Lotem Beider Ben Aharon-viola, Yoni
Gotlibovich-’cello, Eran Borovich-double bass, Amit Dolberg-piano
.
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