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Photo: Yoel Levy |
The Carmel Quartet's recent concert was very
different from past events of its "Strings and More"
series. In "Love is in the Airs", a program on the subject of love,
the Carmel Quartet (established 2000) hosted the Cecilia Ensemble (music director:
Guy Pelc). Replacing Prof. Yoel Greenberg (Carmel Quartet director/violist) and
1st violinist Rachel Ringelstein, we heard Matan Dagan (1st violin) and Shuli
Waterman (viola) alongside Carmel Quartet members Tali Goldberg (violin) and
Tami Waterman ('cello). Established by Naomi Faran (Moran Choirs
conductor/musical director) the Cecilia Ensemble, an octet of outstanding
soloists, serves as the professional representative ensemble of the Moran
Choirs. "Love is in the Airs" was the Cecilia Ensemble's first collaboration with the Carmel
Quartet. This writer attended the concert at the Jerusalem Music Centre,
Mishkenot Sha'ananim on March 4th, 2025.
Opening the program, the Cecilia Ensemble
members performed four a-cappella songs, commencing with a dynamic, ebullient
performance of one of William Byrd's few secular pieces - "This sweet and
merry month of May" - the Italianate madrigal's text reflecting the
accepted English practice of praising Elizabeth I. This was followed by Byrd's
"Lullaby, my sweet little baby", the ensemble highlighting Byrd's
smooth flow of lush harmonies. Indeed tender, but with the balance a little
heavy on the part of the sopranos. Then to two madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi.
The quintet performing "A un giro sol de begl'occhi" (At a single
glance of those beautiful eyes) led the listener from the realm of idyllic
love as mirrored in nature, to sadness and on to vehement expression of love's
cruelty, the singers highlighting Monteverdi's wonderful word-painting (madrigalism) and
dissonances. Following that, the rich, serene nature scene of "Ecco mormorar
l'onde" (Now the waves murmur) offered consolation to "each burnt-out
heart".
In 1996, Eric Whitacre (b.1971, USA)
composed his "Five Hebrew Love Songs" to poems by singer/actress Hila
Plitmann (b.1974, Israel), who would later become his wife. Originally
written for soprano solo, piano and violin, the small poems (referred to by
Whitacre as "postcards") take shape as a musical suite, each song, each, at
the same time, remaining a single performable unit. In 2001, Whitacre
arranged the songs for SATB chorus and string quartet, which was the setting
performed at the Jerusalem concert. Following "A Picture", performed by
the women singers, delicately depicting the love inside a person's heart, we
heard "Light Bride", alternating between sections sung by male voices
and contrasting vivid, unrestrained and dancelike sections sung by the women,
these sections embellished with a touch of percussion. The third song,
"Mostly", is characterized by its soprano solo (Lotem Taub) and by
ascending and descending scales suggesting the idea of roof and sky as the
subtle distance between two lovers. In "What Snow!", players and
singers give expression to Whitacre's marvellous winter canvas, the violins
evoking the pristine snow scene with flageolets, the score's ravishing clusters
describing snowflakes. The bells sounding at the beginning of the song
represent the exact pitches of bells the couple heard each morning from a
nearby cathedral in Germany. An exceptional tableau and beautifully performed!
The fifth song "Tenderness", sensuous, clement and oriental in
flavour, concludes the suite, a work highlighting Whitacre's fine,
expressive writing for both voices and instruments.
From the freehearted, plainspoken approach
to fresh love in Whitacre's "Five Hebrew Love Songs" to the elusive,
mystical quality of British composer Gustav Holst's "Seven Part
Songs" Op.44, set to poems of English poet laureate Robert Bridges and
scored for three-part women's chorus, strings and solo soprano. With the solo sections
shared among the singers, we were presented with a profound, detailed reading
of the pieces, the artists contending well with Holst's later choral
compositional style and his highly personal brand of complex modal
harmony. Singers (and players!) engaged in the complexities and beauty of the
verbal texts with a sense of personal involvement. From the first song,
"Say who is this?", the viola drone endorsing its eerie, bleak
content, the songs challenge the listener to ponder each text and contemplate
the many aspects of love presented here. In "When first we met," its
sophisticated canonic interplay of vocal and orchestral forces emerging both
alluring and disturbing, we learn that love is "so hard a master".
Inspirited by a zesty ostinato, "Sorrow and Joy", on the other hand,
offers a few home truths and advice on managing love and presented with the wink of an eye;
whereas the homophonic, delicate and warmly expressive miniature "Love on
my heart from heaven fell" (solo: Tom Ben Ishai) presents love as an
idyllic state. Setting the scene with a soprano solo (Lotem Taub), supported by
a cold, ghostly pedal in the first violin, the final song, "Assemble all
ye maidens," by far the longest of the set, takes a dramatic approach to
the poem describing a lady who died for love. A masterpiece, it represents the
culmination of Holst’s mature art as a choral composer. One of Holst’s most
profound compositions, it reflects the composer’s interest in the supernatural.
Despite achieving great professional
success, it seems Johannes Brahms remained unlucky in love. Involved in a
number of romantic relationships throughout his lifetime, he is believed to
have also developed feelings for Robert and Clara Schumann’s daughter Julie.
Indeed, Brahms completed his Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52 in 1869, the year her
engagement was announced. Light and unpretentious, the dances in Ländler
style were designed for the enjoyment of talented amateurs rather than for
concert artists, the eighteen songs representing two musical trends of the
1800s - dances to be played by piano duet and vocal pieces on the subject of
love. To this end, Brahms selected verses from Georg Friedrich Daumer’s
"Polydora", an 1855 German anthology of folk song texts from many
countries. The poems Brahms chose comment on various aspects of love: some are
set to longer, more serious texts, while others read like terse proverbs. Enter
two distinctive Israeli musical figures - pianist, music theorist, and
award-winning theatre composer Yuval Shapira and pianist/ accompanist, vocal
coach, lecturer and translator Dr. Ido Ariel. Shapira's desire to re-score
Brahms' piano role (so arresting in piano style and beauty that the composer
arranged it for piano 4 hands without voices in 1875) had me worrying I might
be hankering for that Brahmsian pianistic sumptuousness and poesy throughout
the performance. But no! Shapira's arrangement offered much interest and
individual expression to the string parts, both team-wise and individually, not
losing sight of the composer's expressive use of melody, imaginative harmonies
and counterpoint, or of the unique (experimental!) way in which Brahms controls
the rhythmic and metric flow to suit each of these miniatures. Ariel's
sharp-witted translation of the songs is faithful to Daumer's original German -
no less piquant, no less whimsical, no less delightsome - as the Hebrew words
weave themselves naturally and effortlessly through and around Brahms' melodic
course! Instrumentalists and singers were clearly savouring every verbal- and
musical gesture of Brahms' multifarious lexicon of love…as was the
audience.