The recent coast-to-coast tour of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was one of the important events of the past musical season. Chemjo Vinavër, distinguished musical scholar and leader of the highly esteemed Vinaver Chorus, here discusses the orchestra’s musicianship and the repertoire of music it presented to the American public, in the context of its history and the special interest that attends the developing cultural institutions of the emerging Israeli society.
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Fifty-five concerts of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra—Israel’s most impressive item of “cultural export” to date—in American cities throughout the land have given us the opportunity to draw up a kind of trial balance on at least one major arm of culture in the Jewish state.
The first public appearances of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, in Carnegie Hall (January 13 and 14), were red-letter events, sold out in advance even at the increased prices for tickets. The orchestra had received high praise, but those grown skeptical of publicity paeans wondered. After all, the Israel Philharmonic is a young organization, and in its fourteen years of existence it has lived in continual crisis. It has never had a permanent conductor, and while this may develop an orchestra’s flexibility and adaptability, there is no substitute for an expert leader’s steady guidance.
Delightfully, most doubts were dispelled as soon as there issued forth the magnificent sound of the strings in the opening measures of the first concert. Unhappily, however, the program of the evening was hardly designed to enable any solid appraisal of the orchestra. With Serge Koussevitzky in charge of a predominantly Russian program (Prokofiev’s Fifth and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony), together with a brief selection from the First Symphony of the Israeli composer Ben Haim, one was practically assured of an expert reading of the scores executed with the virtuosity and polish of instrumental effects which is Mr. Koussevitzky’s hallmark. Beyond this one could discover only that the orchestra was capable of following the exacting demands of the American conductor with technical competence and cultivated musicianship.
The program of the second concert, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, promised a fuller revelation: the Mozart Symphony No. 36 (the “Linzer”), Schumann’s Second Symphony, and the “Song of Praise” for viola and orchestra by the Israeli composer Oedon Partos. Unfortunately, this last was replaced by Carlos Chavez’s “Sinfonia India” at the concert As against the first concert, the orchestra did not respond well to the conductor’s wishes, perhaps owing to his tendency to devote his main attention to the first violins at the expense of the other sections. Thus at times the required sforzandos and decrescendos were not provided unanimously by the entire body. More convincing than the somewhat pale rendition of the Mozart symphony was a vigorous performance of the “Sinfonia India” and a really rewarding rendition of the Schumann Second.
These concerts evoked extraordinary enthusiasm from those who had come primarily for the music as well as from those brought by sentimental or patriotic ardor. Generally, the orchestra’s technical and artistic standards are high, with its excellent string choir the strongest asset: the first violins are capable of an almost singing eloquence, and there is a noble sonority in the sound of its cello section and a nice quality to its woodwinds and brasses. As to its second violins and double basses, the impression received at both hearings was that they were of inadequate proportion to the string body.
Surprisingly, only a single, rather fleeting tribute was paid to Israeli music at the Israel Philharmonic’s first two New York concerts: Ben Haim’s “Psalm for Orchestra,” the slow movement of his First Symphony. Brief as it was, it proved an auspicious introduction to the composer’s orchestral works (some of his choral pieces had been heard here previously). Ben Haim is one of the foremost members of the “Eastern Mediterranean” school of composers in Israel, a group which aims to create music embodying indigenous qualities of the Oriental chant and expressive of the pastoral character of the Israeli landscape. Raised in the Western musical tradition (Ben Haim was originally born Paul Frankenburger in Germany, where he received his education and musical training), the composer has been searching for a link with the melodic heritage of the East. His “Psalm” employs elements of the prayer chant traditional with Persian Jews in the reciting of Psalm 121. The noble calm and beauty of this ancient melos manifested itself with the first sounding of the broad theme, played in unison by the strings. Both in his choice and in his discriminating treatment of this material, Ben Haim is guided by rare intuition, all the more remarkable in a newcomer to the melodic expression of the East. Much in the traditional manner of distributing the portions of a psalm between the prayer leader (baal tefillah) and the congregation, the first chanting each verse and the latter providing the responses, the composer has assigned the “chanting” of the theme to one part of the orchestra, while the other sections provide the accompaniment in the character of the murmured “responses,” with the quality of the latter vividly brought out by the woodwinds.
