Bringing Jewish music to the concert hall

A new documentary, “Orchestra of Exiles,” traces the real-life tale of Polish-born violinist Bronislaw Huberman (1882-1947), who saved hundreds from the Holocaust while assembling what later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The Times of Israel has the details:
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This Thursday (Oct. 25), conductor Zubin Mehta directs a program in New York’s Carnegie Hall that include Schoenberg’s take on Kol Nidre, Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and the New York premiere of Noam Sheriff’s choral symphony “Mechaye Hametim” (“Revival of the Dead”). For more information, visit the Carnegie Hall website.

Marion Lignana Rosenberg considers the theological underpinnings of George Frideric Handel’s music:

The sheer number of oratorios that George Frideric Handel wrote on Jewish subjects, including “Solomon,” “Esther,” “Joseph,” “Saul,” and “Judas Maccabeus,” has long led critics to suppose that he was a stout friend to the Children of Israel, and that London Jews were key patrons of his music. More recent scholarship suggests that Handel’s purported empathy with the Jewish people was invoked to prop up “the sacredness of his works” (too steeped in the profane funk of the theater), and that the enthusiasm of 18th-century Jews for Handel may have been overstated to assuage doubts about Jews as loyal British subjects.

You can read more by Rosenberg at The Forward. To learn more about Handel (and Christian-era attitude toward Jewish music more generally) see Ruth HaCohen’s fascinating book, The Music Libel Against the Jews.

The Jewish Press recently profiled Netanel Hershtik, the celebrated chazzan and the star of Pro Musica Hebraica’s December concerts in New York and Washington, D.C.:

Descending from a long line of cantors, Hershtik is a fourteenth generation chazzan, who began singing with his father, the legendary Cantor Naftali Hershtik, at Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue when he was just five and toured with his father through Australia, Europe and the United States at age seven….

Hershtik acknowledges that cantorial music is an acquired taste, but one that is well worth developing. “Chazzanut is not easy listening,” explained Hershtik. “One should give it time and patience in order to love it, but the reward is far greater than any easy listening pop music.

Read the whole thing.

And visit our ticket information page for details on purchasing tickets to the New York City (December 2nd) and Washington, D.C., (December 6th) concerts. From Psalm to Lamentation: A Concert of Cantorial Masterpieces  pays homage to the Golden Age of Cantors and to the liturgical music of modern times. Hershtik, one of the great practitioners of the cantorial arts, will be joined by the Hampton Synagogue Choir and the distinguished Amernet String Quartet.

Mark Glanville and Alexander Knapp will perform at St. John’s Smith Square in London this Saturday, October 6th. Following their critically acclaimed “Yiddish Winterreise,” performed at Pro Musica Hebraica’s Spring 2011 concert, Glanville (bass baritone) and Knapp (piano) turn to “Die Schone Mullerin,” recreating the Schubert cycle with songs from the Yiddish tradition.

You can purchase tickets here, and visit their website for more information about the concert and their recent CD release.

UPDATE (10/9):  Sarah Reid reviews the concert. Here’s a taste:

 Glanville captured perfectly the characteristic melancholy of Yiddish music. His bass-baritone voice projects very well: it is powerful yet not overbearing….For Glanville, this concert has a doubly personal meaning to him: not only is he performing the music of his ancestors, but it was Schubert’s Lieder that first inspired him to become a singer. It was in the knowledge of the artists’ personal attachment to the project that I really became captivated in the performance.

Knapp’s imaginative piano arrangements are highly intricate yet still flow beautifully. As with Schubert’s original Die Schöne Müllerin, I had the impression that the piano is far more than just a simple accompaniment. It is as much involved in the storytelling as the voice and retains a certain faithfulness to the original Yiddish song. With three postgraduate degrees from Cambridge and having taught and published widely on the subject of Jewish music, Knapp is a world expert in the field.

Read the whole thing here. And you can purchase their CD here.