Brazil: The Monarch Composer - Ensemble PHOENIX on period instruments. Vivid performance of this seldom-performed early-19th century repertoire awaits Israeli audiences

Emperor PEDRO I (who proclaimed Brazil's Independence) painted by Simplício Rodrigues de Sá. 

 

Throughout history, members of royal families have shown talent in playing musical instruments, singing or composing music, most often at a gifted amateur level, giving public performances at home or on royal visits abroad.  Alfonso X of Castile, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, Frederick II of Prussia and Liliuokalani of Hawaii, to name a few, composed music, but perhaps the most famous musician of royalty was Henry VIII of England, who was esteemed as a composer, and it is known that he played the cornett, regal, flute, virginals, recorder, lute, harp and organ.

 

People attending "Brazil: The Monarch Composer", Ensemble PHOENIX's upcoming concert, are about to make their acquaintance with another royal composer - D. Pedro I, de Alcântara e Bragança (1798-1834) of Brazil. In fact, all the works performed in this concert will be by Brazilian Classical composers and all will be Israeli premieres. We will hear Pedro's Credo in C major (1829), Padre José Mauricio Nunes Garcia's Pastoral Mass for Christmas Night, Marcos Portugal's Overture "Il Duca di Foix" (1805) and the anonymous early 19th century "Lundu da Cachaça" (the lundu, a popular dance, was an antecedent of the samba). All will be played on Classical period instruments.

 

Once again, Brazilian-born PHOENIX founder and musical director, researcher and viola da gamba player, will offer concert-goers a new and exciting experience. She will conduct Ensemble PHOENIX and The Madrigal Singers (director: Italy Berkovich). Soloists will be soprano Monica Schwarz, mezzo-soprano Noa Hope, tenor Itamar Hildesheim and Gili Rinot - classical clarinet.

 

Celebrating 200 years of Brazil's Independence, this powerful program of early 19th century Brazilian music will be a first in Israel, with works of both naive and grandiose character, with the lundu leaning more towards traditional folk idiom. And for those of us interested in historically informed performance, in hearing (and, indeed, seeing) these works played as they would have sounded in the Classical period, the event is sure to be a celebration!

 

Friday 02.12.22 at 12:00

Jerusalem, St. Vincent de Paul Church, Mamilla Mall 

Reservations: 052-3784586

Tickets: https://ticks.co.il/event.php?i=vymU0m85xO1 

 

Saturday 03.12.22 at 12:00 

Haifa, St. John Anglican Church, 30 Khuri St.,

Reservations: 052-3784586 

Tickets: https://ticks.co.il/event.php?i=vymU0m85xO1   

 

Friday 09.12.22 at 12:00

Tel Aviv-Jaffa - St. Peter's Church

1 Mifratz Shlomo 

SOLD OUT!

 

Saturday 10.12.22 at 12:00

Magdala ("The Pompeii of Galilee"), Duc In Altum Church 

Reservations: 052-3784586  

Tickets; https://ticks.co.il/event.php?i=vymU0m85xO1 

 

 

 

 

 

Giacomo Puccini's "Il Tabarro" (The Cloak) - the Jerusalem Opera opens its 2022-2023 season with a fine performance of this post-Romantic opera

Omer Arieli,Daniel Luis de Vincente,Yasmine Levi-Ellentuck (Elad Zagman)

 

At the front of the stage, the bow of a boat, a life buoy, some sacks and crates create a tasteful setting for Giacomo Puccini's passionate late masterpiece "Il Tabarro" (The Cloak). Taking place in the Henry Crown Auditorium of the Jerusalem Theatre on November 19th 2022, this was the Jerusalem Opera's first performance for the 2022-2023 season. Conducting the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (its players seated on stage) and a line-up of fine Israeli and overseas singers was Maestro Omer Arieli, the Jerusalem Opera's musical director and house conductor. Stage director was Daniel Lasry. Costumes, sets and props - Shira Wise.

