Encore! Encore!
Perhaps no other instrument captures the sad-sweet contemplative mood of classical Jewish music like a cello. Is this because so many Jewish composers have written for the cello, that we think of it as a "Jewish" instrument? Or did they choose the cello because it sings so beautifully of the Jewish soul? Like the chicken and the egg, this question may never be answered -- but it doesn't really matter. This superb music is an important part of our Jewish legacy in its own right.
On this CD, cellist Richard Locker, accompanied by Susan Walters on piano, brings together 12 classical Jewish pieces, some well-known and others not so, in an absolutely magnificent performance -- so beautiful, that it literally brought tears to my eyes. The CD starts out with a niggun (Hasidic tune) by Ernest Bloch, then moves into to the dark, somber strains of Max Bruch's "Kol Nidre." From there it rises in mood, to end with a playful Yiddish theater piece, "Wie schecht is ohne Gelt" (How awful it is to be without money!) Included is the rarely heard "Meditation Hebraique" by Bloch, which he dedicated to Pable Casals, and a trio of pieces by the lesser-known composer, Zavel Zilberts (1881-1949), who directed the Choral Society of New York and played with the Metropolitan Opera. All of this is performed on a cello made by Nicolo Gagliano, dated 1780. To hear such a fine old instrument played by a talented, sensitive musician is truly a mechayah! (pleasure)
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