9  Songs without Words (1952)

    a. Arioso - b. Ballad - c. Sephardi melody

Ben-Haim's model for the Songs without Words was Ravel's Vocalise (better known as the Havanaise). They represent Ben-Haim's most radical endeavor to reach to the East through the predominance of the melodic parameter over the harmonic. The first song unfolds like an Arabic taxim improvisation, starting with a narrow progression by seconds and thirds, and then expanding to a powerful climax, with the harmony in the piano accumulating more and more pitches. Yet the western heritage is still evident with the element of the recapitulation. Ben-Haim requested the second song to be chanted 'indifferently' and compared it to the humming of the Beduin in the desert. The third song is based on the Sephardi song En el mar hay una torre that Ben-Haim had arranged for Bracha Zephira with a solo harp in November, 1950. The Songs Without Words became one of Ben-Haim's most popular works, performed also in the version for voice and orchestra and in arrangements for nearly all melodic instruments.

10  At bein Atzei Eden

      You, myrtle Blossom from Eden

            From Myrtle Blossoms from Eden (1965),

            poem by Yehudah Halevi

The cycle Myrtle Blossoms is one of Ben-Haim's most exquisite vocal works. The five songs alternate between Soprano and mezzo Soprano (or Baritone), with a concluding duet. In the first song Ben-Haim selected a text by the great Jewish medieval poet, Yehudah Halevi which evokes an imaginary ideal world of a nostalgic retrospective glance towards Ben-Haim's early orientalism, with subtle references to Debussy and Mahler. The delicate melodic line is holly diatonic, with constant changes of irregular meters.

11  Music for Cello

       a. Moderato - b. Rather fast, lively - c. Slow

In 1962 Ben-Haim completed a large scale cello concerto, which followed earlier concertos for piano and for violin. The cello concerto was premiered in 1970 by the American Richard Kay, and soon after by the excellent Israeli cellist Uzi Wiesel. In 1972 Ben-Haim was invited by the Mayor of Munich to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday in his home town where he received an honorary award. While crossing a road there he was hit by a car. The accident left him half paralyzed and confined to a wheel chair. Despite his severe condition he returned to limited compositional activity and in 1977 he dedicated to Uzi Wiesel a composition for cello solo.

Ben-Haim always stressed his admiration to Bach as the greatest composer ever, and the composition is modelled on the overall conception of Bach's suite for cello solo. The writing is highly virtuosic and idiomatic, using the entire large range of the cello. The first movement is dominated by the Sarabande rhythm, although the composer requests a flexible b rhythmic interpretation 'according to expression'. The melodic line, occasionally enriched by double stops and chords, reaches a rhythmic acceleration, and then a modified recapitulation of the opening section transposed by a fifth down. The fast movement is modelled after the giga rhythm, with contrasting binary patterns and a breathless forward drive. The final movement is a slow, meditative and moving fantasia.

Varda Kotler