The Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts:
Israeli Musicians Play Paris
Date: Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Time: 8pm -10pm
Venue: Anthony J Drexel Picture Gallery - Main Building
Israeli musicians Moran Katz, clarinet, Itamar Zorman, violin, Linor Katz, cello, Sivan Magen, harp, Renana Gutman, piano, play music of Camille Saint-Saëns, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Henriette Renie, Manuel de Falla, Charles-Marie Widor and Darius Milhaud, all active in Paris 1910-1920. Saint-Saëns drew inspiration from his teacher, Fromental Halevy, the French-Jewish composer. American-Jewish composer George Gershwin went to Paris to study with Ravel, who counseled Gershwin against classical study lest it inhibit his originality and innovative style.
Claude Debussy married the divorcee Emma Bardac nee Moyse. From a respectable Jewish family in Bordeaux. One of the most famous students of Renie, French harpist and composer, was Arthur Adolph “Harpo” Marx, silent partner of American-Jewish Marx Brothers comedy team, who played harp solos in most of his films. De Falla’s piece is an arrangement of seven Spanish songs he wrote in 1914-15 just after his return to Madrid from seven years in Paris. De Falla helped Polish-Jewish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska revive that instrument, writing several pieces for her, bringing the harpsichord back to the orchestra.
In 1909 a French-Jewish lad was admitted to the Paris Conservatory to study with Charles-Marie Widor. Darius Milhaud became one of the greatest and most prolific French composers of the 20th century. He and his family left France in 1939 to escape the Holocaust, and joined the Faculty of Mills College in California. After the war he spent alternate years on the Faculty of the Paris Conservatory. His students included two influential American composers, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, also Jewish.
There will be a 7:00 p.m. desert reception preceding the performance.
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