Giora Feidman, Clarinet - Elena Denisova, Violin - Franz Hummel, Piano

Moscow Symphony Orchestra - Alexei Kornienko, Conductor

Modern Classics

...one hears the audience humming a low sustained sound that accompanies Giora Feidman's clarinet at the beginning of "Hatikva"...
"Hatikva" means hope and is the title of the Israeli national anthem. The Israelis call it, self-ironically, the „Moldau“, because the first four bars are reminiscent of Smetana’s famous D minor theme.
I have melted down the substance of the anthem to form a melodic, hamonic concentrate that renders the atmosphere of the song in four bars and forms the passacaglia bass of the whole work. The solo clarinet is engrossed in its own excessive expression of joy and sorrow, outcry and tragedy while the yearning melodies of "Hatikva" are buried, time and again, beneath the orchestral sounds, recalling the great sufferings of the Israeli people.
Who could convey this subject with more authenticity than Giora Feidman, the genius of sensitivity, to whom I have dedicated this composition.
Towards the end of the piece, Giora and I improvise a cadenza for clarinet and piano.

I originally conceived my Violin Symphony "Fukushima" under the influence of the pictures of atomic destruction in the Japanese city Hiroshima.
The work was intended as an acoustic monument to the extermination of our world by a catastrophe caused by human hybris. The solo violin, that strays about desperately but with fearful hope in a ravaged orchestral landscape, represents the individual in the ruins of civilisation.
After the terrible moving images of the Fukushima drama have burned themselves into my mind, this castastophic symphony now seems like a dark premonition. It bears its title in memory of the Japanese victims, in the hope that their monstrous tragedy will cause mankind to rethink its handling of natural forces.
Franz Hummel

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