Programme

The two ensembles, Trio Venere and Shiraz Quartet, present works they have prepared during the 2nd International Mizmorim Masterclass.

Yaron Deutsch (electric guitar) presents his work Anemone, Mon Amour, accompanied by an artist talk with Till Löffler.

The Mizmorim theme Jidl mitn Fidl takes up a motif that has resonated in many different ways throughout 20th-century popular Yiddish music. One of these songs became particularly prominent during the klezmer revival, but its history is far more complex than previously known. Musicologist Eckhard John explores how the song not only serves as a vehicle for constructing tradition, but also reflects fundamental aspects of the broader theme of Judaism and the violin.

In her work With a Broken Fidl for solo violin (world premiere), Hana Ajiashvili takes up the tradition of the solo violin sonata, which dates back to the Baroque era. Other, earlier works on the programme demonstrate that a single cello or a duo of violin and cello can also be fully at home in chamber music. Performing are Ilya Gringolts (violin), Enrico Dindo (cello), Dmitry Smirnov (violin), Ronny Spiegel (violin), and Benedek Horváth (piano).

This year’s Mizmorim theme opens up a seemingly endless repertoire of music for violin and other string instruments. In a guided tour of the Paul Sacher Foundation, Heidy Zimmermann offers insights into the archive’s collections, highlighting manuscripts of works that will be performed at the Festival.

Hana Ajiashvili’s Projections opens the series of four works in the Festival’s opening concert, receiving its world premiere. Nearly eighty years older are Mieczysław Weinberg’s two works titled «Concertino», one for cello and the other for violin and string orchestra. A friend of Dmitri Shostakovich, Weinberg long remained in the shadow of other Soviet composers, yet his music is striking for the elegance and sincerity of its musical language. The programme is performed by Ilya Gringolts (violin and conductor), Enrico Dindo (cello), and the Mizmorim Festival Ensemble.

Even the Hungarian avant-gardist György Ligeti began as a young composer cautiously exploring and carefully testing the possibilities of instruments and the human voice – as in his Sonata for solo cello and Kineret for voice and piano. The programme also features Swiss premieres of works by Viktor Ullmann, Minna Keal, and Hanoch Jacoby. Robert Schumann’s Six Songs, Op. 8, in a transcription by Aribert Reimann, brings the programme to a close. The works are performed by Anna Juniki (voice), Dmitry Smirnov (violin), Ronny Spiegel (violin), Guy Ben-Ziony(viola), Rafael Rosenfeld (cello), and Benedek Horváth (piano).

György Ligeti and his fellow Hungarian György Kurtág were close friends from their student days. Last year, at the age of 100, Kurtág was still able to reap the fruits of a lifetime devoted to composition. This programme brings together string quartets by these two Hungarian masters, alongside the fourth and final quartet by Arnold Schoenberg, the founding figure of modern chamber music. The concert is performed by the Gringolts Quartet.

One can sing with the human voice, but a violin can sing, too. In 1955, the young Heinz Holliger explored this idea in his Elegische Musik, following in the footsteps of George Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance for violin and piano. In strong contrast are Chaya Czernowin’s Knights of the Strange for accordion and electric guitar, and Steve Reich’s Violin Phase. The programme features Ilya Gringolts (violin), Dmitry Smirnov (violin), Yaron Deutsch (electric guitar), Marie-Andrée Joerger (accordion), Marianna Shirinyan (piano), as well as the song duo Anna Juniki (voice) and Benedek Horváth (piano).

Jean Sibelius loved his Nordic homeland above all else, and that affection can be heard in his Berceuse (Lullaby) for violin and piano. Younger Finnish composers, by contrast, have often sought to distance themselves from the picture-postcard idyll of Finland. One such composer was Kaija Saariaho, who past away in 2023 at the age of 70 and spent much of her life in Paris. The lyrical quality of her music nevertheless remained, as in Changing Light, set to a text by Rabbi Jules Harlow. The works are performed by Anna Juniki (voice), Dmitry Smirnov (violin), Brandon Garbot (viola), and Benedek Horváth (piano).

Anemone, Mon Amour
Yaron Deutsch (electric guitar) improvises and performs pre-composed musical material as well as notated works by himself, Klaus Lang, and Laurence Crane. It is the soundtrack to a tragedy, culminating in a tribute to a milestone of Israeli song: Moshe Wilensky’s setting of Natan Alterman’s poem Kalaniyot (Anemones).

Taking the legendary American-Polish film Jidl mitn Fidl (1936) as its starting point, this programme explores the extent to which the violin can be considered a characteristic instrument of Jewish musical tradition. Selected film portraits of outstanding Jewish violinists—from Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh to Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman, and Gidon Kremer – will be presented. In a conversation with Heidy Zimmermann, violinist Ilya Gringolts and musicologist Felix Meyer discuss the distinctive profiles of these figures and their significance within the great violin tradition since the beginning of the 20th century.

Violist Tabea Zimmermann has played a major role in inspiring new works for her instrument, including through her collaboration with György Kurtág, who dedicated one of his compositions to her under the title «… a flower for Tabea …» long before Kurtág, Brahms’s friend Joseph Joachim composed Hebrew Melodies for viola and piano, while in the early 20th century Frank Bridge went so far as to combine two violas in his composition Lament. Two violas also form the inner voices of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Quintet in B-flat major. With Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Guy Ben-Ziony (viola), Benedek Horváth (piano), and the Gringolts Quartet.

Sasha and the Lost Bow is an interactive musical storytelling experience that introduces children to the violin and the world of classical music. The story follows Sasha as he discovers that his missing violin bow has mysteriously travelled through time. Accompanied by a magical fairy, Sasha and the young audience embark on a journey through different musical eras. The journey is led by Çiğdem Tunçelli Sinangil (violin).

For children aged 4 and up.

Where does composition end and improvisation begin? What do we call European musical culture – and where does the unfamiliar begin? These are questions that may arise when listening to some of the six works on this programme. The works are by Younghi Pagh-Paan, Marcel Mihalovici, Gitta Steiner, György Kurtág, Carola Bauckholt, and Lou Harrison. They are performed by Christian Dierstein (percussion and conductor), the Schlagzeugensemble der Musik-Akademie, Ilya Gringolts (violin), Maksim Barbash (cello), Benedek Horváth (piano), and Akiko Okabe (piano).

Every piece of music can carry a personal memory, a message, or a story – whether or not it is ever explicitly revealed. In Berlin composer Boris Blacher’s Three Studies on Jewish Folk Songs, one can hear echoes of his Jewish childhood and youth. Sarah Nemtsov, too, turns inward in her string trio Erinnerungen (Memories), revisiting fragments of her own past. And in Bruno Maderna’s solo work for violin, one cannot help but wonder what traces remain of his connection with the violinist Ivry Gitlis in 1971. The programme is performed by the Basel’s Mondrian Ensemble.

The Festival’s closing evening invites audiences into an imaginary café where Jewish salon music, early jazz, and classical traditions meet and mingle. The music of Fritz Kreisler, George Gershwin, and Ernest Bloch encounters the unjustly forgotten voices of Alexander Krein, Joseph Bonime, and Vladimir Dyck. In keeping with the festival’s theme, Klezmer and film music by Abe Ellstein run like a thread throughout the evening, weaving these diverse musical worlds together. The ensemble features Ronny Spiegel (violin), Sebastian Braun (cello), Philipp Moll (double bass), and Mischa Cheung (piano).