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.