Music from the Ghetto Leib Ailenberg: Lelero (In memoriam); Braun: Min HaAyara; Bruch: Kol Nidrei*; Daniel Shalit: Suite for String Orchestra Jack Liebeck (violin); London Chamber Orchestra/Simca Heled (cello), *Christopher Warren Green Signum Classics SIGCD653 59:56 mins
What a difference great playing can make! Nothing on this album is a masterpiece, and yet it presents a very satisfying programme, framed by some of the richest cello playing I’ve heard from Simca Heled in Bruch’s Kol Nidrei and Leib Ailenberg’s Lelero (In memoriam). Mike Hatch’s predictably fine engineering helps. Heled also conducts all but the Bruch, and he commands an army of generals in the extraordinarily fine London Chamber Orchestra, including many fine players from other top orchestras.
The most demanding and original works are by Daniel Shalit, both admirably unpredictable in their different ways. Both touch on depths in different ways – Resisey Laila (Voices from the Depths) right at the start, the Suite for String Orchestra more surprisingly out of neoclassical beginnings. Yet there isn’t a stylistic jolt when we reach its longest (third) movement, ‘Niggun’, moving from dance to lament with a phenomenal command of varied dynamics from these string players, and ‘Out of the depth’ leads us quickly and masterfully into the light by which the final movement can sign off.
Yehezkel Braun’s Min HaAyara (From the Shtetl) is a more straightforward sequence extracted from incidental music for the play Hershel of Ostropol. The essence is heartfelt, and played by another total master, Jack Liebeck. With this the seal is set on the collection’s focus on Hasidic music. It’s an important release, well documented by Erik Levi in the booklet, and flawlessly done.
David Nice
