Concert Review

Sounding Jerusalem Festival Cello and Piano Recital Jerusalem Music Center, June 30; Sounding Jerusalem Soprano and Piano Recital Austrian Hospice, July 4.

By URY EPPSTEIN
Sounding Jerusalem Festival Cello and Piano Recital Jerusalem Music Center, June 30
A valuable feature of the Sounding Jerusalem Festival is the stage it provides for young, extremely talented musicians at the beginning of their career, allowing them to become known to larger audiences.
One of these was Australian cellist Pei-Jee Ng. In Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano he achieved an appealing balance of the pizzicato and the bowed sections in the second movement.
Beethoven’s Sonata in A Major op. 69 was performed with a sonorous, rich, singing sound. Beethovenian energies were conveyed with enormous force of conviction, intensity of expression and refreshing liveliness.
A rare combination of youthful freshness and amazing emotional maturity were displayed in Brahms’s demanding Sonata in F Major op. 99.
Arnon Erez was a supportive and attentive partner at the piano.
Sounding Jerusalem Soprano and Piano Recital Austrian Hospice, July 4
A young French soprano who started her career just before the beginning of this millenium, Megal Leger’s program was particularly attractive, by local standards, offering French songs by Debussy and Faure, and German Lieder by Richard Strauss, not quite well-known on our shores.
With her bright, lovely voice, Leger displayed much subtlety in the rendition of these musical miniatures, embellishing them with delicate nuances of volume and lyrical expression.
Above all, she showed mastery of the gentle art of landing softly on high notes, and then letting them swell gradually to impressive force.
Her operatic experience, however, did not prove to be a positive influence on her performance of songs.
An occasionally over-dramatic interpretation sometimes missed the intimate and restrained character of these works. The difference in style between opera and songs is something that this remarkably gifted singer will no doubt acquire before long when she will realize that vocal art also exists outside of the opera house.
Efrat Levy contributed the piano part authoritatively and with extreme attentiveness.