Classical Music

Concertos

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This compact disc features world premiere recordings of three works by JACOB WEINBERG (1879–1956), who was born in the Ukraine to a cultured, assimilated family and studied first at the Moscow conservatory and then in Vienna with celebrated piano pedagogue Theodore Leschetizky.  Superimposed on this traditional classical background were two important factors that would play a vital role in Weinberg’s further development as a composer.  The first was his membership in the Moscow section of the Gesellschaft für Jüdische Volksmusik in St. Petersburg (the Society for Jewish Folk Music), a pioneering organization of Jewish composers, performers, folklorists, and other intellectuals in Russia that attempted to establish a new, authentic Jewish national art music in the early decades of the 20^th century.  This association clarified for Weinberg the nature of his own Jewish identity and ignited the interest in Judaically based art that would inform most of his work from then on.  The second factor was his five-year sojourn in Palestine (1921-26), where he absorbed both oriental Jewish and Arabic musical idioms and, even more significantly, experienced first-hand the strength of the Zionist spirit and the dedication of zealous pioneers to the ideals of a reborn Jewish home.  Weinberg immigrated to the United States in 1926 and became a prominent member of the circle of Jewish music exponents in New York, eventually teaching at Hunter College and the New York College of Music and organizing Jewish music festivals in several American cities.  In addition to his Judaically oriented works, which include several Sabbath services, two biblical cantatas, various liturgical settings, piano pieces and chamber music, Weinberg was known for his patriotic American compositions.







While Weinberg’s Shabbat Ba’aretz (Sabbath in the Holy Land) for baritone, choir and organ was written in this country and intended primarily for American synagogues, it was initially conceived during the composer’s five-year sojourn in Palestine (1921-26), where he was inspired to create an artistic bridge between the antiquity of Jerusalem—with its historical and emotional resonance in Jewish experience—and the spirit of Jewish modernity and renewal as exemplified by the young pioneers around him.  As he expressed it in his preface to the work, the music is “profoundly influenced by the colorful environment and the soil out of which the Bible grew.  The music, so rooted both in ancient Judea (cantillation of the Pentateuch) and contemporary Palestine (secular lore), links Israel’s past to the present.”  Shabbat Ba’aretz was written as a unified service, but is also separable into its distinct prayer settings, six of which are heard on this CD.  Several elements dominate the musical language, among them the melodic and rhythmic flavor of secular songs and dances such as the hora from the yishuv (Jewish communal settlement in Palestine); and the pervasive imprint of the so-called Mediterranean style identified with the first generation of Israeli composers like Paul Ben-Haim, with its reliance on the Dorian, Mixolydian, and Phrygian modes.  Additional characteristics include frequent interchanges between major and minor tonalities, Arabic motifs, and perceived Near Eastern ornaments.  There are also echoes of ancient Psalmody and hints of biblical cantillation motifs throughout.

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