ISRAELI MUSIC FESTIVALJerusalem TheaterSeptember 18

One of the more promising younger composers today – Talia Amar – opened the Israeli Music Festival on Monday with a concise and complex For Orchestra 1.

It is very much influenced by Stravinsky, but it is also interesting how one of the main motifs of the piece sounds almost like an allusion to the blowing of the shofar in a holy convocation – highly befitting at this time of the year.

Next, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra played Oded Zehavi’s Omer (5 love songs) for orchestra and mezzo-soprano, sung by Reut Ventorero. She is an exceptional singer, with a very warm, accurate mezzo-soprano.

Zehavi’s Omer is a highly communicative piece refraining from the harsh dissonances of modernism. The orchestration was colorful and expressive, creating different textures and effects. It offered a very clever and variegated approach to the text, sometimes musically depicting it. For example with How Can One Lonesome Bird Sing given to the flute, other times, as done by Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, capturing the mood or atmosphere of the text with Arabic music in this case.

Daedalus by Leon Schidlowsky was perhaps an antithesis to Zehavi’s more communicative vein. Daedalus is ultimately a tragic piece with the timpani beating like a funeral march and a certain predominance to the downward glissandos. All seem to portray Daedalus’s lament over his son Icarus, who flew too high to the sun and fell to his death.

The evening concert ended with Josef Tal’s 1st Piano Concerto. Completed in 1946, it hasn’t been performed in Israel since 1949. It is a masterpiece of modernism and originality by one of the founding fathers of Israeli art music. It relies on post-expressionism and extended harmony – very much influenced by the German zeitgeist of the 1930s. Pianist Ofra Itzhaki played it in an impressively masterful manner.

The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra is a well-rehearsed musical body, easily able to deal with such challenging works. Nimrod Pfeffer conducted the evening with great efficiency and a very friendly approach to the orchestra members – in stark contrast to the tyrannical conductors of the past.

Overall, the festival unfolds a fascinating canvas of Israeli composers, from the 1930s to ’40s  to recent years. It will no doubt offer a rich and rewarding experience to those who attend.

The Israeli Music Festival runs through September 22, with dozens of concerts nationwide.