Bringing Jewish music to the concert hall

The stars of Pro Musica Hebraica’s Fall 2012 concert have been selected to receive the Cleveland Quartet Award — one of the most prestigious in the field. Originally formed in Israel, the Ariel Quartet moved to the United States in 2004 to study at the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Training Program. They have since become one of the most dynamic young string quartets of our day.

The Cleveland Quartet Award is presented at Chamber Music America’s National Conference, held January 16-19, 2014 in New York City. The award is given to a young quartet every two years that has demonstrated they are on their way to establishing a major career. As part of this prize, the Ariel Quartet will be presented in special performances by Carnegie Hall and seven other major chamber music series.

To learn more about them and to follow their work, visit their website.

ARC Ensemble, the ensemble-in-residence of Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music, has released an album dedicated to the acclaimed Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim. The album comes three years after the ensemble’s brilliant performance in Pro Musica Hebraica’s concert War and Exile: The Music of Berman, Braunfels, and Ben-Haim.

The Jewish Journal spoke with ARC artistic director (and PMH adviser) Simon Wynberg about the project, as well as the meaning of Ben-Haim’s music in light of his experience as a German immigrant in the fledgling state of Israel:

“Ben-Haim was Israel’s best-known national composer,” Wynberg said, “and I wondered why so much of his music was still unexplored.”….

“Ben-Haim’s musical language changed when he arrived in Israel. He heard things he wouldn’t have heard in Germany — folk tunes, traditional melodies.”

In some ways, Ben-Haim was a composer in the right place at the right time. He became a hugely successful tonal composer, whose colorful folkloristic style and exotic melodies were particularly relevant to the Israeli experience.

“This was a young country looking to provide an identity for itself,” Wynberg said. “Writing music as if you were part of a German conservatory was not going to cut it. It was a tabula rasa. You could do what your conscience and creativity pushed you to do.

The album, which the Jewish Journal calls a “vibrant recording, thrillingly performed,” can be purchased on Amazon.

To listen to ARC Ensemble’s live performance of Ben-Haim in our Fall 2010 concert, visit our concert page.

Jewish News One, an international news network which covers world news, produced a feature on Pro Musica Hebraica and last week’s sold-out concert with Alexander Fiterstein:

Evgeny Kissin, one of the world’s greatest pianists and the star of Pro Musica Hebraica and The John F. Kennedy Center’s February 24th concert, will soon take Israeli citizenship. Tom Gross has Kissin’s statement:

I am a Jew, Israel is a Jewish state – and since long ago I have felt that Israel, although I do not live there, is the only state in the world with which I can fully identify myself, whose case, problems, tragedies and very destiny I perceive to be mine.

If I, as a human being and artist represent anything in the world, it is my Jewish people, and therefore Israel is the only state on our planet which I want to represent with my art and all my public activities, no matter where I live.

When Israel’s enemies try to disrupt concerts of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra or the Jerusalem Quartet, I want them to come and make troubles at my concerts, too: because Israel’s case is my case, Israel’s enemies are my enemies, and I do not want to be spared of the troubles which Israeli musicians encounter when they represent the Jewish State beyond its borders.

I have always deeply despised chauvinism and have never regarded my people to be superior to other peoples; I feel truly blessed that my profession is probably the most international one in the world, that I play music created by great composers of different countries, that I travel all over the world and share my beloved music with people of different countries and nationalities – but I want all the people who appreciate my art to know that I am a Jew, that I belong to the People of Israel. That’s why now I feel a natural desire to travel around the world with an Israeli passport.

From the New York Times:

Her success in connecting musicians not just with Yiddish chestnuts but also with obscure songs was crucial to the revival of klezmer, a genre that has become popular far beyond the Yiddish-speaking world in the last three decades, said Sam Norich, publisher of the Jewish newspaper The Forward….

“She opened a whole new repertoire,” said Eleanor Reissa, a Yiddish singer and the Tony-nominated director of “Those Were the Days,” a 1990 Yiddish-English musical revue. “We can interpret and breathe life into them because she unearthed them for us.”