Tikkun Olam: Like Music for Rope

CMT: Norman Cousins (1912-1990) once said, “Music is like a piece of rope. It takes on meaning only in connection with what it holds together.” I like that. To me, it epitomizes the social value of music, especially chamber music. The conversational quality of the expressions between members of a string quartet, say—is so genuine and convincing that it’s hard not to be persuaded that other kinds of extraordinary or improbable conversation are possible as well. It works as an elegant example of how communication and collaboration and mutual trust and interdependence can be done—and how beautiful and satisfying it can be.

DSM: Like music for rope! Ties that bind! It reminds me of how, many years ago, the late Isaac Stern founded the Jerusalem Music Centre and directed the International Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem—summer youth music programs bringing Muslim and Jewish kids (among others) together. And the annual Chamber Music Festival in Jerusalem—founded in 1998 by pianist Elena Bashkirova, Daniel Barenboim’s wife—also has the aspect of promoting multicultural understanding. In the annual Notes of Harmony program, music students and teachers participate in school music programs and music centers in both Jewish and Arab towns and cities in Central Galilee. The program offers the Jewish and Arab music students the opportunity to enrich their individual musical experiences by studying, practicing and performing music together. Additionally, the project provides a forum for the music instructors to share resources and enhance skills through a variety of workshops, focusing on choirs, string ensembles, wind instrument ensembles, and ensembles that integrate Arabic, classical, and folk music. This Notes of Harmony program fosters an environment of interaction and understanding. Each of these programs is quite remarkable!

CMT: And an off-shoot of the annual Seeds of Peace program, the Strings of Peace program, spearheaded by the Music Center at the Jezreel Valley Center for the Arts and Culture, brings Jewish and Arab children together to play violin—this is another example. Meeting weekly, together with their parents, children from Kibbutz Sarid and the Arab village of Manshiat Zebda, both in the Jezreel Valley, participate in individual as well as group violin lessons. The music sessions provide the children with an opportunity to learn violin basics, sing in Hebrew and Arabic, perform concerts, and participate in other activities that attempt to build closer relationships based on friendship, understanding, mutual trust, and music. These things are, I think it can be said without exaggeration, true mitzvahs; tikkun olam; repairing the world, person by person.

DSM: Last April, I was fortunate to hear the Jerusalem Quartet perform in Kansas City. The piece that I particularly enjoyed was the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68. Through part of the first movement, my attention was preoccupied with their technical mastery—how well they played—and it really is difficult not to focus on that. But as they continued to play, I felt a welling-up of—What was it?—it was what I can only describe as a feeling of solidarity, an impression of the deep friendship that the members of the Quartet have for one another, of their staunch enthusiasm for the object of playing together and, in doing so, repairing the world. It went far beyond merely creating something beautiful or aesthetically flawless. It is perhaps this vision that they have—this beneficent and altruistic stance of theirs—that makes their playing so compelling. Visiting with members of the Quartet at dinner afterward, I was touched by their extraordinary modesty, and by their sensitivity to political complexities between Israelis and Palestinians. They mentioned the International Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem as having played a part in their own development. The impression I had was that they did not mean merely their ‘musical’ development.

CMT: They performed on Tuesday, 10-OCT, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 3, 4, 6, and 13) and on Thursday, 12-OCT (Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 2, 5, 7, and 14). The most striking first impression is how vibrant and supple their sound is. Violinist Alexander Pavlovsky’s tone is really beautiful and intense. And the cohesiveness among the four—Alexander and Sergei Bresler, Amihai Grosz, and Kyril Zlotnikov—is phenomenal. But they’ve surpassed themselves in their balancing control with emotional exuberance and expressiveness. The Shostakovich cycle is a good vehicle for conveying their empathy with disenfranchised and marginalized people and those who are victimized by conflict and repression. The life they breathe into these pieces is quite amazing. Their Shostakovich cycle has six concerts coming up at the Berlin Konzerthaus, Vancouver, and Dortmund. This season they’ll also be at the Wigmore Hall—a venue I’ve not been to yet but’ve always wanted to check out.

