76 years of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

Friday, May 14, 1948. The final hours of the British Mandate in Palestine ticked away. The mandate was set to expire at midnight. David Ben-Gurion gave orders for the ceremony to mark the birth of the Jewish state. He decided to make the historic declaration just before Shabbat came in.

In the fevered atmosphere of the time, Ben-Gurion’s overriding concern was security. If the location of the ceremony became public knowledge, a single terrorist bomb could wipe out the entire embryonic government of the new state, together with most of its notables. So it was not until the middle of that Friday morning that officials began telephoning the 200 people who had been selected to attend the ceremony. Only then were they told that it was to take place in Tel Aviv’s Municipal Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, at exactly 4 p.m.

Another 50 or so people also received a call that morning, instructing them to be present – the members of what was then known as the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, comprised of Jewish musicians – for by 1948 the national orchestra had become so identified with the Jewish people that an occasion of such historic significance was unthinkable without their presence.

ON MAY 15, 1948, the orchestra became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO), and its relationship with the people of Israel has a deserved place in the reflections about nationhood, identity, and independence that mark Independence Day.

As the National Council and the guests made their way to the ground floor area, the orchestra assembled in the museum’s upper gallery. At exactly 4 p.m., Ben-Gurion rapped his gavel. This was the prearranged signal for the orchestra to strike up “Hatikvah.” Unfortunately, someone missed the cue, and from above came only silence. Never one to lack initiative, Ben-Gurion promptly launched his uncertain voice into the anthem; rather raggedly, the other members of the People’s Council joined in.

But someone in the hall did respond to that gavel – a young radio engineer, Ralf Hellinger, who had been running the underground radio station of the Hagana, the clandestine Jewish self-defense force. Tipped off by American journalists about what was to take place, Hellinger had arrived at the Tel Aviv museum that afternoon carting two of his cumbersome 78 rpm recording machines.

After proclaiming the new State, Ben-Gurion invited the members of the People’s Council, one by one, to sign the document. As the last one put his name on the scroll, to thunderous applause, the orchestra finally made its presence known, and brought the proceedings to a close with “Hatikvah.”

The audio recordings of the events of that historic Friday afternoon have been preserved in the archives of the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, which today operates under the brand name Kan.

When the musicians assembled at the Municipal Museum that Friday afternoon, they did so as the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. By the time they played “Hatikvah” they had become the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO).

Give or take a few months, the orchestra itself was 12 years old by that time. How had it come into existence?

IN THE early 1930s, Germany’s increasingly harsh race laws roused the eminent violinist, Bronislaw Huberman, to a fury. In articles and letters to the newspapers, he berated German intellectuals for failing to make a stand for freedom of cultural expression; and tried to mobilize world opinion against the Nazis’ persecution of Jewish writers, artists, and musicians. Finally, Huberman decided to do something practical to help those of his own profession who were being denied the right to perform inside the Third Reich.

He began to persuade first-rank Jewish musicians to emigrate to the Land of Israel, known then as Palestine. Against all the odds, he succeeded in setting up a viable orchestra, largely comprised of immigrant musicians. Even more remarkably, Huberman was able to persuade Arturo Toscanini, possibly the most eminent conductor in the world at that time, to conduct the opening concert of the orchestra.

“I am doing this for humanity,” the maestro declared.

The Unfinished by Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was one of the two major works included in that first public performance by the orchestra on December 26, 1936. Present were the British high commissioner Lord Peel, Vera and Chaim Weizmann, Paula and David Ben-Gurion, and a vast audience, which included Signora Toscanini.

The first years were not easy. Not only had the 75 players brought a wide diversity of styles with them, but the diversity of languages added further difficulties. Despite the problems, they quickly coalesced into an orchestra that renowned conductors were happy to lead, among others Bernardino Molinari (1880-1952), William Steinberg (1889-1978), and even Britain’s distinguished Malcolm Sargent (1895-1967). The version of “Hatikvah” currently used by the orchestra is based on the orchestration by Sargent in those early days.

