Modern concertgoers, forever fretful of marring a sublime performance with misplaced applause or a chirping cellphone, may be relieved to read in the book about a late 18th-century Viennese traveler who noted with astonishment that music audiences in northern Germany were “content with the pure enjoyment of the music, without wishing to have the pleasures of card playing, eating and drinking in addition. There you would think you showed both the music lovers and professional musicians a discourtesy and dishonored the music, if you rattled playing chips and hot chocolate cups throughout.”

You can read the rest of the review here.

Mezzacappa made her Kennedy Center debut in Pro Musica Hebraica’s Spring 2010 concert, An Evening of French Jewish Music. The Washington Post lauded her “sympathetic attention to the poetry” in her performance of rare classics and newly discovered masterpieces.

An unprecedented degree of public acceptance was required in order for German Jews to gain prominence in the quintessentially social role of composer. Wealth and societal standing were essential elements of this acceptance. Thus, when the 11-year-old Meyerbeer’s family had him pose for a formal oil portrait standing next to a piano, it was to place this child musical prodigy in the tradition of Mozart but also to underline his family’s social position. Unlike the young Mozart, however, Meyerbeer performed in public not to earn money but to make his family proud. He also made German Jews proud that one of their own could attain such prodigious artistry.

You can read the rest of Ivry’s article here. Conway’s book is available at Amazon.

Hamelin also did an outstanding job bringing across a lot of unfamiliar music to the audience. Alkan was once a star performer and later a recluse, long associated with the spurious but dramatic story that he died pulling the Talmud from a bookshelf that collapsed on him (Charles Krauthammer, the columnist who founded Pro Musica Hebraica with his wife, Robyn, said in his introduction from the stage that this accorded perfectly with his own impression of the Talmud, “beautiful but deadly”). His work is technically difficult and quintessentially romantic, making it an ideal vehicle for Hamelin, who certainly made a case for getting to know it better.

Read the whole thing.

Marc-Andre Hamelin, one of the world’s most honored pianists, will delve into the creativity of Frederic Chopin and Charles-Valentin Alkan, the two greatest piano virtuosos and composers of 19th century France. The occasion is Pro Musica Hebraica’s program focusing on the composers’ remarkable accomplishments and friendship. Despite being outsiders in their community, Chopin a Pole and Alkan a Jew, they thrived in the world of music centered in Paris.

“Chopin’s music never disappeared but has been part of our culture since his time,” Hamelin said. “Alkan, however, slipped into obscurity until he was rediscovered by two people during the 1950s and 1960s.

Read the rest here.

Joachim Stutschewsky: Jewish Song and Freylekhs

Juliusz Wolfsohn:  Two Paraphrases on Old Jewish Folk Tunes

Mieczysław Weinberg:  Piano Trio, Op. 24 (1945)

ENCORE:  Joseph Achron (1886-1943):  Song of the Little Tailor

April 9 broadcast: Program No. 2:

Alexander Krein: Elegie for piano trio

Alexander Veprik: Chant rigoureux for clarinet and piano

Jacob Schoenberg: Chassidic Suite for piano solo (American premiere)

Julius Chajes, arr. Sarah Nemtsov: Hebrew Suite for piano trio and clarinet (world premiere of new arrangement)

“The group is very close-knit and everyone is infused with this devotion to the trips,” says Cziger….”The fact [that] we bring the exact same program performed for audiences in the center – which supposedly understands more and is more sophisticated – is very important.

“The international success of our musicians, who have performed worldwide and earned prizes, is another important factor,” Cziger adds. “When the high-school students read in the program notes that we returned from a concert tour on the West Coast of America, and that two weeks before meeting with them we played Carnegie Hall – this realization that we didn’t put together a concert specifically for them, but are bringing them what we bring to the world, contributes to a much greater level of involvement and attentiveness.”

The ensemble members talk to the audience at eye level, joke around, explain things in an accessible fashion and dress like everyone else. “This way the barriers are broken down,” says Cziger. “It shows the audience the human side of being musicians. Most people see musicians in concert attire and remain quiet, and this ice needs to be broken.”

Read the whole thing. And to learn more about the Project, visit their website. 

While still in his early 20s, Weiner wrote to Joel Engel, a composer and critic who co-founded the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, a pioneering group that strove to build a national Jewish art music derived from authentic folk sources. With his letter, Weiner enclosed some of his own early songs of a more generically impressionistic character. Engel replied, complimenting their craftsmanship but also wondering why Weiner had neglected all the obvious Jewish material in his own background?

“That was a turning point in his life,’’ said [Weiner's son, Yehudi] Wyner, one that set him on a new course toward his mature Yiddish art songs. Those songs make frequent if sometimes subtle use of Jewish musical sources while remaining keenly responsive to their poetic texts. (In musical terms, Wyner sees his father’s closest model as the songs of Mussorgsky.) In subject matter, Weiner’s songs address an enormous range of topics, from the plight of a simple wedding musician to the Yiddish language itself (“my golden well’’), from poignant affirmations of faith in a post-Holocaust world, to dissonant existential-religious meditations spurred by the poetry of the 20th-century theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel.

As the Globe puts it, “Taken as a whole, Weiner’s vast and highly diverse catalog of over 100 Yiddish songs – rarely recorded, very seldom performed – represents a deeply eloquent achievement, one that simultaneously bridged artistic worlds, created new hybrid musical forms, and preserved a vision of a secular Yiddish culture across decades of its near-extinction.” Read the whole article here.

“When we started the orchestra, there was no repertoire of works from which to choose. Instead we had to produce new versions and reconstruct a culture that is nearly undocumented in Israel. The Mizrahi Orchestra is different from all others here.”

In its heyday, the ensemble numbered 36 musicians, including experts in 18 classical Eastern instruments, including some that are plucked (oud, dutar and tanbur ), as well as strings (kamancheh, jorza, jizak), winds (duduk, zurna), and percussion (duira, tonbak, darbuka, tabla and dhol).

In contrast to the Andalusian Orchestra, which Takhalov also conducted, the authentic Eastern instruments played in the Mizrahi Orchestra are unfamiliar to most Israelis. Seventy percent of the musicians have a master’s degree in music and a good number studied at Bar-Ilan, he continues, but despite that, most make their living from fields other than music. Many are relatively new immigrants from countries in the former Soviet Union and central Asia, who play alongside Israelis who emigrated years ago from Mediterranean and North African countries. Some of the players, Takhalov notes, are among the only experts in the country in these traditional classic instruments.

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