DSM: The Quartet was founded in 1993 within the framework of the Young Musicians’ Group of the Jerusalem Music Centre and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance. That their origin was in that crucible may be indicative. But the animation that they deliver in the Shostakovich Quartets is something totally their own—there is a conviction to their playing of them that is, I think, unique.

CMT: Shostakovich is maybe the most famous of the artist-victims of Stalin’s censorial coercion. Twice Shostakovich’s music got him into real trouble: once in 1936 when Stalin found his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk objectionable, and in 1948 when he (along with Khachaturian and Prokofiev and others) was denounced by the Soviet Composers' Union. He kept an overnight travel bag packed by his bedside, to be ready in case the KGB came to arrest him in the night. Composing music was, for Shostakovich, literally a matter of life and death. Chamber music allowed Shostakovich “maximum seriousness and minimum external pressure.”

DSM: Shostakovich began writing chamber music fairly late in his career. He’d already written his famous Fifth Symphony before he wrote his first quartet in 1936 and had completed his Eighth Symphony before he started work on the second quartet in 1944. The second quartet, dedicated to Shostakovich’s friend, composer Vissarion Shebalin, was written in only 19 days in 1944. The trenchant passages that could be regarded as complaints against the Soviet regime are there—although more subtle than the larger works that got him into trouble. And the violin recitatives achieve the effect of a personal commentary.

CMT: You’re right. Each of Shostakovich’s quartets has at least one muted passage. In most of the quartets, it’s in the scherzo. That might seem paradoxical if it were anyone but Shostakovich. The combination of muted strings and a gradual dynamic crescendo increases the tension, and this evokes imagery of suffering and abjection that Shostakovich used so frequently in his “war” compositions.

DSM: I admit that I have an insatiable Shostakovich craving this Fall, on the occasion of his 100th birthday celebration. For me, the Jerusalem Quartet comes the closest to satisfying that craving. They can really bring suppressed voices brought to life!

CMT: Have you heard of the Jewish Music Institute’s International Forum for Suppressed Music? Michael Haas, Chairman of the JMI International Forum for Suppressed Music, points out that the works of the generation of composers killed or exiled by the Nazis in the Thirties and Forties are highly significant—and he points out also that they are a missing link in how music evolved from the romanticism of the 19th Century to the austere musical language of the 20th Century.

DSM: It’s really taken almost sixty years for the artistic achievements of the composers who were silenced by the Nazis to register. Suppressed for being Jewish, then for being avant garde, and then for being conservative—thrice cursed. I understand that a boxed set of CDs will shortly be issued on the new record label and website Andante. Another mitzvah, more justice, repairing the world bit by bit!

Here are some world-reparative things you may like to read and listen to:

• Jerusalem String Quartet. Dvorak, Opp. 81 and 96. Harmonia Mundi, 2006.
  
• Jerusalem String Quartet. Haydn, Opp. 64, 76 and 77. Harmonia Mundi, 2004.
  
• Harmonic Convergence: Community in A Diverse World. Chamber Music America 29th Annual Conference. 11/14-JAN-2007, New York.
  
• Barghouti M. I Saw Ramallah. Anchor, 2003.
  
• Darwish M. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise. Univ California, 2003.
  
• Dorff E. The Way into Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World. Jewish Lights, 2005.
  
• Finkelstein N. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Norton, 2003.
  
• Hammad S. Drops of This Story. Writers, 1996.
  
• Hass A. Drinking the Sea at Gaza. Owl, 2000.
  
• Loft A. How to Succeed in an Ensemble. Amadeus, 2003.
  
• Pearlman W. Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada. Nation, 2003.
  
• Rounds D. The Four and the One: In Praise of String Quartets. Lost Coast, 1999.
  
• Segev T, Shainin J, Carey R, eds. The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent. Norton, 2002.
  
• Steinhardt A. Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000.