This piece with its fine restraint and lucid instrumentation should go a long way toward refuting the unfounded legend—current among less explorative composers—that the Semitic-Oriental chant is unsuited to polyphonic treatment. Music of this caliber, which so naturally absorbs and reflects the echoes of our musical past, indicates the road that may lead to a distinctive Israeli musical idiom. To be sure, it may take a good while for a spontaneous, authentic utterance to replace the conscious striving for continuity with our melodic heritage: but history teaches us to be patient.
In view of this promise, one cannot help voicing disappointment that more composers of Israel were not heard at the crucial first concerts, which naturally received the most extensive reviews, and on the basis of which the orchestra was evaluated. Having for years suffered the maudlin performances and recordings of imported “Israeli music,” with their gross misrepresentations of Israeli musical creativity, one had anticipated at last a fair sampling of the true home-grown product, authoritatively presented by the natural emissary of that music, Israel’s national orchestra. However, the powers that be (whoever they were) evidently had decided (possibly to cater to the presumed music prejudices of the critics) to remain within the bounds of the standard concert repertory. If so, they outmaneuvered themselves: to Olin Downes of the New York Times, the presence of the one brief snatch of Israeli music was “the most interesting fact of all about this concert.” And Virgil Thomson of the Herald Tribune asked: “Has Israel no confidence in its own conductors? Or in its own music? Whenever a French or British or Italian orchestra is heard in New York, its programs and its playing reflect musical attitudes a little different from ours. . . . Bringing a whole orchestra from Tel Aviv to America just to offer these excellent artists in their familiar repertory is surely carrying perfume to Paris. . . . I cannot believe that at home its programs and playing have not some special flavor of their own.”
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“Some special flavor of their own.” In music it is the same as elsewhere. It is not failing to be what we re not that we must fear, but rather failing to be what we were meant to be. Rabbi Meir of Apt said: “When in the world-to-come I face my Final Judge, I do not fear lest he reproach me: ‘Why haven’t you been Abraham our Patriarch?’ or ‘Why haven’t you been Moses our Teacher?’ I only fear that he might ask me, ‘Why haven’t you been Rabbi Meir of Apt?’”
Actually, it was rather close to this spirit that the idea of “an orchestra of one’s own” was originally conceived. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra began, quite properly, as a Utopian dream. Its founder, Bronislaw Huberman, the distinguished violinist who died in Switzerland in 1947, envisioned this orchestra as a cultural emissary rather than a mere instrument for serving the musical needs of its country. “Some day,” he wrote in his outline of the project, “I hope to send an artistic message abroad from here.”
Huberman was himself no political Zionist: what first suggested the idea of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra to him was the passionate devotion to music he encountered in Palestine while on a concert tour of the Near East. Not that he was unaccustomed to the most extravagant public acclaim: Brahms had hailed him as a genius at the time he was a thirteen-year-old prodigy, and later the musical world everywhere followed suit. Yet the musical enthusiasm of the Yishuv surpassed all this by far. I remember a Huberman concert before a typical Palestine audience during the season of 1927-28. The concert took place in a barn-like structure, carrying the ambitious title of “Exhibition Hall,” on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The audience, many of them halutzim in their blue shirts, filled it to the last corner, and literally hung from the rafters and stood on the roof. The heat was unbearable, yet there was absolute silence. Outside, hundreds besieged the hall. The inevitable noise created by the numbers outside, and the creaking of the rooftop under the weight of the music lovers, destroyed what was left of the “acoustics.” Huberman had to interrupt his performance repeatedly. As might be expected, he was rather perturbed at all this, but at the same time he was openly moved by the patience and spirit of those music-mad people. Indeed, Huberman, though brought up in a home estranged from Jewish tradition, was deeply aware (as I had occasion to discover years later in New York) of the power latent in this collective Jewish worship of music, art, and things of the spirit—a phenomenon which might well be a modern manifestation of Hasidic fervor in a secularized generation.
