Notes for: July 17, 2012
Avner Dorman is one of the remarkable generation of Israeli composers who emerged in the closing years of the twentieth century. At the age of 25, he became the youngest composer to win Israel’s prestigious Prime Minister’s Award for his Ellef Symphony, and was awarded the Golden Feather Award from ACUM (the Israeli Society of Composers and Publishers). In 2002 his song cycle Boaz received the Israeli Cultural Ministry Prize, and in 2003 his Variations Without a Theme, premiered by Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, won a second ACUM award.
His music has also been widely recognized outside Israel, with performances by the New York, Los Angeles and Munich Philharmonics and the San Francisco, and Vienna Radio Symphonies. Naxos has issued record albums of his piano music and chamber orchestra concertos, and in 2010 his Mandolin Concerto was nominated for a 2010 Grammy Award. With a doctorate in composition from Juilliard, he is now a professor of theory and composition at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
Dorman composed Jerusalem Mix for wind quintet and piano in 2007 on a joint commission from the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. For publication of the work, he wrote the following program note:
“Jerusalem Mix takes its title from a popular Israeli dish made of an eclectic assortment of fried meats. The dish, much like the city of its origin, is a melting pot of flavors and characters - each preserving some of its unique characteristics while contributing to the whole.
“When I was first approached to write a woodwind and piano quintet for the tenth anniversary of the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, I knew I wanted to write a piece that would reflect the spirit of the festival and of the city of Jerusalem.
“As I started writing the piece, I discovered that the piano and woodwind quintet is a tricky ensemble as it embodies members of four different instrument families. The bassoon and oboe are both double-reed instruments, the clarinet is a single-reed instrument, the French horn is a brass instrument, and the piano is of the percussion family. I decided to use the diversity of this ensemble to mirror the diversity of Jerusalem.
“With this in mind I set out to write this piece as a collage of short scenes, each portraying one or more aspects of the city:
“I. Jerusalem Mix – portraying the busyness of the modern city. Musically, this movement is based on Armenian and Turkish folk dance-styles in which the length of the beats constantly varies. In the middle part of this movement a prayer-like melody is introduced in the oboe, emulating its Middle-Eastern origins such as the zurna or the duduk.
“II. The Wailing Wall – emulates the sound of a praying crowd. This movement is based on the characteristic sigh of the Jewish prayer.
“III. Wedding March – a humorous movement that is first inspired by hassidic music but gradually incorporates wedding music from Middle-Eastern Jewish traditions. As the wedding party reaches higher levels of ecstasy (and the guests are increasingly drunk), these different styles collide and collapse into one another.
“IV. Blast [a sudden burst of sound].
“V. Adhan (the Islamic call to prayer) – by hitting the strings of the piano with drumsticks the pianist emulates the sound of a kanun, a Middle Eastern stringed instrument. The prayers of the opening movement and of the “wailing wall” movement become the call to prayer of the muezzin.
“VI. Jerusalem Mix.
All the movements are based on two simple melodic cells – one chromatic and the other made of a whole step. For me, the fact that these simple motives can lend themselves to the music traditions of Christianity (Armenian dance), Islam, and Judaism, express that on a deep cultural, musical, and humane level, our cultures are closer than we realize.”