Pioneers and Exiles: Violin Music from Israel is a collection of solo violin pieces written by Israeli composers and played expertly by violinist
Kolja Lessing for Hänssler Classics.
Lessing teaches at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart and is a specialist in the field of Israeli musicology. Israel itself is a relatively young country, and its first generation of natives was not "native" so to speak; of the four composers here, three were born in Germany and one in Russia. Among them, Paul Ben-Haim, represented here by his Sonata in G (1951), was a crucial figure in the development of the specific character of Israeli music and his sonata still seems the best among the seven works featured in this program. Although Ben-Haim spoke of himself somewhat deprecatingly as being a throwback to the nineteenth century, the Sonata in G has a faultless forward trajectory and a distinct harmonic profile that draws strongly upon Jewish tradition, yet retains an individuality that keeps it from self-consciously imitating that sound, so closely identified already with the violin. The piece has a very moving effect; it was initially written for
Yehudi Menuhin, who played it often.
The remaining composers -- Ehrlich, Seter, and Haim Alexander -- depend at least to some extent on serial methods, and although their music is technically atonal, in the limited medium of solo violin the effect is neither jarring nor discordant so much as endlessly wandering, linear, and chromatic. Unfortunately, it also sounds rather the same from piece to piece, as though all were in the same key. Of these, the most effective is Ehrlich's The Ash, of which forgetting consists, (2000) which makes effective use of negative space and aphoristic gestures; by comparison, Haim Alexander's Prolog and Epilog are fashioned so closely to one another that it's hard to tell which one is which.
Lessing is an interesting player; very flexible in tone, adjusting relative thinness and fatness of tone to fit a given passage, and his handling of microtones is very persuasive. SWR's recording is generally good, though a tad more volume in the "Lento e sotto voce" would not have hurt the movement. Pioneers and Exiles: Violin Music from Israel is a good disc that will not have the listener jumping through hoops with glee, but it might be a nice option for late-ight, solitary listening and will likely interest those who are deep into developments in late twentieth century Jewish music.