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5月16日 There Must Be Another WayIn my last blog, I more or less promised to write about the role of the Roman Catholic Church in promoting antisemitism, and this would probably have been an appropriate time to do it, in the wake of the Pope's visit to Israel earlier this week. However, I don't feel in the mood for polemics at the moment, so instead, I would like to bring you Israel's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest which takes place in Moscow tonight, together with a translation of the words. The song Your Eyes (There Must be Another Way) is performed by Achinoam Nini, (better known in Europe as Noa), who is of Yemenite Jewish origin and Mira Awad, an Israeli Arab who enjoys huge success in Israel on stage and on TV (she played Eliza Doolittle in the recent Israeli production of "My Fair Lady").
Oddly enough, despite the song's message of peace, the duo have come under fire both from the Israeli Left and from Palestinian supporters in Europe, who claim they are covering up Israeli "atrocities" in Gaza.
There's no satisfying some people, it seems. The song, which was chosen by an open poll of TV viewers, days after the end of Operation Cast Lead, is sung in Hebrew, Arabic and English. The translation below is a literal one, and therefore does not rhyme. I ask you, how can anyone interpret this as anything but a heartfelt prayer for peace?
There must be another way!
Your eyes, sister, say all that my heart asks for.
We have come such a long, hard way together, hand in hand.
And the tears fall and flow in vain, a nameless pain.
We are only waiting for the day after.
There must be another way!
Your eyes say, a day will come
When all the fear vanishes.
In your eyes there is a determination
That it is possible to continue the road,
However long it may take,
Because Sorrow has no single address.
I cry to the wide spaces, to the stubborn skies -
There must be another way!
It's a long road we will travel,
Such a hard road, together, to the Light.
Your eyes say, all the fear will vanish.
And when I cry, I cry for both of us.
My pain has no name.
And when I cry, I cry to the merciless sky and say:
There must be another way.
There must be another way!
Your eyes, sister, say all that my heart asks for.
We have come such a long, hard way together, hand in hand.
And the tears fall and flow in vain, a nameless pain.
We are only waiting for the day after.
There must be another way!
Truly, for all our sakes, there MUST be another way!
1月27日 A Promise KeptHaving promised (twice!) to post the video I filmed at the General Rehearsal for our Bach/Mendelssohn concert last month, I am finally about to fulfill that promise. Since starting this blog, I have been learning to do all sorts of things I never knew how to do before and to use software I never even knew I had - such as Windows Movie Maker. As I explained in a previous blog entry, I filmed this piece in two takes and it has taken me till now to learn the art of splicing them properly (almost
 ). I had assumed it would be a simple task of splicing two video clips. Imagine, then, how great was my surprise on discovering that WMM splits each clip into several smaller clips (each of them a different size and some, no more than a couple of seconds in length!). The hardest part of all was trimming what had originally been Take #2 at the point of overlap. I'm not sure, even now, that I got it perfectly right. Another difficulty was the fact that the filming was done using a small digital camera, designed for stills and having only a limited video capability. Worse, the audio capacity is even more severely limited and there is significant distortion, especially at the loudest parts. I haven't yet figured out a way to overcome that problem - short of buying a more sophisticated (and expensive) video camera - and any suggestions would be welcomed. That said, a promise is a promise and the film is good enough to give you a rough idea of how a concert "comes together" at a general rehearsal. So here it is.Enjoy it while you can. It won't be long before I'm back to my usual polemics
 ...1月24日 Song of SongsThe guns having fallen silent (at least for the time being), the Muses can once more raise their voices. Last month (how long ago it now seems), I promised to post the video clip of the general rehearsal for the Bach and Mendelssohn concert we gave at the beginning of December. Unfortunately, the editing is proving somewhat more difficult than I had expected. Until I can overcome the problems, here is a little something I posted on YouTube this evening - the Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir performing a lovely pastoral piece by Yechezkel Braun, to words from "The Song of Songs": Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south wind; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow forth. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.
I haven't given up on the Mendelssohn either, and will post it just as soon as I can. Meanwhile, enjoy...
12月6日 Food for the SoulSUNDAY NOVEMBER 30TH: A frisson of excitement ripples through the choir, as the first violinist calls for silence. The orchestra is tuning up, first the violins, then each section in turn. After weeks of rehearsals, first a cappella, then with a pianist, this is our first rehearsal with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and with all four choirs. I love the sound of a full symphony orchestra tuning up, especially when it's the first orchestral rehearsal. This is the moment when all the weeks of preparation start to come together and you feel it's really going to happen.
