Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Nigunim, Hebrew Melodies (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Nigunim, Hebrew Melodies (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:08 minutes | 618 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Canary Classics

Jewish folk music has always played an integral part in Gil and Orli Shahams’ lives. This release includes masterpieces by Ernest Bloch, Joseph Achron, and Leo Zeitlin, and as their idiomatic writing for the violin suggests, they all started their musical lives as child prodigy violinists. Also included is music from the wonderful Schindler’s List score by John Williams.
The centrepiece of this release comes from the work sharing the album’s title Nigunim, commissioned by Gil and Orli from Israeli composer Avner Dorman. Dorman’s composition shares the universal appeal of the wordless melodies on which it was named. ‘He has created a masterpiece and in my experience everybody who hears the piece falls in love with it they’re electrified by it,’ Gil explains. Indeed, when he recently toured the work, San Diego Today affirmed that ‘it was hard to miss [its] visceral excitement and structural elegance,’ the Boston Globe admiring the ‘uncommonly intriguing sounds’.

Many if not most performers of Jewish background have recorded albums of material referring to Jewish musical traditions. Violinist Gil Shaham and his pianist sister Orli Shaham deserve credit here for bending the formula in some original ways. There are a few of the general hits that show up in programs of this kind: violin-and-piano arrangements of Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem, which displays Gil Shaham’s characteristic burnished tone at its best, and of three items from the score to Schindler’s List by John Williams. Williams was not Jewish, and these chamber readings offer a somehow fascinating window on exactly how he manipulated the features of Jewish music to suggest the themes involved. The rest of the pieces are much less common, and it is here that the real interest lies. The highlight is a work by contemporary Israeli composer Avner Dorman, which draws on Jewish traditions from a wide swath of the globe, including religious cantillation; the work’s title, and that of the album, means melodic improvisation, and the composition suggests this in multiple ways. Nigunim was composed for the two performers. The works by Joseph Achron are folkloristic in nature, while the Danse hebraïque by Josef Bonime, born in Lithuania and later a Hollywood-based player and accompanist to Mischa Elman, is a fine short essay in the Bloch vein. The Shahams here have not only paid tribute to their origins but also explored worthwhile and underexposed music. –James Manheim

Tracklist:
01. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Danse hebraique (02:50)
02. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Hebrew Melody, Op. 33 (version for violin and piano) (05:30)
03. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Violin Sonata No. 3, “Nigunim”: I. Adagio religioso (05:31)
04. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Violin Sonata No. 3, “Nigunim”: II. Scherzo (03:40)
05. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Violin Sonata No. 3, “Nigunim”: III. Adagio (06:41)
06. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Violin Sonata No. 3, “Nigunim”: IV. Presto (03:54)
07. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – 2 Hebrew Pieces, Op. 35 (arr. for violin and piano): No. 2. Lullaby (02:37)
08. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – 2 Hebrew Pieces, Op. 35 (arr. for violin and piano): No. 1. Dance (05:41)
09. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Schindler’s List (arr. for violin and piano): Theme: Slowly (03:28)
10. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Schindler’s List (arr. for violin and piano): Jewish Town (Krakow Ghetto, Winter ’41): Andante (04:12)
11. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Schindler’s List (arr. for violin and piano): Remembrances: Moderato (04:48)
12. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Eli Zion (arr. J. Achron) (05:03)
13. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Baal shem (version for violin and piano): I. Vidui (Contrition): Un poco lento (03:08)
14. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Baal shem (version for violin and piano): II. Nigun (Improvisation): Adagio non troppo (06:05)
15. Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Baal shem (version for violin and piano): III. Simchas Torah (Rejoicing): Allegro giocoso (03:53)

Personnel:
Gil Shaham, violin
Orli Shaham, piano

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