PERFORMERS
- Josefina Urraca, piano
- Julia Yang, cello
ABOUT THE CONCERT
Kaddish is the first of Maurice Ravel's Deux mélodies hébraïques, composed in 1914 as settings of traditional Hebrew texts, paired with "L'énigme éternelle." The Kaddish is the ancient Aramaic prayer of mourning and praise, and Ravel treats its melismatic, cantorial line with the precision, elegance, and restrained emotional depth that mark all his music. Originally written for voice and piano and later orchestrated, it is heard here in an arrangement for cello and piano, the cello taking the vocal line's long, ornamented phrases. Ravel, a towering figure of early twentieth-century French music, is celebrated for his crystalline orchestration and refined harmonic language, often linked to Impressionism yet always unmistakably his own.