We've already had two rehearsals together with the Rubin Academy of Music Chamber Choir (their conductor, Stanley Sperber, will be conducting the two concerts), but this is the first time the Kibbutz Artzi Choir and the much smaller Tontine Choir will be joining us. It seems to go well. At any rate, rehearsal ends much earlier than I had expected (feared
, in fact). There is to be another rehearsal on Tuesday, the General Rehearsal. Just as well. It takes time to get used to Stanley's rather exuberant conducting, after Ronen's more restrained style.TUESDAY DECEMBER 2ND: This time, the soloists will be joining us. One of the sopranos seems to have absolutely no sense of rhythm or tempo. Another has a most irritating vibrato. The counter-tenor is excellent. The tenor and the bass - acceptable. The tenor, in fact, proves himself in his solo aria, and especially in the recitative section, ringing out loud and clear as he asks, in notes that remind one of the oratorio "Elijah", also by Mendelssohn, that we sang two years ago: "Hüter, ist die Nacht bald hin" (Watchman, will the night soon pass?). The choir's triumphant response - "Die Nacht ist vergangen" - is one of my favourite sections of the Lobgesang. I slip off the stage to listen from the front of the auditorium, taking the opportunity to record it. My batteries are almost flat and I am forced to make two takes. Splicing and editing is going to take some time but when it is done, I promise to post the final cut on YouTube and embed it on this site as well.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 3RD: Tonight is the first of two concerts, in Jerusalem's Henry Crown Symphony Hall. First, the Bach Magnificat, performed by three only of the choirs. Then, we are joined by the Kibbutz Artzi Choir for the Mendelssohn Symphony no. 2 - Lobgesang (Song of Praise). There is hardly a vacant place in the 750-seat auditorium and the applause at the end is loud and prolonged.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 4TH: Tonight's concert takes place at Tel Aviv's Performing Arts Centre, home of the Israel Opera. Here, too, we have an audience of several hundred. The concert doesn't sound as good to me as yesterday - possibly because the vastness of the stage makes it difficult for the various sections of the choir to hear one another and because of the distance between the conductor and the choir. However, at least we have chairs to sit on when we are not singing, unlike the previous evening, when we were crowded together on tribunes imediately behind the orchestra. (The seating arrangements of a full symphony orchestra are such that the sopranos are always directly behind the brass and percussion sections, and while perspex acoustic barriers are placed between them and the string section in front of them, we are exposed to the full body of sound - which, in the case of the Mendelssohn, is very, very loud!)
Still, I am told that the sound out front is much better than it seems to us, on the stage - and here too, the applause is enthusiastic. So that's all right then.
The concert starts right on time (they are fussier about that in Tel Aviv) and finishes at 22:10. By 22:25, we are on the coach, heading back to Jerusalem. This coming Sunday, there will be no rehearsal. We have earned a holiday
. Next Thursday, we shall meet again. I wonder what our next project will be...6月8日 The King is in the Altogether (literally)Last week, I went to see Purcell's opera, Dido and Aeneas, at the Israel Opera in Tel Aviv. Well, no - that's only half true. I certainly went with the expectation of seeing Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. What I actually saw was a complete travesty. This was not Dido and Aeneas, it was not Purcell, it wasn't even opera. This was a co-production of the Berlin Staatsoper and the Sasha Waltz Dance Company. But again, that's only half the truth. In fact, it was a contemporary "dance" production by the choreographer and stage director, Sasha Waltz, onto which Purcell's opera had been tacked on. The production started with fully dressed dancers (I say fully dressed, but that is a matter of interpretation, since, for the most part, they were clad in semi-diaphanous shmattes) diving into a huge aquarium and swimming around in a kind of underwater ballet. This, in itself, could have been quite pleasing aesthetically, although it was difficult to see what in the world it could have to do with the plot of the opera. The total irrelevance was compounded by the fact that when the swimmers/dancers emerged from the water, they proceeded to strip off in full view of the audience. I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that they were facing the rear of the stage, so we were spared the experience of Full Frontal Nudity. However, given the complete irrelevance of the fish tank, it is hard to see what the sight of exposed buttocks was supposed to contribute to the operatic experience...
There then followed several minutes of rhymed spoken dialogue, in English, which, despite the fact of this being my mother-tongue, I would have found unintelligible, were it not for the surtitles, due to the fact that it was all pronounced phonetically (eg. spear, pronounced as spe-ar). Why? I have no idea.
