The Sound of Music

The concert season in Jerusalem resumed this week, and it was like meeting old friends, In fact, we did actually meet old friends. The first concert of the season of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra found us sitting in the packed Henry Crown auditorium of the Jerusalem Theatre. Together with us were many familiar faces, as well as friends and acquaintances from various walks of life whose paths have coincided with ours at one point or another, and whose friendship we have continued to cultivate, fertilized by our common love of music.

The orchestra was present to its fullest extent, crowding the stage with an impressive array of instruments, including an impressive brass section. Their virtuoso ability was stretched to the utmost in the music chosen for the evening. It started with four specially commissioned pieces by contemporary Israeli composers. Each piece was unfamiliar and did not make for easy listening, though none was longer than seven minutes. At the end of each piece Steven Sloane, the conductor, turned round to the audience and motioned to the composer concerned to stand up and take a bow. And after the last piece all four composers, three men and one woman, were invited on to the stage to take a collective bow. An admirable gesture obviously intended to encourage young Israeli composers.

The rest of the evening followed more traditional lines, with a stirring performance of Schumann’s piano concerto played by veteran pianist Elisabeth Levanskaya and, after the interval, Berlioz’s Synphonie Fantastique. This last draws on all the talents of every instrument in the orchestra, producing marvellous sounds, both pianissimo and fortissimo, but especially the latter. Berlioz knew his onions when it came to getting the maximum out of the orchestra, and it was emotionally stirring to see and hear the whole orchestra, together with the brass section and the extended timpani section, giving their all in the last movement of the symphony (Witches Sabbath).

The dry cough that sometimes afflicts me in concerts seemed to be kept at bay for most of the concert, and when it did choose to descend upon me it was luckily in the last movement, when any sound I made was well and truly drowned out by the massive noise produced by the orchestra. The sight and sound of two huge, highly-polished tubas doing their bit to produce a thrilling effect at the end was something I won’t forget in a hurry.

One can’t have a concert without an audience, and it is a pity that so many music-lovers in Israel don’t seem to know how to behave. At first I thought that some of the people sitting near me were suffering from Parkinson’s because they kept moving their hands, but when they managed to stop I realized that they were simply ‘helping the conductor.’ The worst culprit sitting near me, though fortunately not next to me, was an elderly lady who waved her hands around above her head to show her identification with the music. If the conductor hadn’t been standing with his back to her he might well have volunteered to let her take his place.

Our Friendly Neighbour

For a number of technical reasons we decided to hold our family celebration marking a milestone birthday in the neighbouring island of Cyprus. Family members came from various parts of Israel and the world, a hotel in the seaside resort of Ayia Napa was chosen and the dates for our four-day stay were selected. This last coincided with Israel’s eight-day festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles), when schools, colleges, universities and many places of work are closed.

The flight lasted about half an hour, and the drive to Ayia Napa took another half-hour, and then we were at our destination – a small hotel on the beautiful coast, part of a continuum of hotels. Our hotel overlooked the sea and the marina where yachts and fishing boats bobbed up and down with the waves and fishing and sailing excursions were offered.

From the moment we arrived (there were seventeen of us) the manager and the staff of the hotel went out of their way to please and meet our various demands. Tables in the dining area were moved so that we could all sit together. Our ‘birthday party’ meant that we more or less took over the hotel lounge, but no one complained. Balloons and champagne bottles were placed on the long table at dinner, a superb cake replete with pyrotechnics and candles was served with a flourish, and everything was done with grace and what seemed to be natural cheerfulness. Smiles were the order of the day everywhere we went and whatever we did.

The history of Cyprus goes back many millennia, and the island has been invaded and settled by many different nations and cultures, among them the Greeks and the Romans, of course. Its inhabitants appear to have learned to adapt to their checkered history, though the two main groups identify as either Turkish or Greek. In 1925 the British made it a Crown Colony, and established a strategic military base there. In 1960 the island became independent, but tensions between the two groups persisted, and in 1974 Turkey invaded the country. The resulting combat ended with the partition of the island into a Turkish and a Greek part, though the Turkish part is not recognized by the UN or any country other than Turkey.

While we were there we were not aware of any tension or hostility, and since the livelihood of a large proportion of the inhabitants rests on tourism it is evidently in their best interests to maintain the prevailing mood of optimism and charm. The climate is very similar to that of Israel (mostly Mediterranean), which leads most hotels to close down completely during the winter months. Along the promenade of Ayia Napa there are restaurants catering to every taste, but with special emphasis on fish and seafood.

Whether in the hotel or outside it, everyone is friendly, helpful and polite. And despite its volatile past Cyprus could well be called ‘Land of Smiles.’ It was something of a surprise, therefore, to come across a memorial plaque installed on the promenade in 2021 commemorating the victory in a ‘heroic battle between Greek Revolutionaries and Turkish soldiers of the Famagusta Guard’ held there in 1828 ‘with the victory of the Greeks.’

There is no avoiding the parallels with Israel’s own history and the conflict between two populations both laying claim to the same land. The Turks and Greeks of Cyprus seem to have settled into the modus vivendi of partition, with a clear line dividing the two parts of the island. At present there are no overt hostilities, and it would seem to suit both sides to keep the situation as peaceful as possible, enabling everyone to get on with their lives and livelihoods.

Ah well…

Four Times Twenty

During the last few years I have been spending part of the summer in France, supposedly to avoid the summer heat of Israel. That has come to be something of a joke, as the summers in France have been as hot as – or even hotter than – the ones in Israel.

Still, there are many benefits to life in France, or at least the rural part where we usually stay. The food is good and relatively cheap, there is a quieter, slower pace of life, and people are friendly, polite and usually well-mannered. For my husband and myself it is a time of relaxation and contemplation.

Mastering the French language is usually not too much of a problem for speakers of English, especially if, like me, they were taught some of the basics of French (as well as Latin) at school. In many cases the vocabulary is similar if not identical, though the grammar can be daunting.

But the biggest bugbear for me is the numbers. They follow a law of their own, one which bears no resemblance to anything any speaker of English can recognize. Sometimes the number involves having to do addition, so that twenty-one is vingt-et-un (twenty plus one), but twenty-two is vingt-deux. And sometimes you have to multiply, so that eighty is quatre-vingt, which is four times twenty. But after that you have to add, so that eighty-one is quatre-vingt-et-une (four times twenty plus one) and so on, but ninety-two is quatre-vingt-douze (four times twenty plus twelve) namely, multiplying and addition all rolled into one. Quel horreur! It’s a nightmare for someone like me whose grasp of arithmetic is somewhat shaky.

But as I have just turned eighty, it is something of a consolation to use the term quatre-vingt to define my age rather than the mundane English term. There is something charming, even magical, about defining myself as four-times-twenty, as there is still an element of youthfulness somewhere in there. Even if I’m four times twenty, the twenty is still in there somehow, reminding me that once I was indeed just twenty, in the far-off, long-lost world of my youth.

It’s also occurred to me that most of the people I grew up with and who were the friends of my youth must also have reached the same ripe old age. Help!

So, vive la France, and vive le Français, as long as it enables me to retain some latent element of the person I once was, and help me to overcome the ravages of time on my person.