1954 Haifa
May 30, 1954 – Jun 7, 1954
Haifa
Festival info
Start: May 30, 1954
End: Jun 7, 1954
Locations: Haifa
Hosting member(s)
Supported by the city of Haifa and in association with the Israel Contemporary Music Center
Jury
Karl-Birger Blomdahl
Elliott Carter
Peter Gradenwitz
Mario Peragallo
Domingo Santa Cruz
Concerts
Sunday, 30 May 1954
Heitor Villa-Lobos (Brazil, b. 1887; d. 1959): L’Odyssee d’une Race, poème symphonique (Symphony No. 7) (1945) [36′];##
* Darius Milhaud (France, b. 1892; d. 1974 in Switzerland): Piano Concerto No. 4, op. 295 (1949) [21′];
Adone Zecchi (Italy, b. 1904; d. 1995): Due Invenzioni for orchestra (1948-52);
André Jolivet (France, b. 1905; d. 1974): Symphony No. 1 (1953) [25′] [world premiere].
Monday, 31 May 1954
Antonio Veretti (Italy, b. 1900; d. 1978): Sonata for Violin and Piano (1952);
Arnold van Wyk (South Africa, b. 1916; d. 1983): Van Liefde en Verlatenheid (Marais), 5 songs for soprano and piano (1953) [15′];
Mátyás Seiber (United Kingdom [England], b. 1905 in Hungary; d. 1960): String Quartet No. 3 ‘Quartetto Lirico’ (1951) [23′]; #
Roger Sessions (United States, b. 1896; d. 1985): String Quartet No. 2 (1951) [33′].
Tuesday, 1 June 1954 – Operatic performance
Darius Milhaud: David, opera in 5 acts, op. 320 (1952/54) [2h] [world premiere, concert version].
Wednesday, 2 June 1954
Marius Flothuis (Netherlands, b. 1914; d. 2001): Capriccio for string orchestra op. 35 no. 2 (1949);
Bernhard Lewkovitch (Denmark, b. 1927): 3 Salmi for unaccompanied chorus (1952) [9′];
* Sven-Erik Bäck (Sweden, b. 1919; d. 1994): String Quintet ‘Exercitier’ (1948) [19′];
Mario Panatero (Italy, b. 1919; d. 1962): La Resa di Calais, ballad for soloists, chorus, strings and piano.
Thursday, 3 June 1954
* Ralph Vaughan-Williams (United Kingdom [England], b. 1872; d. 1958): Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus for harp and strings (1939) [13′]; ##
Yoritsune Matsudaira (Japan, b. 1907; d. 2001): Saibara Metamorphoses for soprano and orchestra (1953) [19′];
Riccardo Malipiero (Italy, b. 1914; d. 2003): Violin Concerto (1952);##
Josef Tal (Israel, b. 1910 in Germany (now Poland); d. 2008): Viola Concerto (1953) [20′];
* Hilding Rosenberg (Sweden, b. 1892; d. 1985): Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola, oboe, bassoon and orchestra (1935) [20′].##
Friday, 4 June 1954
Michael Gielen (Austria, b. 1927; d. 2019): Variationen über einen Choral von J. S. Bach;
Erich-Walter Sternberg (Israel, b. 1891 in German; d. 1974): String Quartet No. 1 with soprano (1924);
Rudolf Escher (Netherlands, b. 1912; d. 1980): Le Tombeau de Ravel for flute, oboe, violin, viola, violoncello, and harpsichord (1952; rev 1959) [25′];
Lauri Saikkola (Finland, b. 1906; d. 1995): Divertimento for wind quintet (1952);
Leon Kirchner (United States, b. 1919; d. 2009): String Quartet (1949) [20′].
Sunday, 6 June 1954
” Arnold Schönberg: Piano Concerto, op. 42 (arranged for two pianos) [in memoriam];
Alexandre Tansman (France, b. 1897 in Poland; d. 1986): Sinfonia Piccola (1951/52) [17′];
Klaus Egge (Norway, b. 1906; d. 1979): Violin Concerto (1953) [29′];
Carlos Riesco (Chile, b. 1925; d. 2007): Cuatro Danzas for orchestra (1953) [17′].