Finally, we got to the opera itself. I thought that now, at least, I would be able to sit back and enjoy the singing. How wrong I was! The singers were accompanied by dancers, in such a way that the sung characters were accompanied by dancing "doubles". In the case of Dido herself, she was not merely doubled but tripled, since two dancers represented her ambivalent feelings. Again, not a totally ridiculous idea, but why then was it necessary for the singers themselves to accompany their singing with ridiculous, jerky, semaphore-like arm movements? Were they trying to translate the words of the songs into Sign Language for the Deaf? Why would deaf people go to the opera anyway? Isn't the whole point supposed to be the musical experience, for which the faculty of hearing is, one would imagine, a sine qua non? In short, the choreography distracted - and thereby detracted - from the music.
We were also subjected to a "comic" scene of spoken dialogue which appears nowhere in the opera, in which an androgynous character, played by a man but dressed (more or less) like a woman, drilled what appeared to be a group of escaped Bedlamites in some strange choreography. The significance of this scene totally eluded me. It was, I suppose, mildly amusing, but totally irrelevant to the plot.
After the performance, there was a "talkback" between the audience and the participants. When I raised the subject of the irrelevant and therefore needless nudity, I was asked "What is your problem with nudity? It is the most natural state there is." (If it is so natural, why were we all clothed, including the actor?) And there you have it, the intellectual arrogance of the perpetrators of this outrage. I somehow have a problem with nudity. I can't understand the director's concept. And it is precisely this sort of arrogance which causes audiences and critics alike to fall victim to what I call "The Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome". People don't like to be thought unsophisticated or provincial. They don't like to admit to a failure to grasp the director's "concept." That accounts for such descriptions in music and theatre critics' reviews as "stunning" to describe the production. Stunning, it certainly was. I was very definitely stunned - with horror! I do not have a problem with nudity. I have a problem with irrelevant nudity, whose only purpose seems to be to provoke an audience reaction and grab newspaper headlines. If there had been a nude love scene between Dido and Aeneas, I might not have been thrilled about it - this is, after all, a Baroque opera - but it would at least have been relevant. After I returned home, still seething with indignation, I visited the Israel Opera website and discovered that the giant fish tank was somehow supposed to represent the sea which Aeneas had crossed to reach Dido, and the discovery of the sunken city of Carthage. My uncle, who actually enjoyed the performance, having read the programme notes in advance, and having therefore known what to expect, thinks I should have read about the production first and then I would have enjoyed it more. Well, I'm sorry, but in my opinion, if one has to read the programme notes in order to understand the director's so-called "concept", then the said director has failed lamentably in conveying his or her concept to the audience.
Was there anything about the production that I liked? Well, the orchestra of the Akademie für Alte Musik from Berlin wasn't bad, nor was the choir, but, as I said, the ridiculous so-called dancing (consisting for the most part, of ugly, jerky movements that made one wonder if the dancers were suffering from convulsions) made it impossible to concentrate on the music. Aeneas had a good voice and so too did Dido, but she suffered from a bad habit of swallowing the ends of her phrases. To put it bluntly, what I saw epitomised everything I detest about modern opera productions. I am so sick and tired of the way megalomaniac stage directors impose their crazy "concepts", and, in their infernal arrogance, try to make the audience feel that they are somehow deficient in understanding or in sophistication, if they fail to grasp what, in the director's opinion, should be obvious to anyone but a child.
Israeli audiences are actually very polite. I suspect that the reaction of a La Scala audience to such a travesty as I witnessed last week, would have been boos, whistles and catcalls. As for the New York Metropolitan - I doubt that this production would even have made it to the stage. Well, I know myself to be an extremely intelligent person, in no way lacking in sophistication. I therefore have no hesitation in declaring that, as far as the Sasha Waltz production of Dido and Aeneas is concerned, the King was very definitely in the Altogether - literally!
11月3日 Musical MemoriesGrowing up in England, one of my favourite radio programmes was the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" hosted by the late Roy Plumley. According to Wikipedia, the programme was first broadcast in January 1942 and is still going strong, 65 years later, making it the longest running programme in the history of radio. The format of the programme was simple. Each week, there was a celebrity guest who would be invited to choose the 8 discs they would take with them to a desert island, always assuming, as Mr. Plumley would explain, that they had a gramophone with them. (As nobody ever stopped to consider the unlikelihood of there being an electrical power source on the island, I can only assume that they were thinking of the old wind-up gramophones.) Around the guest's musical choices, would be woven the story of their life.
On Israel Radio's Kol Hamusika channel, there used to be a programme based on a similar concept, called "My Concert", although it was a two hour programme and there was no mention of desert islands. But the basic idea was the same - that one's life is punctuated by musical landmarks.
Not being a celebrity, I have never been invited to take part in either programme, but the question continues to gnaw at me. If I were to be marooned on a desert island, which pieces of music would I choose to have with me? Not an easy question. There are so many.