While recognized remarkably early as a first-class orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic is today world-class. This transformation was due to two towering figures in its history – famed conductors Leonard Bernstein and Zubin Mehta. The first a Jew, the latter a gentile, these two men share equal credit for forging the unique symbiosis between the orchestra and the people of Israel that is the outstanding characteristic of the IPO.

No other top-flight orchestra in the world is so closely identified with its constituency as the Israel Philharmonic. City orchestras in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe; national orchestras in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and elsewhere, none are woven, as the IPO is, into the very fabric of their audience’s lives. Where the Israeli people have gone, there has been the orchestra, giving musical expression to the great events in the nation’s story.

BERNSTEIN ARRIVED in Israel in October 1948 to open the first orchestral season in the State of Israel. The season included six special concerts for service men and women – the most spectacular in the town of Beersheba just captured from Egyptian troops. Braving bad roads, sand and dust, the orchestra traveled from Tel Aviv with their own piano and played their concert on a makeshift stage before a thousand-strong audience of troops.

That November, Bernstein broadcast from Israel to the United States.

“Last week,” he said, “we gave a concert in Jerusalem for soldiers only. Imagine 2,000 soldiers simultaneously given leave one morning in a city under siege!

“Imagine them crowding into the Edison Theatre, filling every nook, suspended literally from the roof, curled up on window sashes, packed into the aisles and staircases – all to hear a Brahms symphony.

“And at the end, the shouting and screaming was an almost unbearable tribute. Yes, the orchestra is the lifeblood of Israeli culture, and I am dedicated to the task of seeing it flourish.”

That was a commitment Bernstein honored to the full, in the years that followed.

An unforgettable concert during the Six Day War

TOWARD THE end of May 1967, with Israel’s Arab neighbors mobilizing on her borders, the distinguished foreign conductor, who had been engaged for the summer concert series, took fright and hurriedly departed.

In the middle of the six days of fighting that began on June 5, Mehta arrived from Europe in a plane otherwise filled with ammunition, joining Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré who were already performing with the orchestra. Close on their heels came Sir John Barbirolli and Bernstein.

In July, with Jerusalem once again united, an unforgettable concert was staged in the amphitheater on Mount Scopus. In the warm summer afternoon, before a packed audience that included then-prime minister Levi Eshkol and former prime minister Ben-Gurion, Bernstein conducted a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection symphony that lives in the memory of those present as an almost unbearably moving experience.

By this time, Mehta’s connection with the IPO was strong, forged in his first season with the orchestra in 1961.“When I came on to the stage for the second rehearsal,” he once recalled, “the players applauded.”

How a musician from India, coming to this group of Jewish musicians assembled from around the world, managed to ignite so extraordinary and lasting a chemistry is something of a mystery. Mehta himself sometimes ascribes it to the fact that he was a member of the Persian “Parsi” minority in his own country, although, he always adds: “The Parsis have never experienced racism like the Jews.”

In the heady days that followed the Six Day War – days that saw the marriage of Barenboim and du Pré in Jerusalem – Mehta alternated with Bernstein in conducting the IPO in a series of victory concerts. The opening of the 1968-69 season coincided with the announcement of Mehta’s appointment as musical director of the IPO, an appointment extended for life in 1981.

“I will stay for as long as the players want me,” declared maestro Mehta, in accepting the honor.It was under his directorship that the IPO achieved acknowledged world-class status. He melded the rich string sound that comes so naturally to European musicians with the special qualities of brass and woodwind that flourish in the United States.

Mehta provided the inspired leadership that united a body of musicians into a musical instrument that is greater than its parts. Above all, he cherished and fostered the unique relationship that has existed from the first between the orchestra and the people of Israel. Under the Indian Mehta’s baton, the IPO was transformed into the musical expression of the Israeli nation’s very identity. 