This is Volume 1 in a new chamber series which explores the music of composers who were forced to flee Europe during the 1930s. The survey begins with works by the German-born Jewish composer Paul Ben-Haim (né Frankenburger) who immigrated to Palestine in October 1933. Ben-Haim was an accomplished pianist, conductor, choral coach, and composer who made a significant cultural contribution to his adoptive country. The list of musicians who commissioned, performed, and recorded his music includes Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman, Menahem Pressler, and Leonard Bernstein. Among the Israeli composers he taught are Eliahu Inbal, Avraham Sternklar, Noam Sheriff, and Shulamit Ran Piano Quartet was completed in Munich during the summer of 1921, long before any thought of emigration. Until the ARC Ensembles performance of the work in 2012, it had not been played since a broadcast in July 1932. It it strongly rooted in the music of Brahms, Strauss, Reger, and Fauré, whilst retaining Ben-Haims own strength of ideas, sense of form, and bold, confident use of colour. By the late 1930s / early 1940s, Ben-Haims musical language had adapted to life in Palestine, and we find strong Hebraic elements scattered throughout both the Two Landscapes and Improvisation and Dance. The Canzonetta is the fourth of the composers Five Pieces for Piano, and a direct descendent of the nineteenth centurys Song without Words. The amalgamation of Eastern and Western influences in Ben-Haims life are beautifully realised in the Clarinet Quintet. While the European technique originates in the two mainstays of the clarinets chamber repertoire, the quintets by Brahms and Mozart, the Capriccio in the Scherzo is a complete quotation of Elohei Tzidki (God of my righteousness), a traditional hymn. I was very satisfied, wrote the composer, because I felt that I had succeeded in consolidating a new style. Over the last ten years the ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory, Toronto) has become one of Canadas pre-eminent cultural ambassadors, raising international appreciation of The Royal Conservatory and Canadas rich musical life. Its first two CDs, On the Threshold of Hope and Right through the Bone (devoted respectively to the music of Mieczysaw Weinberg and Julius Röntgen), were both nominated for Grammy Awards in the Best Chamber Music Recording category. Its recordings enjoy regular airplay around the world, and its concerts have been broadcast on CBC Radio, National Public Radio in the US, and on public radio throughout Europe.
The foremost composer in the early years of the State of Israel, Ben-Haim was a romantic nationalist in an alien landscape. Munich-born in 1897, Paul Frankenburger docked at Haifa in 1933 and was shocked to discover that Europe did not hold a monopoly on musical tonalities. He took a Hebrew surname and, inspired by a Yemenite folksinger, Bracha Zefira, composed Hebrew songs in microtones, with ultra-correct German precision. His chamber music, written for domestic use under the heavy skies of a Tel Aviv summer, has fallen into disuse; this release is an illuminating introduction. Passing quickly over a juvenile piano quartet, we discover a kindred spirit to Bartók, ears wide open to indigenous and ambient sounds, feet ever ready to jump up and learn a Bedouin dance. The most attractive pieces, athletically played here by Canada’s ARC ensemble, are a pair of violin-piano jigs written for the visiting virtuoso Zino Francescatti, and a quintet for clarinet and strings that hovers between the bourgeois salon and the high-jinks of a klezmer band against a backdrop of heat and dust. Ben-Haim died in 1984, never fully acclimatised to his new-found land. The record cover is a stunning portrait of Tel Aviv s Dizengoff Square in pristine Bauhaus design. No photographer credited, but a joy to behold. *** –Sinfini Music,24/06/13Flagged “Music in Exile”, these chamber works by Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984) introduce a composer who left a prosperous family life in Germany in 1933 and started a new existence in Palestine, later taking Israeli nationality. The expansive, Romantic style of the Piano Quartet Op 4, written in Munich and not played for years until the ARC Ensemble took it up, has the feel of wrong-note Brahms. By the time he wrote the wistful Two Landscapes Op 27, depicting the hills of Judea and spiced with Hebraic motifs, he was fully immersed in his adopted homeland. The Clarinet Quintet Op 31a, in contrast, has a rewarding balance of eastern and western musical traditions. All are expertly played by members of the eight-strong ARC Ensemble. –Observer, 21/07/13Superb playing by the members of the ARC Ensemble. –Gramophone, sept’13
