Hagai Yodan brings bold vision to Jerusalem Piano Festival’s opening concert

Hagai Yodan comes across as a driven character. As a concert pianist who has built up quite a reputation for himself over the past couple or so decades, that is an attribute that surely helps to keep him on the artistic track and further his ongoing burgeoning career. 

Yodan will no doubt impart that mindset and professionalism in his forthcoming contribution to this Piano Festival, which takes place under the stewardship of founder and perennial artistic director Prof. Michael Wolpe at the Jerusalem Theater, November 12-15.

As per Wolpe’s egalitarian all-embracing credo, the program covers numerous genre and style bases. The four-day agenda features both symphonic and chamber orchestras, with the expansive purview seeping into the realms of jazz, world music, and even charts from more commercially oriented climes. 

As per the festival’s titular instrumental manifesto, the common denominator between all 17 concerts is the fact that there is a solo pianist in the thick of the onstage action. Yodan will certainly put in his shift for the cause when he appears at the Jerusalem Theater on the opening day of the festival.

He will share the spotlight with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and conductor Roi Azulay, sandwiched between three works by Camille Saint-Saëns, with Malachi Rosenbaum in the ivory tickling role. Each year – this is the 11th edition – Wolpe dedicates the program to some giant or other of the classical music continuum. This time, the oeuvre of the French Romantic era composer got the nod.

A wide range of styles 

Yodan certainly fits the Wolpe eclectic line of thought, and typically his spot sees him collaborating with Azulay and the JSO in the premiere of Concerto for Piano, Computerized Technology and Orchestra by 69-year-old Israeli composer Amnon Wollman. That’s quite a technological – analog and digital – spread for a single work, but a perusal of Yodan’s bio to date reveals the 38-year-old pianist has been dipping his nimble fingers into all manner of disciplinary and stylistic pies for some time now. 

Keying his name into a YouTube search unearths dozens of video clips of Yodan’s synergies with an astonishing range of contemporary composers and performers. He is clearly determined to do his bit to support the development and dissemination of current-day Israeli classical music, with the odd foray into other areas of sonic endeavor. The Wollman curtain raiser is just the latest in the growing list of homegrown scores Yodan has helped to push into public view. The intergenerational roster of local writers who have worked with Yodan includes Dina Smorgonskaya, Daniela Cohn-Levitas, hale and hearty 97-year-young Tzvi Avni, Eitan Steinberg, Tsippi Fleischer, and Shai Cohen, to mention but a few.

“I GOT my love of Israeli music from my mother’s side,” Yodan advises when we meet up at his loft-style abode in southern Tel Aviv. I soon hear about more complex and colorful layers of that side of the family.

“My maternal grandfather was a Palmahnik, and he was in espionage, long before they thought up the term ‘mista’arvim’ [IDF and Israel Police personnel who operate undercover within Arab communities] as we know them today.” There is also the intriguing matter of his grandmother, who, Yodan says, was a well-known opera singer in her native Holland and also made a name for herself here as a jazz singer.

Sounds like some bona fide Israeli salt of the earth filtered into Yodan’s genes. He also began crafting his own pathway through the Israeli musical undergrowth from a very young age. “I basically stopped studying piano when I was 16. I didn’t attend any academies or take on higher musical education. I learned from being out there, in the field,” he declares. 

I suggested that may have been his own form of teenage rebellion. “I don’t think it was about rebelling,” he chuckles. “It was really the realization that continuing with formal musical education would have done me more harm than good.” He is not a fan of the higher education system or of many of the pianists around today. “Sadly, the academies are a bit like a conveyor belt. I am sorry to say that I can take 95% of academy graduates and just do copy-paste of their content. I am bothered that I don’t see many musicians who took a different route.”Meanwhile, Yodan took matters very much into his own hands. “I was always initiating new projects as a freelancer. I initiated concerts and concert series. I initiated activities with all kinds of people.”

There was also some help from like-minded folk on offer. “I worked with people who are very dear to me, like [Israeli Opera conductor] Danny Ettinger and [lauded opera singer] Sharon Rostorf-Zamir, who were already at more advanced stages of their careers. They believed in me and allowed me to work with them.”

Yodan says he was drawn to the sounds emanating from this fathomless, multi-stratified melting pot of ours here from the get-go. It has become a passion for him as he continues to mine the sumptuous seams of the creative endeavor of composers who grab onto the cultural shirttails of dozens of ethnic groups, each with its compelling folklore. 

As such, the pianist seemed like as good a person as any to ask about his take on the ins and outs of, and possibly get something akin to a definitive handle on, what Israeli music really is. If I was looking to get some neat pigeonhole overview of the classical sounds that emanate from this diminutive tract of land at the juncture of three continents, I was to be sorely – but not quite unexpectedly – disappointed.

“‘Israeli music’ is a very abstract term,” he sagely posits, adding some mitigating peripheral reasoning. “Music as an art, in general, is abstract. You can’t see it or touch it.” Still, the man is heavily invested in the sphere and has something of value to say about it. 

“Israeli music is based on the ingathering of the exiles.” That overarching ambit was further bolstered by the sounds immigrant composers encountered and became enchanted with after making aliyah. “The Eretz Israel music, the Mediterranean philosophy formed by people like [German-born] Paul Ben-Haim, [Latvian-born] Marc Lavry, and [Hungarian-born Alexander Uriyah] Boskovich, which was continued by Tzvi Avni and his colleagues, had a goal. Those composers wanted to integrate the local Arabic music and arrive at a synthesis. You hear that a lot in their music.”

That gradually petered out. “You can understand that,” Yodan continues. “Israeli composers wanted to connect with global trends. And they traveled to, for example, the United States and took on influences from composers like [Aaron] Copland, and some who went to Europe were impacted by people like [now-96-year-old Hungarian composer Gyorgy] Kurtag. They wanted to go to the cutting edge.”

Yodan also puts Wollman in the upper echelons of the Israeli musical hierarchy. “Amnon is like Wolpe in terms of his ability to listen. His music, including this work, has a very delicate blend of the romanticism and the ultramodernism of electronica. The concerto was written for piano, orchestra, and computer,” Yodan explains. “There are romantic melodies,” he adds, which ties in nicely with Wolpe’s choice of thematic festival composer. “And [conductor] Roi [Azulay] and Dor Fischer on computer are simply wonderful.”

While culture consumers largely prefer their entertainment to follow the path of the straight and narrow, music, like any field of creative pursuit, must evolve and venture into uncharted and sometimes choppy waters. The Wollman slot appears to embrace that while maintaining a steady grip on the art form’s timeline.

“It’s a fun work to play, and it’s fun to listen to,” Yodan smiles. Who could ask for more?

For tickets and more information about the Piano Festival: https://www.jerusalem-theatre.co.il/magazine/PianoFestival2024Eng