??? ” Concert of Israeli Music
Monday, 7 June 1954 – Special concert featuring works by composers from new sections of the ISCM and from Mediterranean countries
Ahmed Adnan Saygun (Turkey, b. 1907; d. 1991): Sonata for Violin and Piano, op. 20 (1941) [23′];
Jean Coulthard (Canada, b. 1908; d. 2000): Threnody (from the Piano Sonata) (1947) (4′ of 15″);
Nikos Skalkottas (Greece, 1904-1949): Fourth Suite for Piano;
Avraham Daus (later Ram Da-Oz) (Israel, b. 1902 in Germany; d. 1974): Suite of Songs (? nach Liedern von Rahe P4);
Héctor Tosar (Uruguay, b. 1923; d. 2002): Sonata for Violin and Piano (1947);
Mirko Cipra (Yugoslavia [Croatia], b. 1938?): Variations on a Yugoslavian Folktune;
Paul Hindemith (Germany, b. 1895; d. 1963): Piano Sonata No. 2 (1936) [13′];
Aurelio de la Vega (Cuba, b. 1925; later emigrated to the United States): Leyenda del Ariel Criollo for violoncello and piano (1953) [7′];
Don Banks (Australia, b. 1923; d. 1980): Sonata for Violin and Piano (1954) [13′].
The following additional works were scheduled, but were not performed (although several of them were reprogrammed and actually performed during ISCM festivals in subsequent years:
Sven-Erik Bäck: Sinfonia Sacra for chorus and orchestra [texts: Psalm 41 and Desiderium Dei] (1953);
Benjamin Frankel (United Kingdom [England], b. 1906; d. 1973): Violin Concerto, ‘To the memory of the six million,’ Op. 24 (1951) [26′] (withdrawn from the festival by the composer, but subsequently performed during the 1956 ISCM Festival in Stockholm);
Alexei Haieff (United States, b. 1914 in Russia; d. 1994): Piano Concerto (1952) [22′] (also performed during the 1956 ISCM Festival);
Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (Israel, b. 1919 in Poland; d. 1994 in Austria): Bénédictions for Soprano and 9 Instruments (1951) [8′] [this world have been a world premiere which eventually occurred instead during the Donaueschinger Musiktage];
Serge Nigg (France, b. 1924; d. 2008): Pour un poète captif, symphonic poem (1951) [12′];
Robert Oboussier (Switzerland, b. 1900 in Belgium; d. 1957): Psalm 130 for chorus and orchestra (1947) (performed along with two other psalm settings by Oboussier during the 1957 ISCM Festival in Zurich);
+ Ralph Vaughan-Williams: Flos campi for chorus, solo viola, and orchestra (1925) [21′];
* Karl Amadeus Hartmann (West Germany, b. 1905; d. 1963): String Quartet ‘Carillon’ über jüdische Themen (1933) [23′].
Notes
# Seiber’s quartet was re-programmed and performed again during the 1955 ISCM Festival in Baden Baden following the composer’s complaints that the Haifa performance was substandard.
## These works were not originally selected by the jury, but were either chosen by the committee to attract audiences or were works deemed by the jury to be as worthy of performance as the works that had been selected by the same composers which needed to be replaced since they were too difficult to perform.
Significant interpreters
Singers: Betsy de la Porte, Bina Vogel-Millon, Yehoshua Zohar, Heinz Rehfuss, Antonia Weiss-Lavanne.
Pianists: Frank Pelleg, Zadel Skolovsky, Moshe Lustig, Arnold van Wyck, Eduard Steuermann, Lola Granetmann.
Violinists: Sandro Materassi, Shimon Mishori, Ernst Glaser, Sascha Parnes.
Violist: Gideon Roehr.
Ensembles: Israeli Wind Quintet, La Salle Quartet, Polishuk Quartet, Haifa Quartet.
Orchestras and Choruses: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Haifa Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Kol Israel Orchestra, Kol Zion Lagola Choir.
Conductors: Michael Taube, Heinz Freudenthal, Arthur Gelbrun, Mogens Woeldike, George Singer, Ferenc Fricsay.
Sources
Anton Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM), Ihre Geschichte von 1922 bis zur Gegenwart (Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, 1982), pp. 510-511 [in German].
Ross Parmenter, “I. S. C. M. Festival in Israel Will Give U.S. Composers Wider Representation,” New York Times, January 24, 1954, Section X, p. 7 (available online).
Nicolas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, Sixth Edition edited by Laura Kuhn (Schirmer Reference, 2001), pp. 477-478.
(annotated by Frank J. Oteri, in progress)