Synagogue Music > Reviews

Cantors in Concert
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 18 December 2004
Reviewed by Malcolm Miller

The cantorial stars of Anglo-Jewry are in the ascent, as shown by the incredible sight and sound of sixteen leading British cantors singing – adorned with hat and robe - at a capacity-filled Queen Elizabeth Hall last Monday, surely a first for synagogue music! Their sweet-toned voices conveyed familiar melodies with intensity, joy and that unique cantorial ingredient, ‘kavanah’, fervour.

This JMI concert in aid of the Barry Weinberg Fund for Jewish Music, featured a varied programme both solemn and jazzy, directed by the Montreal-based synagogue composer Stephen Glass, Weinberg’s multi-talented nephew. His flowing piano accompaniments, echoing both Rachmaninov and Manilow, allowed free rein to each individual voice, with many magical moments to savour, too numerous to mention, warmly supported by the excellent Shabbaton Choir. There was Robert Brody and Stephen Robins’s sparkling duet, and, with the operatic Steven Leas, a ‘three cantor’ number by Meir Finkelstein. Leas and Lionel Rosenfeld later harmonized in scintillating ‘zmirot’, while the pure-toned tenor Gedalya Alexander combined in a rapturous Rosenblatt duet with Moshe Haschel. Jonathan Murgraff ’s rhapsodic Yardeini setting contrasted with the intimate eloquence of David Apfel’s ‘Shma Yisroel’ and Lawrence Fine’s artful interpretation of Max Helfman. The stylistic mosaic was enriched by a fine Sephardi setting by the Lauderdale Road choir with Adam Musikant, classic Yiddish songs projected wittily by Geoffrey Shisler and Dov Speier, David Shine’s ‘Ani Ma’amin’, with audience participation, and ‘heimishe’ singing by Dubiner, Lider and Marx. Yet it was the glorious sound of the ‘sixteen’ all together that resonated longest in the memory, an optimistic symbol for the creative future of cantorial music.