A Totally Different Musical League
By Noam Ben Zeev
Ensemble Meitar in a special concert: The 100th Anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s Death. Ohad Shachar, narrator; Yuval Zorn, piano; Gisele Ben-Dor, conductor; The Song of The Earth ( Das Lied von der Erde ), Noa Frenkel, alto; Howard Haskin, tenor. Promoter, producer, and program notes editor: Dan Yakir. The Enav Center, 18.6. (Next concert: 21.6)
“Ensemble Meitar presented an excellent concert that opened with a lamentation – a lullaby by Brahms, in memory of a member of the ensemble, the violinist Matan Givol; and finished with an outburst of joy ending in tragedy, with the Song of the Earth in the chamber arrangement by Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn. Alto Noa Frenkel , who sang marvelously, and Howard Haskin, who also sang beautifully, performed the six songs together with the rich ensemble under the precise conducting of Gisele Ben-Dor – even if they were not entirely successful in coping with Riehn’s spare arrangement, whose clarity and precision were sometimes discordant to the ear. The program notes, which will be preserved as a bibliographical source on the life and works of Mahler, are also testimony to this evening, which sounded like a representative of a totally different musical league. “