Allan Nadler reviews From Psalm to Lamentation: A Concert of Cantorial Masterpieces:
It was especially good to be reminded of hazzanut, our own equally magnificent treasury of classical composition for the synagogue, which for too long has been spurned and scorned by Jews of all denominations. It was comforting and inspiring to be moved not by Handel’s “Messiah,” Bach’s “Weihnachts Oratorio,” or Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” gorgeous as they are, but by selections from our own classical liturgy, which have been lost or forgotten not as the consequence of pogroms or the Holocaust but on account of the low-brow musical predilections of most American shul-goers.
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