TALES FROM THE MOTHERLAND      

Monday, October 28, 2002        7:30PM          Recital Hall, UTSA

Tuesday, October 29, 2002   8:00PM          Ruth Taylor Recital Hall, TU

 

Overture on Hebrew Themes, op.34        Serge Prokofiev

for clarinet, string quartet and piano

 

Kaddisch                        Maurice Ravel

from “Two Hebrew Melodies”

for violin and piano

 

 

>From Jewish Life                    Ernest Bloch

for cello and piano

    I     Prayer

    II   Supplication

    III Jewish Song

 

 

Nigun (Improvisation)               Ernest Bloch

from “Baal Shem” (Three Pictures of Chassidic Life)

for violin and piano

·        Intermission—

 

Divertimento from “Gimpel the Fool”     David Schiff

for clarinet, violin, cello and piano

Special guests: Karen Stiles, violin and Dee Dee Fancher, viola

 
PROGRAM NOTES
When Zimro, a New York-based ensemble made up of Petersburg Conservatory graduates, asked Prokofiev to write a work based on Jewish folk themes (which 
they gave to him in a notebook), Prokofiev initially refused. According to his biographer, Israel Nestyev, “at the time he considered it ‘bad from’ to compose music 
on borrowed themes.” After spending more time with the folk tunes, he eventually came around, sketching the entire Overture on Hebrew Themes in a couple of 
days. The unusual instrumentation was also the doing of the Zimro ensemble, who requested that Prokofiev write for their full compliment. (Prokofiev later 
orchestrated the work.)
 
The work’s two themes, a playful dance tune and a more lyrical, sustained melody, occupy separate spaces for most of the work. The piece is in a three part form
 
 of ABA – dance tune, lyrical melody, dance tune – until near the end of the piece, when the lyrical music unexpectedly returns, bring the two ideas together for the 
 
first time. 
 
 
Prokofiev may have been reluctant to write using Jewish themes, but that was certainly never the case for Ernest Bloch, who made his name as a composer of 
 
Jewish-themed music with pieces such as Schelomo (for cello and orchestra) and the Sacred Service (Avodath hakodesh), even to the point that some vilified him 
 
for it. His epic orchestral work America, for example, was attacked by those who saw American music as Anglo-Saxon in temperament, and there were arguments
 
 among other scholars over whether his music was really Jewish, or whether his Jewish-ness was more a matter of the spirit than of the letter.  Bloch himself said, “It 
 
is neither my purpose nor my desire to attempt a reconstruction of Jewish music nor to base my works on more or less authentic melodies. I am not an 
 
archaeologist; for me the important thing is to write good and sincere music. What interests me is the Jewish soul.”  Few considered him just a one trick composer, 
 
however, and it is important to note that even in his non-Jewish influenced works, Bloch still wrote highly dramatic music, often influenced by philosophical or poetic 
 
ideas.
 

Nigun (Improvisation) is the center movement of the suite Baal Shem (Three Pieces of Chassidic Life), composed in 1923, and it is probably performed more

often without the outer movements than with them. According to Mina Miller, the entire suite “depicts spiritual and religious elements of orthodox Jewish life. The

first movement, Contrition, addresses the act of atonement for one’s sins; Nigun… reflects on the deep emotional and religious feeling of this act. Rejoicing

speaks to a fundamental aspect of Judaism. In this work, however, it specifically relates to the annual festival of Simchas Torah (which celebrates the completion of

the reading of the Book of Law).”

 

The three scenes From Jewish Life could be termed Bloch’s Baal Shem for cello, so similar is the intent of these two works. Not only do both have three 
 
movements about Jewish life, but even the subject matter of the movements (atonement and reflection) is similar. But whereas Nigun is an extroverted work , From
 
Jewish Life is contemplative and melancholy, avoiding virtuosity. In both works, Bloch uses shofar-like calls, augmented intervals (often as a crying motif), and 
 
quarter tones in the strings to evoke Jewish music. 
 
 
The Kaddisch is the first of Maurice Ravel’s Deux mélodies hébraïques, written in 1914 on a commission from Madame Alvina-Alvi, a soprano in the St. 
 
Petersburg opera company. Ravel used folk melodies in a number of works, but these would be last time he would set a folk tune. Besides Ravel’s orchestration of 
 
the accompaniment to the songs, done a number of years later, there is also this arrangement, by Lucien Garben, for violin and piano, written for Ravel’s friend, the 
 
violinist Zino Francescatti. Ravel gives the haunting melody a sparse accompaniment which stays out of the way of the tune as much as it supports it. The Aramaic 
 
text of the Kaddisch is one of the masterpieces of the Jewish liturgy. In English translation it is: “May His great name be magnified and hallowed throughout the 
 
world that He created according to His will; and may He reign over His kingdom in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime of the entire house of Israel, 
 
speedily in our day. Amen. May the holy name be blessed and lauded, glorified and uplifted, extolled, honored, magnified, and praised. Blessed is He, higher than all 
 
blessing and hymn, praise and consolation that are spoken in this world. Ah! Let us say Amen.”
 
 

- Notes by David Heuser