This release, part of the
Chandos label's excellent Music in Exile series, will be absolutely essential for lovers and students of Jewish music;
Alberto Hemsi's works are rarely recorded except for, sometimes, the
Coplas Sefardias, Op. 30, three excerpts of which are heard here. However, its appeal is spreading far beyond the Jewish music community, and indeed, the
ARC Ensemble has no special connection to Jewish music. The album hit classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2022.
Hemsi's background is unusual and remarkable. He was a member of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora created when Isabella and Ferdinand expelled Spain's Jewish population in 1492. These exiles maintained their traditions as far away as Anatolia in what is now Turkey, where
Hemsi was born in 1898, but during
Hemsi's lifetime, owing to the currents of world events, they became threatened.
Hemsi grew up partly in Alexandria, Egypt, and lived later in Italy and France. Observing what was happening in his home city, he set out to collect Sephardic music that had been passed down orally for centuries and to incorporate it into modern compositions. The results are extraordinarily artful.
Hemsi has been compared with
Bartok, but his music does not have quite the same abstract rigor
Bartok derived from folk materials. Nor is it pure Romantic nationalism.
Ralph Vaughan Williams or
Zoltan Kodaly might be a better comparison, or one could even say
Hemsi's music rests in a sweet spot between those two. The haunting quality of the Sephardic melodies is retained, but the treatment of them is elegant and fresh. All of the music is enjoyable, but the
Quintet, Op. 28, with a solo viola carrying the Sephardic material against fairly dense counterpoint in the other instruments, is a standout and deserves much wider exposure. It is to be hoped that this fine
Chandos release will bring just that. ~ James Manheim