 

Set on the banks of the Seine, this one-act opera tells the story of barge owner Michele, who suspects his young wife Giorgetta of being unfaithful. Packed with side plots and characters bringing to life the sights and sounds of 1910, the opera reaches its dramatic conclusion when Michele unexpectedly catches his wife’s lover. Featuring in this dark tale of love, loss, adultery and murder were US-born baritone Daniele Luis de Vicente as Michele, soprano Yasmine Levi-Ellentuck in the role of Giorgetta and Ukraine-born tenor Vitaliy Kovalchuk as Luigi, Giorgetta's lover. Well cast, each gave articulate and convincing expression to the concentrated dramatics with outstanding vocal performances, each artist so different in character, each endearing him/herself to the audience. In addition to Michele's pivotal aria "Nulla…Silenzio!", the audience was treated to opera performance endorsing some of Puccini’s most stunning vocal writing. The other singers made for a colourful band, their different human agendas, sometimes high-spirited (and drunken) actions, striking a clever balance with the more intense and ill-fated main plot. No new face to opera stages in Israel, mezzo-soprano Noa Hope, playing the sassy Frugula, always delights with her lively stage presence and easeful singing. 

 

Maestro Arieli reads well into the melodrama of Il Tabarro, highlighting the brilliance of one of Puccini’s most modern and impressionistic scores. He and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra gave precision and attention to the fine detail, shaping and beauty of the instrumental score, sharing the plot and emotions with Intensive orchestral involvement, drama, surprising contrasts, musical predictions, comments and some surprises. Take, for example, the French waltz played by a desperately out-of-tune street organ; Puccini scores this with clarinets and "out-of-tune" flutes, playing not in octaves but in major sevenths.

 

The original idea for “Il Tabarro” had come to Puccini in Paris in 1912. He wrote: " I already have the idea for the veristic opera; the story will be based on a play by a not-so-well known French playwright called Didier Gold. It is a romance tragedy that takes place on a barge. I find life on the docks quite intriguing. The docks swarm with workers, boatmen and ordinary people. This gives a lot of opportunity for life-like scenes both on the boat and ashore." The darkest of Puccini’s works is centered around the idea of passing time, metaphorically embodied by the time of sunset, by the Autumn season and, above all, by the slow, inexorable flow of the river, around which the whole story develops.

 

And a life-like and dynamic stage it was in the Henry Crown Auditorium! A fine opera performance, swift-moving, rich in emotion and marvellous music, here was the great opera composer at the very height of his powers, Puccini at his most verismo. The audience drank in every nuance, emotion and event of this small gem. Kudos to all involved. 

 

Established in 2011, the Jerusalem Opera’s goals are presenting opera productions of the highest quality in Jerusalem and the promotion of Israeli artists.

Daniel Luis de Vicente,Yasmine Levi-Ellentuck (Elad Zagman)

Lev Elgardt,Noa Hope (Elad Zagman

Yasmine Levi-Ellentuck,Vitaliy Kovalchuk (Elad Zagman)

Daniel Luis de Vicente (Elad Zagman)

"Lied in Fall" - The Israel Contemporary Players open the 2022-2023 season on an autumnal note

 

The Israel Contemporary Players opened their 2022-2023 Discoveries Series with "Lied in Fall" (Song in Autumn) in the Zucker Hall of the Tel Aviv Culture Center on October 22nd 2022. ICP artistic director Ilan Volkov conducted the players, with 'cellist Hillel Zori as soloist.

