A Memorial Day Concert Review

Yesterday was Memorial Day in the USA, and I went to a concert in Tel-Aviv. What do these things have to do with each other? In principle, nothing, but read on.

The concert consisted of three trios for French horn, violin and piano: the Brahms horn trio, the horn trio by Gyorgy Ligeti, and a new work written by an AI program using prompts from composer Daniel Yehezkeli, who was in attendance. The venue was the small hall (400 seats) at Heichal Hatarbut in Tel Aviv, a hall I had never been to previously, having only been to the adjacent, and cavernous, Mann auditorium in which the Israel Philharmonic plays. By my count, there were around 120 people in attendance. The performers were IPO violinist Ari Þór Vilhjálmsson, pianist Yoav Sened, and IPO horn player Dalit Segal, who organized the program; she’s also the one who commissioned the AI piece.

Rather than play each piece straight through, Dalit gave an introduction to each movement, with relevant slides projected above the performers. At various points in the introductions, she and the other musicians also demonstrated things that would be going on in the music, such as the Hungarian dance played with the pianist’s right hand versus the incessant scale played with the left hand in the third movement of the Ligeti. That included a demonstration of horn calls on the natural (valveless) horn, something that she referred to “the Whatsapp of the day”, and that was appropriate for this week’s Torah portion of Beha’alotcha, which includes (Numbers 10:1-10) a command to make two silver trumpets and to blow them, using different blasts, inter alia to call the army together or to head off to war, or to let people know that the sacrifices for the New Moon and certain holy days were being offered.

The AI piece was the last piece to be performed, and it sounded like a poor attempt to mimic some 19th century music. There are musicians who can play different styles on request (think of the spontaneous song segment on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”) or synthesize different styles (e.g. in the 1980’s, pianist John Bayless put out albums in which he played Beatles songs in the styles of Bach and Beethoven), but here the AI didn’t make the cut – the music wasn’t interesting, or moving, and it didn’t make good use of the instruments. There was, however, an interesting discussion after the concert about how AI may affect musical composition in the future. The composer himself was of the view that, at best, AI can only produce “average” music.

The combination of horn, violin and piano is unusual, and Ligeti wrote his trio in 1982 as a companion to the Brahms trio from 117 years earlier, even calling it Hommage à Brahms, so pairing the two pieces on the same program made sense. But rather than each piece in order, Dalit chose to do something interesting: the group played the first two movements of the Brahms, then then entire Ligeti, and then the last two movements of the Brahms, each movement with an introduction.

I know the Brahms well, having performed it a few times myself, but while I was aware of the existence of the Ligeti, I had never heard the whole thing performed, not even in a recording, and I’ve never even looked at the horn part. I can’t say I’ll be running out to buy a recording of the piece: to me, as a first-time listener, it’s as if Ligeti was trying to write a grotesque parody of music, using musical instruments and known musical forms. I suppose that if I was to listen to it multiple times, and even more so, try to play it with others, it would grow on me; I know that some people consider it to be a work of genius.

From the perspective of a horn player, the Ligeti is a piece that presents significant technical challenges that only the best players can meet, exploiting the outer pitch ranges of the instrument as well as the limits of its dynamic range. Dalit was up to the task, even after a day of rehearsing Bruckner’s eighth symphony, which the IPO will be playing this week.

In contrast to the Brahms, in which the movements are arranged slow-fast-slow-fast, Ligeti reverses the tempi in the last two movements, so that the finale is slow. That finale was written in memory of family members killed by the Nazis, and with that in mind, the strangeness of the movement actually worked to good effect, similar to how Schoenberg’s atonality works well in his “A Survivor From Warsaw”.

That movement juxtaposed well with the next movement the group played, viz. the third movement of the Brahms, which was written following the death of Brahms’ mother and is the most somber of the movement of the piece. At one point in the movement, Brahms briefly introduces what sounds like a lullaby, perhaps a tune that his mother sang him as a child. Dalit explained that the musicians were dedicating the performance of that movement to the memory of Gaia Halifa, who was killed at the Nova festival on October 7, 2023. Her parents were at the concert; I found out later that her mother is a friend of Dalit’s.

That announcement reminded me that it was Memorial Day in the USA, and drove home, yet again, the contrast between Memorial Day there versus in Israel.  Memorial Day in the USA is meant to honor Americans who gave their lives in defense of their country. But few Americans nowadays know anyone who served in, let alone died serving in, the US armed forces, and even fewer know someone killed by terrorists.  Many don’t appreciate the blessing they have in being able to live in the USA. For most Americans, Memorial Day is day for shopping or picnicking.

In Israel, by contrast, it is nearly impossible not to know someone who was killed in uniform or was the victim of a terrorist attack, and if you don’t personally know someone, there’s probably not more than one degree of separation. No Israeli would think of wishing someone “Happy Memorial Day”, let alone think of holding a beach party, as one US classical radio station did a few years ago. (I wrote the station and suggested that they change the venue to the local military cemetery, so that could not only figuratively but literally dance on the graves of the soldiers interred there). Most Israelis, at least the taxpaying ones, get that the freedoms – and safety – we enjoy, such as being able to stage and attend plays and concerts, are not givens, and that lots of people have paid a high price to guarantee that safety and those freedoms. So while memorial day in Israel – Yom Hazikaron – is set aside for the country to remember both fallen service members and terror victims, the memories are always there, especially for family and friends directly affected.

The finale of the Brahms is in a lively six eight time and features the same lullaby tune from the third movement, but arranged in a way that is reminiscent of the finales of the Mozart horn concertos.  Its placement after the movement that musically eulogizes his mother, and its quotation from that movement, can perhaps be seen as Brahms’ way of simultaneously acknowledging the loss of his mother and saying that life goes on, sort of in the way that nowadays Yom Hazikaron goes directly into Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day).