This week the Israel Sinfonietta, under musical director Doron Solomon, presented a charming version of Saint-Saens’s classic Carnival of the Animals. Guest artists included the Israeli piano duo of Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg, along with narrator Edo Mosseri, who read and acted out Yaron London’s Hebrew text with a brilliant sense of timing, articulation of words, voice coloring, and histrionic gestures. Silver-Garburg also performed an elegantly styled version of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat Major, K.365, and encored with a piano four-hands version of Mendelssohn’s scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What impresses in their playing was their technical facility, immaculate preparation, and clear articulation – every nuance was thought out. They played the entire program from memory, without a hitch. It’s not often one hears the complete Le Tombreau de Couperin by Maurice Ravel in an orchestral version. Ravel orchestrated movements 1, 3, 4 and 5 of this piano suite. This evening, however, we heard two new additions – movements 2, and 6 – in orchestrations by Gil Shohat. They blended right into the original, and promise to become a standard version for future presentations of the work.