 

The program opened with "Schlammflocke II (Sludge Flakes) by German composer Carola Bauckholt (b.1959). Composed in 2010 for the Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, the curious trigger for this ensemble piece was the operation of water purification installations, in which sludge flakes (micro-organisms of dead and living material) play an important role. To produce the unique piece, the composer uses a wide range of resources, with the musicians playing their own instruments conventionally, but also generating a variety of animal sounds with such instruments as nose whistles and conventional instruments played in unconventional ways. The score shows accurately-notated pitch-, rhythm-, timbre- and dynamic signs, yet invites each player to give them his own meaning. What emerges is a tranquil background against which a dynamic scene emerges, a rich and exhilarating sound world of independent animal sounds and varied bird calls, from the most minute and delicate of gestures to nature's grand tutti. The listener is swept into the vivid scene, into a work that is experiential both aurally and visibly, beautiful and captivating,

 

Sarit Shley Zondiner (b.1984), a prominent Jerusalem composer, refers to her music as "ambiguous dramatic situations" that "find their expression in different combinations of sound, that fluctuate between normalcy and insanity." "Shoudu '' for ensemble and electric guitar is not the first work of hers to explore the darker, ambiguous nature of the inner world of the child. The composer refers to two Israeli writers of children's literature who address the subject - Miriam Yalan-Stekelis and Ronit Haham.  Shoudu, a devil wielding magical powers, a figure both fearful and humorous (even nice), appears in Haham's writings. In Shley Zondiner's work, unrelenting texture are strewn throughout, with finely-chiselled, chilling-, spectral- and otherworldly effects, melodic fragments and glissandi that surface and subside; but the core texture of the piece consists of wispy percussive effects, breathy sounds and even some disturbing effects of an uninvited guest gently knocking on a door. There is no mistaking that the piece evokes a child's most nightmarish imaginings. Volkov and the instrumentalists gave a detailed and fine-spun reading of the piece, one demanding much skill and delicacy. Kudos to Oded Geizhals on his very fine handling of the percussion role.  

 

Then to Anton Webern's 1920 chamber ensemble setting of his Six Pieces for large orchestra Op.6. The original version of the Six Pieces was premiered in Vienna in 1913, conducted by Arnold Schoenberg. The average length of each piece is 25 bars; the longest (No.4) having 41, the shortest (No.3), presented in just a few brushstrokes, a mere 11 bars in length. Volkov and the players addressed the fine detail, shades of meaning and emotion of each of the pieces. The Funeral March (No.4), opening with what must be one of the most chilling percussion sequences ever written, the instruments mostly shrouded in shadows of sotto voce, the haunting, penetrating clarinet solo, with the snare drum leading fatefully to the movement’s shockingly abrupt conclusion, was compelling. Altogether, the ensemble's warmth of sound and attention to such elements as pauses gave poignant expression to Webern's remarkable sensibility and ground-breaking musical syntax. Indeed, autumnal in mood, the work, according to the composer himself, describes episodes connected with his mother’s death.

 

And to the piece offering the concert its title - "Lied in Fall" (Song in Autumn) - by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen (b.1952), a work for large chamber ensemble and 'cello solo commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, which also premiered the piece in January 1988. "Lied in Fall" is dedicated to prominent Danish composer Per Nørgård (b.1932). Abrahamsen describes the work thus: "In an autumnal landscape of falling lines, the 'cello moves about with delicate lyricism, almost singing its Lied. It is surrounded by shadows of what has been and what has yet to come, coexisting with melodies between these lines…" In this work, typical of the evocative narrative and nature imagery of the early period of Abrahamsen's career, the ensemble creates a vivid, dynamic screen of sound, against which Zori expounded the work's sweeping, songful melodies with bold delivery. Throughout the lush soundscape, wrought of two totally different and seemingly independent agendas, Volkov held both components in delicate and precisely-hewn balance, leaving the listener questioning himself as to where to direct his own personal spotlight at any given moment.

 

Established in 1991, the prestigious Israel Contemporary Players have added much to the country's musical life, enriching its audience's appreciation of contemporary music. The ensemble regularly commissions, performs and records works by Israeli composers, besides performing an international repertoire from the 20th- and 21st centuries. It collaborates with European and Israeli conductors and soloists and performs in Europe and Asia. The ensemble consists of 14 players.