A fabulous musical week in Jerusalem
May 1, 2013

Last Tuesday and last night  were Hallel CHoir rehearsals.  I've sung with them on other stays here.  We rehearsed an Israeli folk song, Salomon Rossi's Boruch Hu, a drinking song by Mozart--lyrics in Hebrew--it sounds like a real German drinking song, and a South African round.  Rossi's music sounds typical of the Renaissance--he wrote for the court of the Duke of Mantua and also wrote liturgical music for the synagogue in the same style but in Hebrew; he was a contemporary of Monteverdi.

Thursday night we heard the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra perform Cherubini's Requiem in D Minor  for male choir and orchestra--quite lovely,  He wrote this for all male choir because he had been severely criticized by the Paris church for a previous mass because it featured a mixed chorus.

What we really were interested in was Shostakovich' Symphony 13, "Baba Yar" for bass soloist, male chorus, and orchestra.  Baba Yar is a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko--deals with Russian antisemitism (he is not Jewish) and Russian silence about the slaughter of Jews by Nazis at Baba Yar (Kiev).  There are 4 other movements wh/ are seemingly disparate themes but deal with freedom and courage and human fortitude.

The second movement presents a personification of humor whom despots try to silence, kill, stop from dancing,, imprison but can not, "Glory to humor!  He is a courageous fellow!"

In the Store, the third poem is about something as mundane as women in a store,, "They wait silently, the family's kind gods, As they clutch in their hands The hard earned money,,,They are our honor and our conscience.  They have mixed concrete And Plowed and reaped.  They have endure everything,,..,Everything on earth is possible for them, They have been given so much strength."

4,  Fears--new fears arise after the old ones die.

5.  called "Career" speaks about Galileo's persecution by the church--career involves a hypothetical man who didn't come to his defense because "he had a family And he, stepping into a carriage with his wife, Having accomplished his betrayal, Considered himself advancing his career,"  Poet also mentions Shakespeare , Pasteur, Newton, and Tolstoy.,  "Those who cursed them are forgotten.  But the accursed are remembered well."

Anyway it was a wonderful experience.

Saturday night was Live at the MET--Handel's Julius Caesare--also playing simultaneously in Sebastopol. Wonderful performance--especially after you get used to big hairy men having femaloid voices--counter tenors--three of them.

Monday was a free chamber music concert by Voice of Israel radio--repertoire for 2 pianos.

Tuesday Stan heard a jazz concert at the American Commerce Center while I went to rehearsal.

And I'll write later about tomorrow's concert,.
Roberta