GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site - Non-Jewish Jewish music and piano.

Musical Discussions
Topic: Non-Jewish Jewish music and piano.

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 10-03-2009

A few days ago I was listening the Richard Locker’s CD “Jewish Cello Masterpieces”

http://www.richardlocker.com/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006NSWV/002-5296420-0612827?n=5174

wish is “A beautiful collection of great Jewish Music. Classics by Ernest Bloch and Max Bruch, mixed with rarely heard gems by Maurice Ravel, Zavel Zilberts, Jacob Wasilkovsky, and David Meyerowitz. "Wie Shlecht es is Ohn Gelt", a Yiddish Theatre gem, is alone worth the price of admission for its mixture of pathos and humor. The songs by Zilberts are an important and beautiful part of the Jewish music legacy that must be heard.”

It is a good CD but…. I do not really get any Jewish feel from it. To me it more sounded like a classical cello repertoire. Listening it again it comes to me that piano destroys the Jewishnes. The cello does have some mid eastern influence with Jewish-like nuances but as soon cello joined with piano then it bleaches out all Jewishnes from music. I wonder if anyone comes to this observation.

Is piano some kind of anti- Jewish instilment? Of course, I do not talking about anti-Semitism but about a tendency of one or another heritage music to be performed by a given interment. Do Jews/Arabs/Mid Easterners need “strings” to express heritage by music? Can anybody point Semitic musk in classical piano repertoire?

The Cat

Posted by Paul S on 10-03-2009

Hmmm... True, clarinet or violin somehow works better for the lead... Maybe it depends on who's playing the piano?

I have often thought of "Jewish" music itself as being regionally colored, such as the Czech versus the Polish, vs. the Russian, vs. the Isreali, etc.

A friend who plays a lot of klezmer music has described a sort of Gypsy quality that makes the music (like most "folk" music) rather a regional affair.

I don't know about "Classical", but: Regarding the piano, I immediately thought of Vladimir Yampolsky (David Oistrakh's regular accompnist), who seems to be able to come up with a reasonalbly "Jewish" sound via piano (albeit not klezmer).

Maybe Yampolsky does not do it in your mind. Bit if you agree that he can do it, then it is one example, anyway.

If I come up with other examples, I will post them in this thread.

Best regards,
Paul S

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