Klezmer: Jewish Music

This unique CD of Klezmer music, the traditional music of the Jews of Eastern Europe, brings this entertaining repertoire to a wider audience. The music is based on rigorous forms with regular rules, but, like jazz and folk, allows for a large amount of personal expression. It is by turns joyful and energetic for fun and dancing, and intense and poignant for quiet listening and reflection.

Kleztory is one of the most dynamic Klezmer ensembles in Montreal today.This story begins in 1997, when guitarist Alain Legault founded a group dedicated to performing Jewish folk music from Eastern Europe. In 1998 he was joined by double bassist, Mark Peetsma.This finely tuned rhythm section encountered the perfect clarinettist in the classically trained veteran Airat Ichmouratov, and in 2002 the quartet became a quintet, with the integration of the violinist Elvira Misbakhova and with the accordionist Henri Oppenheim rounding out the traditional instrumental configuration for a Klezmer band: Double Bass, Guitar, Accordion, Clarinet and Violin.

On this disc, some of the world’s best Klezmer musicians are joined by I Musici de Montréal, an award-winning ensemble that has made many recordings for Chandos, and is renowned for its adventurous programming and virtuosic performances.

All the works on this disc here receive their premiere recording in these versions.

Klezmer was born out of a Yiddish culture that has today almost disappeared. The word ‘Klezmer’ is a contraction of the Hebrew words kely (instrument) and zemer (melody).

The earliest evidence that Jewish instrumental groups existed in Central Europe dates from the fifteenth century. Thereafter, fleeing the Spanish inquisition and persecution, Jewish communities gradually moved eastwards to Poland, Ukraine and Constantinople, Odessa, Rivne, Kiev and Vilnius. The product of an oral tradition, the music has undergone innumerable transformations over time.

A great many rich influences – the music of the synagogue, Hasidic and gypsy music, central European and Greco-Turkish dances, local folk music – have been distilled down the centuries to create the many-faceted music we hear today; it thus embodies an important part of the legacy of centuries of European and middle-Eastern music. Many truly great musicians – principally violinists – issued from the huge well of talent kept secret for centuries, with musicians Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh demonstrating a flamboyant and rewarding fusion of classical and Klezmer violin techniques.

The popularity of Klezmer declined during the first half of the twentieth century, for many Jews emigrated to the New World during this time and were keen to integrate with their new surroundings. Its return to favour in the 1970s owes much to the passion of young American musicians who undertook to research, archive and refresh the old repertoire, and to the success of recordings by successful artists such as Itzhak Perlman with Klezmer ensembles. In the past 30 years there has been an unprecedented surge in the music’s popularity throughout the world.

Klezmer: Jewish Music

Yuli Turovsky

I Musici de Montréal

Kleztory

LEglise de la Nativite de la Sainte Vierge, La Prairie, Quebec

Ralph Couzens

John Newton

Blanton Asplaugh

Chamber

Klezmer: Jewish Music

TRADITIONAL

Vi bist du gevezn far prohibition*

Kolomeke*

Moldvavian Hora*

Zol zayn gelebt†

Ma Yofus/Odessa Bulgar†

Firen di Mehutonim Aheym†

Freylekh Yidelakh*

Di Zilberne Khasene†

Dem Trisker rebbins chosid*

H. OPPENHEIM

Going Home†

TRADITIONAL

Dem rebin's Nigun, Oy Tate†

H. OPPENHEIM

Omer Tantz†

TRADITIONAL

Violin Doina‡

Fun Tashlikh*

Tears of Israel*