It was not until 1936 that the projected orchestra came into being. Shortly before that time, its founder had distinguished himself by his uncompromising rejection of proffered Nazi concessions. In 1934, following the removal of Jewish artists, he was invited by Conductor Wilhelm Furtwaengler of the Berlin Philharmonic to return to the German concert stage. Huberman rose to the occasion with an unforgettable answer, his “Open Letter to Furtwaengler,” first published by the Swiss Neue Zuericher Zeitung. Huberman’s “best answer to Hitler,” however, to use his own words, was the creation of the Palestine orchestra. The nucleus for this ensemble came from the ranks of Jewish musicians expelled from German orchestras. These musicians—most of them accomplished instrumentalists at home in the European musical tradition—were trained and welded together by the brilliant German Jewish conductor Hans-Wilhelm Steinberg (now William Steinberg, conductor of the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra). In December 1936, Toscanini conducted the inaugural concert of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in Tel Aviv.
In the course of fourteen years of existence, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra—as it is called now—has become part and parcel of Israel’s cultural life. Each of its subscription concerts has to be repeated several times. In Tel Aviv alone there are 7,000 subscribers to its concerts, and on special occasions neither Ohel-Shem hall nor the Habimah Theater building is large enough to hold all. A subscription to the Philharmonic is considered among the necessities of life by many Israelis. One poet, recently robbed of all his possessions, complained in the press, “Most of all, I miss my subscription to the Philharmonic.”
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At the close of their tour of the United States and Canada, the Israel Philharmonic returned to New York for two farewell concerts at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Leonard Bernstein, and an additional concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. On March 18 New Yorkers finally heard Oedon Partos’s “Song of Praise,” concerto for viola and orchestra. Mr. Partos, born and educated in Hungary, has been the leader of the orchestra’s viola section since 1938, and his playing of the viola solo of his composition was delightful in its skill, subtlety, and excellent musicianship. The work itself proved a noteworthy piece of Israeli music. Consisting of a Symphonic Prelude, Variations, and an Epilogue on a theme from the Prelude, it is written in a somewhat conservative style, yet the music is expressive of a distinct individuality. Western influences are knowingly fused with those of the Orient, the color and mood of Eastern sacred and folk melos becoming perceptible throughout, manifesting themselves rather in spirit than in letter, but with inspiring impact.
Two more works by Israeli composers were presented at Carnegie Hall the following night, on a program which included Mendelssohn’s “Italian” symphony and the “Eroica” by Beethoven. “Legend and Dance for Strings,” by Josef Kaminski, turned out to be a rather poor piece of music; Mark Lavry’s “Emek” revealed itself as a somewhat more successful work—a symphonic poem in the popular Oriental vein, it was reminiscent of the works of such 19th-century composers as Ippolitov-Ivanov and Noskovski.
To the American Fund for Israel Institutions, which helps support the orchestra, goes the credit for having made the first American visit possible. There would have been one more cause for gratitude if the sponsoring organization had cast the orchestra’s publicity in a key somewhat more appropriate to the cultural occasion. In the souvenir booklet one finds side by side with appropriate information, such as program notes written in a refreshingly factual style by Peter Gradenwitz, pages filled with tributes in gushing schoolgirl manner, e. g., “To the [Israel] Orchestra music is a provocation of the soul, like the morning roses of eternity” or “Music is the machine that manufactures love.” The verbal genuflections to the “high priest” and “preacher” Sol Hurok, the impresario managing the tour, were in the worst possible taste. But then this is all of a piece with the fumbling second-rateness and short-range commercialism that still characterize so many phases of cultural liaison between Israel and America. Here, too, time will undoubtedly work improvement, but the process remains exasperatingly slow.
So, happy as we are with these first concerts, we would voice the hope that on its next tour the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will be presented to the American public in a style befitting a great musical institution rather than a Madison Square Garden charity benefit, and that it be permitted to act as a bolder and more distinctive representative of the culture of Israel, playing more of Israel’s own music, under its own conductors.
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