Take Beethoven, for starters. One of the earliest pieces I remember is the Egmont Overture. We had an old radiogram, inherited, I think, from my maternal grandfather, and a collection of old 78 r.p.m records. "Egmont" was one of them. I used to listen to it and wave my arms around, pretending I was conducting. Yes, I think "Egmont" would definitely be on my desert island list.
Beethoven being my favourite composer, I am going to have to be very strict with myself here and limit myself to no more than 2 pieces by him. Otherwise, no other composer will get a look in. Which is to be the second piece? I toyed with the idea of Symphony no. 9 - having performed it, with the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at last year's Independence Day Concert. It sounds magnificent - such power and optimism - but believe me, it's hellish to sing, especially if you happen to be a soprano. No, on the whole, I think my second Beethoven piece is going to be the 6th Symphony - the Pastoral. I particularly love the depiction of the storm.
Number 3, number 3, which is it to be? I was introduced to opera quite early in life, without realising it. My father used to sing bits of operatic arias, but with funny words of his own. For example, I remember:
"I am a little tiger cat, And I am getting rather fat, For my stripes have grown so tight, so tight, That I have to take them off each night, take them off each night," sung to the tune of "Bella figlia dell' amore". And there was a version of "Ah! che la morte" from the last act of "Il Trovatore" which began with the words: "Why are you calling me? 'Cos I wanted to tell you something."
However, I was also exposed to "real" opera. The BBC (again!) used to have "Schools' Broadcasts" including various music programmes - "Time and Tune", "Rhythm and Melody" and so on. Each school term, the programmes would centre around a single topic and one term, that topic was Smetana's opera "The Bartered Bride". Round about that time, I received my first LP, a gift from my mother - extracts from "The Bartered Bride" sung in English by the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (later known as the English National Opera). I still have that record and in addition, when I eventually visited Prague (many years later), I bought a triple CD album of the whole opera, with a Czech cast and orchestra. In my opinion, the overture and opening chorus of "The Bartered Bride" is one of the most joyous pieces of music in existence. When I listen to it, my feet start tapping and I feel tears of pure happiness. So - that's definitely coming with me to my desert island.
Proceeding to number 4. When my mother was bedridden with her final illness, someone gave her an LP with the Bruch No. 1 and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, played by Yehudi Menuhin. There was also an LP of Elgar's Enigma Variations which she loved very much. I'm going to have to choose between these three.
I think, on the whole, I'm going for the Elgar. The two violin concertos I like, although neither of them can lay claim to being my favourite. There are several violin concertos I prefer, among them the Tchaikovsky, which I discovered much later in life, the Castelnuovo-Tedesco Second Violin Concerto ("The Prophets"), or even the Sibelius, in D Minor, with its chilling opening evocation of grey northern skies. I must also bear in mind that, at least as far as Mendelssohn is concerned, there are quite a few pieces I like more than I like the Violin Concerto. Fingal's Cave I love, as well as the incidental music to "A Midsummer Night's Dream," (the first Shakespeare play I ever saw, at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London - and to this day, my favourite of all the Bard's works). Then, too, a serious candidate for my favourite work by Mendelssohn, must be "Elias", which I have performed, with the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir, more than any other piece of music, over the last few years - 5 times in Israel and 4 times in Germany (see previous blogs).
Tchaikovsky was bound to be one of my desert island choices and, while I very much like the Violin Concerto and absolutely love the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, I'm going to go for one of the ballets here. It's a hard choice. I remember my father taking me to a Saturday afternoon matinee performance of Swan Lake at Covent Garden, where we sat in the second row (much too close, in my opinion). I love the haunting Swan Theme. I also love the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty. But, looking at the ballets as a whole, music-wise, I think The Nutcracker has to be my favourite, with a wealth of lovely pieces - the Dance of the Snowflakes, the Waltz of the Flowers, the (rather hackneyed) Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and (my personal favourite), the Pas de Deux of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier (nowadays, often performed by the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker Prince). So, number 5 is going to be The Nutcracker.
Number 6 is going to take us back to the world of opera. Here again, it's going to be a difficult choice. The very first opera I ever saw, in its entirety, was Turandot, broadcast on Israel TV back in the days when there was only one channel, if I remember rightly - or at most two - and with a simultaneous stereo broadcast on the radio. It was broadcast over two evenings, the first two acts one night, and then the last act, a week later. The cast included Eva Marton as the eponymous heroine, José Carreras (my favourite tenor, ever since) as Calaf and Katia Ricciarelli as the unfortunate slavegirl, Liu. They say a woman always has a soft spot for her first lover. I certainly retain a soft spot for my first opera - and for Puccini - and so Turandot remains a prime candidate for the title of my favourite opera, but bothTosca and La Bohème can certainly give it a close run. However, all in all, I'm going to go for Madama Butterfly and the love duet at the end of Act 1, "Bimba, non piangere".
