Digital Concert Hall

The israeli Vocal Ensemble
Conductor: Yuval Weinberg (Israel-Germany)

Israeli conductor Yuval Weinberg, music director of the South West German Radio Choir, leads the Israeli Vocal Ensemble in a beautiful and challenging a- cappella program. 
The program includes two Psalms by Mendelssohn Op. 78 commissioned for the Berlin Cathedral Choir in 1843. The motets are written for 8 voices with different combinations of soloists, and are almost orchestral in color and texture. The musical language combines techniques from the Renaissance and Baroque periods and the eight voices enable harmonic and polyphonic richness. 
Yehezkel Braun‘s Song of Songs clearly expresses Brown’s connection to Gregorian Chant. Brown once said: “My first love was, and is, melody in its purest form, especially when it is sung by the human voice.” This sentence best describes the affinity between Brown’s music and especially his writing for the choir, and the Gregorian chant: “bare” melody, recitation on one note, rhythms arising from the accents of the text, etc. 
The Unicorn Is Caught is a work by the Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo living in the USA, who is influenced by various American genres. He is particularly inspired by the improvisational art of film composer Thomas Newman, jazz legends Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny, glass artist Dale Chihuly and architect Frank Gehry. Gjeilo’s choral works are among the most performed in the contemporary choral world. The Unicorn Is Caught is perceived as exciting and adventurous and is written to an unusual Latin text, in a musical style that ranges from Renaissance dance to choral, and hymn, and in a texture that varies from unison to eight voices.