by dan pine
staff writer
Germany, France and Italy had centuries to develop their distinctive musical styles; Israel, only decades. Who could blame the Jewish state if its place in the classical music world is not yet fully fixed?
As an aesthetic work in progress, Israel has inspired plenty of good music since its founding, and no other entity has championed it like the Milken Archive of Jewish Music. The label has released several CDs worth of recordings, spanning the Jewish music world.
“In Celebration of Israel” is a Milken compilation of music by European-born Jewish composers, some of whom had visited Israel or pre-state Palestine, all of whom sought to consecrate the Holy Land in music. The results are mixed.
The CD kicks off with Kurt Weill’s dense and dissonant 1947 arrangement of “Hatikvah,” one of the CD’s few adventurous pieces. Most of the music in this set is firmly lodged in the late Romantic tradition, safely tonal, with occasional brashness standing in for complexity.
The music of Julius Chajes stands guilty as charged. The composer likes to employ broad orchestral sonorities, liberally basing some of his melodies on liturgical trope. So far so good, but pieces like the “Hebrew Suite” or “Adarim” (which features Cantor Benzion Miller) come off like outtakes from Ernest Gold’s “Exodus” soundtrack. One is left a bit shaken but not stirred.
Chajes redeems himself with “Old Jerusalem,” a melancholy but gorgeous song for soprano and orchestra. Reminiscent of Mahler’s “Das Leid von der Erde,” the piece boasts niggun influences, concluding with an enchanting tarantella.
Another screechy piece is Sholom Secunda’s “Yom B’Kibbutz” from 1952. Secunda is best known for his pop tune “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” and he was a staple of New York’s Yiddish Theater. As a contemporary of George Gershwin, he here tries his hand at his own Rhapsody in Blue and White, but cannot pull it off. The piece is clangorous and uninventive.
Max Helfman’s six-part “Israel Suite” (1949) is one of the CD’s better works. At turns languid and up-tempo, the piece courses with youthful energy (having the Vienna Choir Boys singing it doesn’t hurt).
Composer Herbert Fromm escaped to America from Nazi-occupied Austria, but he, too, looked eastward toward pre-state Israel. His “Pioneers (Halutzim)” from 1971 tries to capture that “How the West Was Won” spirit, with a touch of pseudo-Shostakovich thrown in.
He also contributes his “Yemenite Cycle” from 1961, clearly the CD’s finest work. What Canteloube did for the songs of the Auvergne, Fromm does for Yemenite Jewish musical tradition. Scored for soprano, flute, harp and percussion, this cycle is closer to pure music than anything else on the set. Most of the works on the CD are too stodgily programmatic to bear repeated listening.
The CD, like all Milken recordings, boasts excellent liner notes. And if you don’t feel the need to know Sholom Secunda’s life story, the CD booklet’s exhaustive history of “Hatikvah” is certainly worth a read.
The mission of the Milken Archive –– preserving and distributing the work of Jewish composers –– remains vitally important, even if some of that music doesn’t measure up to the best of the best. “In Celebration of Israel” may not be worth shelling out $20, but like any effort to protect the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, it’s nice to know it’s there.
For further information on “In Celebration of Israel” (The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music), go to www.milkenarchive.org.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California