Search - Julius Chajes, Samuel Cohen, Herbert Fromm :: In Celebration of Israel (Milken Archive of American Jewish Music)

This record celebrates not only Israel but six excellent 20th-century Jewish composers - all émigrés except the American-born Scharf - whose work should be better known: the music is skillfully composed, varied, constantly interesting and appealing. Strangely enough, it is the most-familiar composer's contribution that strikes the only false note: Weill's arrangement of the "Hatikva," now Israel's national anthem. Though its composition has been debated for decades, it is essentially a simple folk-tune which Weill's noisy, overblown orchestration obliterates with "modern" harmonies, brass and percussion. Given the basically mournful, minor-mode-oriented nature of Jewish music, this "celebration" is tinged with yearning, melancholy and nostalgia, though there are some buoyant dances along the way. Highlights include the Austrian pianist-composer Chajes' vocal and orchestral music; in the latter, the oboe becomes a shepherd's pipe, the clarinet a klezmer-player. Fromm's "Yemenite Cycle," scored for voice, flute, harp, and bells, sounds bright, cheerful and simple, like children's songs. Scharf, a film composer, and Secunda, the most-renowned composer of Yiddish popular songs, naturally reveal their stylistic "roots" with music straight out of Hollywood and the musical theater and aimed straight at the heart. The performances are all admirable; the Vienna Boys Choir, of all participants surely the most incongruous, is terrific.     -- Edith Eisler