Or am I? Because there's another love duet I can't get out of my mind, and that's the Reconciliation Duet from the end of Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria. Monteverdi is one of my very favourite composers and although later Baroque music is often perceived as over-stylised and lacking in emotion, this accusation can in no way be levelled at Monteverdi. There are scenes in this opera where the emotion is as raw as in any verismo masterpiece and the knot in the pit of my stomach and the lump in my throat, when Penelope finally recognises her long-lost husband are no less than when the fragile Mimi expires or when Cio-Cio San plunges the knife into her breast. So, which is it to be? The youthful passion of Butterfly and Pinkerton, the touching adoration of the young bride, doomed to be betrayed? Or the tried and tested love of the mature couple, parted for so long, reunited at last and (hopefully) never to be parted again.
Come to think of it - why not both? This is my desert island, so I'm going to allow myself ten pieces, rather than eight. (Yes, I jolly well can. This is my blog, and, as I stated in my very first entry, I can do what I like in it!). Besides, the BBC now has a new series, called "Private Passions", where the celebrity guests get to choose 8 or 9 pieces - and there have been cases where they got away with ten! Right then! I'll have both, and that's my 6th and 7th choices out of the way.
I must have some Händel. Growing up in the UK, naturally I heard a lot of his music, especially round about Christmas and whatever piece I choose, the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Messiah is going to give it a run for its money, but, in the end, I can't remain indifferent to the fact that the first oratorio I ever sang, with the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir, still in its infancy almost 2 decades ago, was Judas Maccabaeus. So that's going to be my eighth choice. If I had to choose one piece from this magnificent oratorio, I think it would be the tenor aria "Sound an Alarm" and the following chorus "We Hear, We Hear". The aria flows smoothly into the chorus, so it's really like one single piece. Ah, who can beat the rousing sound of baroque trumpets in full cry?
Time for number 9. Schubert. An die Musik. It says it all, sums up exactly what music means to me, its power to lift the spirit and to transport the listener far away from the sorrows and cares of this world to a better place. And as for the performer - obviously Kathleen Ferrier. As it happens, she was my mother's favourite singer and, possibly because the same illness killed both of them, is inseparable in my mind from my mother.
Finally, for number 10, it's back to my roots. Kol Nidrei. Not the Bruch version for cello, but sung, in Hebrew, as it has been for centuries. Sung as it was in the Central Synagogue in London, when I was a little girl and would sneak into the men's section to sit with my father and creep under his tallit (prayer-shawl) - or, as we used to call it in the Ashkenazi pronunciation we used back then, tallis. I would like it performed by the same man who served there as chazan (cantor) in my day, the Rev. Simon Hass.
There you have it then. Ten essential pieces of music to take with me to my desert island. And with them, it would be no desert.
10月10日 Sweet HarmonyYesterday, I spent the day in Eden.
Eden on the Water, that is - an events venue in Kibbutz Nir Eliyahu. For those of you who are not familiar with the geography of Israel (the majority, I suspect
 ), Nir Eliyahu is close to the city of Kfar Saba, in the Sharon Plain. And the event - a nationwide conference of choirs, organized by Hallel, the Israel Choral Organization.700 singers from 21 choirs came together for a day devoted entirely to making music - in this case, Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore K.339. Beautiful music in a beautiful setting - a huge hall with a Scandinavian-style wooden roof and glass walls on three sides, surrounded by well-tended gardens, with pools and waterfalls (hence the name, Eden-al-hamayim, Eden on the Water). During the breaks between sessions, we picnicked in the gardens and the birds joined their voices to ours.
Not for the first time, I found myself marvelling at the power of music to banish care. For eight or nine hours, I completely lost myself in what must surely be the noblest of all arts, that art to which the German Romantic poet Franz Schober attributed the power, in times of darkness, to unlock the Heaven of better times and carry the listener to a better world. Those of you familiar with the lieder of another Franz (Schubert) know the poem as An die Musik, D.547.
It's always hard to come back down to earth from the abode of the Muses. But I still have something to look forward to. This coming Saturday night, which also marks the end of the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah and of the Succot (Tabernacles) holiday, my choir - the Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir - will be closing the Abu Ghosh Vocal Music Festival with a performance of the aforesaid Vespers, together with Vivaldi's Gloria. After that, it really is back to the humdrum routine of daily life. Well, for another fortnight, that is. Because at the end of October, the choir is off to Germany for a concert tour.
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