By Gigi Yellen-Cohen, JTNews Correspondent
Like this year’s abundant apples, the late-summer harvest of CDs from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music fills and overflows the shelf here at JTNews.
In this issue, we’ll introduce ourselves to five new releases with an eye toward to approach of Rosh Hashanah. In our next issue, we’ll focus especially on the Archive’s latest recordings featuring Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, as Maestro Schwarz and the Symphony begin the celebration of their 20th season together.
This fall, the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music completes its first year in a multi-year cycle of releasing recordings of the diverse music that represents American Jewish life. The discs are all commercial releases. For information about any of these recordings, visit www.milkenarchive.org or www.naxos.com.
The First S’lihot: The Entire Midnight Service According to Orthodox and Traditional Ritual. Doesn’t that title intrigue the seeker after some exotic, mysterious ritual? “The first” – does that mean the original? Is this an early-music effort? “Midnight” – that wondrous hour. “Orthodox” – isolated from its politics, the word looks positively Byzantine. In fact, whether this disc sounds exotic depends on what kind of Jewish you’re used to. Accompanied by the magnificent men’s voices of Neil Levin’s Schola Hebraeica in this two-disc set, Cantor Benzion Miller intones the impassioned prayers for the period of intensified soul-searching that begins at midnight on the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah. Selichot, meaning forgiveness prayers, gives voice to a Jew’s responsibility to come to terms with self, community, and God in the days before the Day of Judgment.
A powerful tenor, Cantor Miller, heir to a Hasidic family, serves a congregation in Brooklyn, but maintains a busy concert schedule, keeping alive the almost-operatic style of cantor/choir performance. Recorded in the grand acoustics of London’s West End Synagogue, accompanied by scholarly notes and translated texts, and performed with religious care, this is a recording that encourages the disaffected to appreciate, and the faithful to meditate. (Naxos American Classics 559428)
Cantor Benzion Miller: Cantorial Concert Masterpieces. Assorted supporting artists, including The Vienna Choir Boys and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, join Cantor Miller in this assortment of melodies which may feel traditional, but were actually composed. A listener who reads the copious biographical notes will learn a great deal about the people who created the unique art form of hazzanut, and whose compositional talents served it. Or, for that matter, still serve it. Most of the orchestral accompaniments to these performances are conducted by Elli Jaffe, music director of the Jerusalem Great Synagogue Choir, surely an oasis of survival for this art. (Naxos American Classics 559416)
Many surprising and beautiful musical discoveries await us with each new Milken Archive release. Nevertheless, there’s something unsettling about seeing one’s native religious music encased as a work of art. It’s not that the music isn’t deserving of the respectful treatment we grant to a great deal of other art music derived from other traditions; it’s not that the recording quality isn’t first-rate: it is. One hopes for a long shelf life, in many libraries worldwide, for this collection, both as a snapshot of where Jewish music is at this time, and as an inspiration for future composition and performance.
Ofer Ben-Amots: Celestial Dialogues; Hashkivenu-Song of the Angels; Shtetl Songs. Quite simply a revelation, this music by a 40-year-old Haifa-born composer trained in Europe and the U.S. is seductive from the first whispering notes. Like a book you don’t want to put down! “Hashkivenu” lifts two anonymous voices – ethereal soprano and countertenor – over the rest of the BBC Singers, heightening the otherworldly effect with bells and what sounds like a celesta but is credited as an organ; “Celestial Dialogues” joins the edgy contemporary clarinetist David Krakauer with Cantor Alberto Mizrachi, a concert tenor of prodigious ability, accompanied by the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra/National Orchestra of Catalonia conducted by Karl Anton Richenbacher, in music that both quotes, and looks back darkly on, the klezmer tradition. “Shtetl Songs” set half a dozen Yiddish songs for soprano and piano (a warm and tender Israeli soprano, Re’ut Ben-Ze’evi, accompanied by John Musto, an American composer). The drama on the disc is reserved for the last track: a setting of Psalm 81 for children’s choir with percussion, which anyone with a fondness for Bartok or the Bulgarian women’s vocal tradition will find irresistible. (Naxos American Classics 559421)
Yehudi Wyner: The Mirror; Passover Offering; Tants un Maysele. Classical clarinet virtuoso Richard Stoltzman solos in “The Mirror,” a suite from Wyner’s incidental music for the play by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It opens like a circus band and melts into tender chamber music, with an all-star ensemble including flutist Carol Wincenc and cellist Ronald Thomas (who played in the Seattle Chamber Music Festival this summer), singers with Met Opera credits, and the composer’s voice in a speaker’s moment. “Passover Offering” is a five-movement suite for clarinet, flute, cello and bass trombone, abstract and unmistakably evocative of Biblical cantillation. In “Tants un Maysele” (“dance and little story”), a violin, clarinet, cello and piano (the composer at the keyboard) spins what Wyner once thought of as straw – Eastern European Jewish folk motif – into the gold of sophisticated late-20th century chamber music. (Naxos American Classics 559423)