The music director of southwest Washington’s Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is also the principal guest conductor of Israel’s Raanana Symphonette. Maestro Salvador Brotons, now celebrating his 20th season in Vancouver, conducted in Raanana last week on Feb. 17 and 19, and returns there within the month, to lead three concerts on March 9, 10 and 12.
On the phone from his room at the Sheraton in Raanana, the energetic Brotons enthused about his relationship with the Israeli orchestra: “It’s almost like a love affair!” he said.
Born in Barcelona, he is not Jewish, but he says he feels connected through his Catalan cultural identity to the Jewish people, both as music lovers and as people whose history involves being stateless and oppressed.
“I’m very sympathetic to the things the Jewish people have gone through,” he says. In addition to his multiple engagements in Raanana, Brotons has a date later this year to conduct the Kibbutz Orchestra.
Located about half an hour’s drive northeast of Tel Aviv, Raanana, like the Portland suburb of Vancouver, is high-tech country. Over half the musicians in the Raanana Symphonette were trained in Russia; the orchestra originated as part of the process of absorption of these new immigrants. Hebrew and Russian are the languages buzzing about in rehearsals. Brotons, who speaks neither Russian nor Hebrew, rehearses in the classic way: “I sing a lot. We use Italian terms. Music is an international language.”
Salvador Brotons was introduced to the Raanana Symphonette in 1999 by his friend, the Basque pianist Joaquin Achucarro, and it’s been a great relationship ever since.
“They keep calling!” he says with delight, and in turn, “I invited their concertmaster to solo in Vancouver a couple of times.”
His March concerts will have a Romeo & Juliet theme, with Tchaikovsky’s romantic tone poem, highlights from Prokofiev’s ballet, Bellini’s “Capulets & Montagues” overture, and a Chinese star-crossed lovers tale, the “Butterfly Lovers” violin concerto featuring the orchestra’s concertmaster, Nitai Zori.
Zori and his award-winning cellist twin brother, Hillel, are expected in Vancouver for a concert together next year. (Their sister, the violinist Carmit Zori, artistic director of the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, is known here for her appearances with Seattle Chamber Music Society.)
Brotons, who makes his home in Barcelona, also leads orchestras there and in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. He says his favorite place in Israel is “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! It’s just a phenomenal city!” He says he’s made a lot of friends in Israel, and is looking forward to introducing the country to his daughter when she joins him there in March.
The Raanana Symphonette’s Web site is a little, as they say in Israel, shvach (it could use some of that high-tech talent there), but there’s more about Salvador Brotons and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (not to be confused with the one in Vancouver, B.C.), at their attractive site, www.vancouversymphony.org.
A musical loop
