Of the many artists performing at the 2021 Isrotel ClassiCameri Festival (Eilat, Israel) audiences delighted in hearing some outstanding young artists.

Pianist Daniel Ciobanu, 1st violinist Nitai Zori (Avi Muskal)

For some "time out" from the reality of these turbulent and uncertain times, music-lovers from all over Israel met in Eilat to attend the 23rd Isrotel Classicameri Festival (December 16th to 19th 2021) a festival offering three days of fine music and carefree enjoyment in Israel's sunny, southernmost town. The festival is a collaborative project between the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra and the Eilat Isrotel hotels. Apart from two events, all the concerts took place in the convention hall of the gracious and hospitable Royal Beach Hotel. This writer stayed at the Isrotel Lagoona Hotel closeby, enjoying the hotel's caring, quality service, superb cuisine and high standards.

The Isrotel Festival gives the stage to local and foreign artists. It also features some exceptional young musicians, some of whom will be mentioned in this article. Pianist Daniel Ciobanu (b.1991, Romania), today living in Berlin, first attracted international acclaim at the 2017 Arthur Rubinstein Competition (Tel Aviv), where he won both the silver medal and the audience prize. Opening the 2021 Classicameri Festival, he referred to his solo recital (enigmatically titled "Decomposing")  as "one of extremes, of different galaxies''. Ciobanu had listeners at the edge of their seats with his animated playing of pieces by two Romanian composers -  20th century composer Constantin Nicoloe Silvestri's unrelentingly concentrated, atonal "Bacchanale" (Suite No.3, Op.6 No.1) and Dan Dediu's (b.1967) "Winds of Transylvania'', a piece of flamboyant rhythms, vivid pianistic textures and the occasional visit to the realm of tonality. A very different choice was vocal music of Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) played on the piano. Ciobanu played his own arrangement of three of the infamous Italian composer's madrigals, their daredevil harmonic forays still raising eyebrows 400 years later, Gesualdo's unconventional writing emerging more tempered on the piano than it does in the colliding of human voices. As to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.12 in C sharp minor, Ciobanu produces its kaleidoscope of contrasts, from noble utterances, Romantic melodiousness, charming, fragile descant niceties, to intense, indeed, wild passages. The centrepiece of the recital was Robert Schumann's "Kreisleriana", Op.16, "one of the sincerest pieces I have encountered, presenting the two extremes that make our lives beautiful", in the pianist's own words. With spontaneity, precision and virtuosity, addressing the work's colour and subtle inner voices, Ciobanu invites the musical score to take him and the listener into the complex workings of Shumann's mind, into the composer's opposing sides (those represented by two literary characters - the impulsive Florestan and dreamy Eusebius) also, his vulnerability, energy and childlike wonder at the world. It was an experiential and beautiful performance.

At another festival concert (Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, Keren Kagarlitsky-conductor) Daniel Ciobanu soloed in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.2, Op.18. From the piano's lone, foreboding voice issuing in the concerto, Ciobanu engaged in the work's brooding depressive moments as well as the ardent, lush Romantic gestures and songfulness woven throughout the concerto, giving the lyrical passages personal expression. The Raanana Orchestra's mellow, dark sound and fine wind playing created the appropriate setting for the Rachmaninoff concerto. For his encore, Daniel Ciobanu's whimsical, featherweight playing of Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona's "Mazurka Glissando" wrapped up the performance with the wink of an eye.

The youngest artist performing at the ClassiCameri Festival was cellist Nahar Eliaz (b.2006), a student of Prof. Hillel Zori and the winner of several international prizes. In addition to performing in Israel, Nahar has played at such venues as the Lincoln Center, the Barcelona Arts Center and Carnegie Hall. "December", the recital she performed with pianist Tal-Haim Samnon, opened with a sensitive reading of the Adagio from J.S.Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major BWV 564, moving on to Grieg's Sonata in A minor for 'cello and piano Op.36, its abundant range of moods and dynamics addressed and enhanced by the splendid teamwork of both artists. And how beautifully they took the listener into the singing, sweeping melodiousness, delicacy and urgency, the introspective and euphoric moments of the 'cello and piano version of Schumann's "Fantasiestücke". They also performed Czech composer and cellist David Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody for cello and orchestra, a true  Konzertstück, with virtuosity, breadth of inflection and a sense of discovery. "December", Hillel Zori's arrangement of  Alterman/Vilensky's reflective Israeli chanson was appealing, with Samnon artistically flexing the music with touching sentimentality, interwoven by Eliaz' spontaneous, cantabile shaping of the nostalgic melody. A versatile musician, Tal-Haim Samnon (b.1986) composes, produces programs, solos, accompanies, plays chamber music and writes about music. 

