This Is Jewish Music, Too

The art music of Israel is performed at the Kennedy Center in the Pro Musica Hebraica series, recently featuring the Ariel Quartet.

By Barrymore Laurence Scherer for The Wall Street Journal
Some years ago, Charles and Robyn Krauthammer were discussing a conundrum: To many who knew about Jewish or Hebraic music, their conception was limited to three things: Klezmer (the infectious Yiddish dance-band music with its weeping clarinet skirls); Israeli folk music typified by “Hava Nagila,” the ubiquitous wedding dance tune; and synagogue music for cantor, choir or congregation. Yet the rich repertoire of Jewish classical music was generally unknown. By “Jewish classical music,” the Krauthammers were thinking of concert music—art music composed by Jews (or even non-Jews) that shares a common inspiration in the ancient modes, melodies and sometimes Hebrew and Yiddish texts of traditional Jewish culture in Europe, the eastern Mediterranean region and beyond.

Mr. Krauthammer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist with a former psychiatric practice in his back pocket. Ms. Krauthammer is a sculptor and painter with a former international law practice in hers. In 2008 they founded Pro Musica Hebraica, an annual concert series at the Kennedy Center consecrated, according to its mission statement, to exposing its audience “to the magnificent range of Jewish music” and “reintegrat[ing] the Jewish musical past and present into the mainstream repertoire of chamber and symphonic musical performance.”

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