election Day and Mendelson - 5.11.24
Are we getting bombed tonight? Orit and I discussed this as just another consideration about whether to go to the concert last night. An amazing program, a wonderful escape, but then there are the threats.
But we all went, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.
And to hear amazing antithetical music. I hadn’t thought of the fact that Mendelson and Mahler were two Jewish composers – both of whom had to convert in order to be accepted in their profession.
What a concert and what contrasts
https://www.ipo.co.il/en/program/lahav-shani-bouchkov/?event_id=51322
The Jewishness of it came to me at the beginning when we stood up with entrance of the conductor to sing HaTivka, an anthem I often regret. So outdated, so exclusive against the Christian and Moslem population – about how long we have longed to return to Jerusalem to be a free nation. I’m often embarassed – but last night I wept – because we’re still fighting for it. Maybe I’d change a few words and take out the Zionism and bring in freedom for all people in a jewish state…
Anyway I started the concert in tears. Even though I remembered the question we always ask, “where are we going to draw the line? What other country lets everyone in?”
And then there was Mendelson and the conductor Lahav Shani and the violinist Marc Bouchkov played the violin concert without notes – so beautifully I cried, And I know Mendelson had to change his religion to get a career in music. But I tried not to put Jewishness into the concert. But then Marc Bouchkov came out for an encore and played a melody he remembered from his great grandmother Dina Weiss, and we all melted. Even though I know that what he was playing couldn’t have been a Yiddish melody – Yiddish words wouldn’t fit into the melody…
At the break our friends told us they had come for the Mahler, and I was expectant – I didn’t remember the 6th symphony. But as soon as it began I turned off. It wasn’t a voluntary action – I couldn’t hear it.
So I spent the time reading about Mahler and his conversion and his antisemitic wife who almost always married Jews. The music with its antithetical emotions and their lack of fusion seemed to me again – a sign of his Jewishness.
It was probably me and my fears. We seemed to be all in the same basket in that concert hall and I kept remembering Mark Twain:
Behold the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”–which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention;” but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and–WATCH THAT BASKET.”
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Several days later ~ What did you mean by, “The music with its antithetical emotions and their lack of fusion seemed to me again – a sign of his Jewishness.”
Mahler has been one of my favorite composers (both to perform as well as to hear/listen)… but It has always been my observation that he often surprises us – especially toward the end of the most promising and positive of phrases (or sequences)…going off into some unpredictable (often dark) tonality. Understandable why your ears would turn off at the beginning of Mahler’s 6th. I have always cringed at the opening ( which also repeats throughout that 1st movement). Always sounds like marching, starched Nazis. “Songs of a
Wayfarer” are much easier on the ear!