Another aspiring and inspiring young artist at the Isrotel Festival was conductor/bassoonist Rotem Nir (b.1998), today, assistant conductor of the Israel Chamber Orchestra. His conducting of "Inception", a symphonic concert of works of Beethoven and Saint-Saëns, was animated and bold, resonant of his concept of each of the works. The final work in that concert was Camille Saint-Saëns' 'Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor Op.33, with Nahar Eliaz as soloist. Nir's direction highlighted the fact that the orchestra plays a major role, giving the work its specifically symphonic character, as its three relatively short movements run together (attacca). Watching Nir intently, Eliaz engaged the cello's capacity for both dignified and impassioned utterance in a performance that was detailed, richly melodic, both dramatic and lyrical, her playing commanding curiosity right through to the concerto's final measures.

In "The Best of Classics", violinist Asi Matathias (b.1992) and pianist Victor Stanislavsky (b.1982, Ukraine) performed works of Mendelssohn and Saint-Saëns. Felix Mendelssohn did not publish his Violin Sonata in F major during his lifetime. In fact, it was Yehudi Menuhin who revived the work, publishing it in 1953. An extremely ambitious work, Mendelssohn's writing is concerto-like for both instruments. Addressing its forthright, occasionally dramatic sections as well as its tranquil moments, cushioned in Mendelssohn's signature sense of well-being, both artists took the music into the realm of human expression, responding to each other's gestures, rendering the final Allegro vivace with young energy, technical know-how and joie-de-vivre. Then to Saint-Saëns' Violin Sonata No.1 in D minor Op. 75 (1885), a work whose first performances were more than disillusioning for the composer, as violinists came to grief with its virtuosic demands, in particular those of the finale. (The composer felt compelled to inform his publisher that it would be called the "Hippogriffsonata”, implying that the violin part could only be played by a mystical figure!) Indeed, no casual undertaking, Matathias and Stanislavsky launched into the unsettled first movement, evoking the ethereal quality and shimmering harmonies of the Adagio with its more robust middle section, their playing of the Allegretto moderate skipping along joyfully, its enigmatic chorale-like passage leading into the virtuosic and gripping final movement, one of uninterrupted frenetic scales and rapid arpeggios, culminating in sparring octaves in the piano with fiery violin outbursts. Concluding this program of virtuosic works was Saint-Saëns' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" in A minor Op.28, a concertante work for violin with orchestral accompaniment, in which the composer pays tribute to his friend, Spanish violinist Pablo Sarasate. The first version of the work, published in 1870, was the violin and piano reduction prepared by Georges Bizet at Saint-Saëns’s request. In the bipartite work, its mood coloured by Hispanic influences, the artists collegially conveyed its sentimental, lyrical and meditative moods as contrasted by highly virtuosic sections. Asi Matathias and Victor Stanislavsky took leave of the audience with the soothing sounds of Jascha Hesifetz' arrangement of Brahms' "Contemplation".

Another up-and-coming young artist performing at the festival was mandolin artist/conductor Dor Amram  (b.1999), a soloist and chamber musician, whose repertoire ranges from early music to jazz, to contemporary music and Israeli songs. In "Italian Breeze" (Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, conductor: Keren Kagarlitsky), he was joined by his teacher Jacob Reuven to perform Concerto in G major for two mandolins RV 532. A small jewel of a piece, only rediscovered in a Turin library in 1926, this is one of Vivaldi's most exuberant and entertaining concertos. In the two outer Allegro movements, the artists engaged in joyful banter, their ornamentation suavely fashioned and beautifully synchronised. With the string orchestra taking a step back for the Andante movement, Amram and Reuven's gossamer-fine and sensitively shaped duetting delighted listeners as its graceful melodic lines overlapped, echoed and came together, only to intensify at certain points through the meetings of harmonies. Jacob Reuven (b.1976) renowned internationally for his technical mastery and brilliance and is a highly regarded mandolin pedagogue. 

At another concert - "Musical Gourmet - When the Chef Meets the Orchestra"

- Dor Amram gave a skilled and vivid performance of Albéniz' "Asturias" (subtitled "Leyenda" - legend), his playing evoking the  beautiful Asturias region of Spain, the work's slower central section imitating the improvisatory style of flamenco singing recalling Gypsy, Indian, and Arabic influences.

A graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Dance and Music, Keren Kagarlitsky (b.1991) is a young Israeli conductor with her own uniquely expressive style of conveying the nuances of music to her players. An artist whose international career is on the up-and-up, she today resides in Berlin and is conductor designate of the Wiener Volksoper (2022-2023). At the Isrotel ClassiCameri Festival, where she conducted the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra in several of the concerts, her competence, charisma and her acquaintance with a wide range of repertoire and styles were more than impressive. Kudos to the dedicated and polished players of the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra (music director: Omer W. Welber). A unique voice on the classical music scene, the Symphonette is committed to music education, to promoting music of Jewish composers and to the belief that high quality music should be accessible to as wide an audience as possible

Cellist Nahar Eliaz, pianist Tal-Haim Samnon (Yehuda Ben Itach)