“Jewish people and Germans will always be connected to each other.” These words of powerful understatement from the Israeli Ambassador to Germany prefaced the first edition of the New Life Festival, dedicated to Jewish musicians who fled from or suffered under the National Socialist regime during the Second World War. Many, such as Kurt Weill or György Ligeti, are already rightfully celebrated for their contribution to 20th-century musical culture. Others are less well known.
At the centre of the New Life Festival was the music of Paul Ben-Haim, born in Germany in 1897, and who became an early Jewish settler in what was then Palestine in 1933. Ben-Haim is celebrated for his efforts to create an Israeli musical style, but is rarely heard in European concert halls today. On the opening day of the concert, soprano Mimi Sheffer, also the festival’s director, presented a newly discovered orchestral version of Pan for soprano and orchestra that has hitherto only been performed in its piano reduction.
Written in Germany in 1931, when the composer was still known by his birth name Paul Frankenburger, this symphonic poem sets a text by Heinrich Lautensack (who was associated with Frank Wedekind, the father of literary expressionism), that connects nature with dreaming as well as the Greek god Pan. Ben-Haim’s score is evocative, an ecstatic concoction of shimmering harmonies and mysterious melodies that conjure up the magic of nature.
Pan is an interesting work, with a sensuality reminiscent of Szymanowski and Scriabin, and the orientalist use of mandolins showing the composer’s burgeoning interest in the East. However, it deserved a more confident performance than that given by the Berliner Symphoniker under their chief conductor Lior Shambadal. Mimi Sheffer is obviously dedicated to Paul Ben-Haim’s music and was powerful in her upper register, but struggled in a difficult acoustic.